People Are Talking: UMS presents Ryoji Ikeda’s...
Posted: 10/31/14
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PERFORMANCES & EVENTS
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People Are Talking: UMS presents Ryoji Ikeda’s superposition at Power Center:
I shared a similar experience of being caught between trying to look away while simultaneously being drawn in. It was hard to know exactly what to thing or how to react to the blinding lights and sounds, yet I similarly walked away with a sense of relevance. As for the scientific messages, I had a hard time seeing them as concrete references to things like quantum mechanics and physics. Rather, it seemed as though science as a whole was being described so it could be placed opposite religion. The wave of sound we experience was definitely paradoxical: how can something so bizarre and confusing seem to communicate higher level understanding?
Ryoji Ikeda’s Superposition entirely surprised me. I’ll admit that I went to the Power Center expecting nothing more than a headache invoking sequence of bright lights and beeping. With the extremely high pitched noted at the beginning of the performance, I at first thought that my expectations would be confirmed.
However, my attitude toward the performance quickly changed. Ikeda managed to take noises and images that are generally written off simply as dry, confusing, data and turn them into an overpowering experience. Although the sounds and images were harsh, I found myself completely enthralled by the performance, drawn in so much that I couldn’t separate myself from the sound. I was incredibly impressed that the traditionally opposed realms of science and art were linked so flawlessly. Art relies on the artistic to relay meaning while the sciences relay on the scientific. Superposition blurred this distinction in a way I previously thought impossible. I never expected that data could participate in creativity.
The harsh sounds and piercing lights compelled me to turn away and plug my ears, but at the same time paralyzed me so that all I could do was direct my attention to the stage. It almost seemed that Superposition had a kind of hypnotic power. I was unable to analyze the performance; much like the sciences which Ikeda’s data and images are associated with it lay totally outside my realm of understanding. Despite this however, I left the Power Center feeling that whatever was being portrayed by Ikeda’s performance was relevant to me. Ikeda’s Superposition relayed some sort of artistic interpretation of the world that I previously expected could only be represented by traditionally artistic means. While the components of the performance seemed like utter chaos to me, there certainly existed an order, an explanation within the chaos. This paradox drew me into the performance, and left me with an impression of confusion, surprise, and amazement.
"by Faith
People Are Talking: UMS presents Ryoji Ikeda’s superposition at Power Center:
Superposition was an experience unlike any other I have had before. When the lights slowly faded and the room was blanketed in darkness, I was unaware of how Ikdea would communicate his themes and his artistic vision; when the counters in the front of the stage began to beep and flash sporadically, all united by a mechanized harmony and a driving bass, I knew that I would just have to be a spectator. Through various physics demonstrations, such as a back-and-forth with Morse code and vibrations from tuning forks, we were given a beautiful artistic representation of science. However, the entire production was coated with an air of mystery and a tangible sense of fear. At multiple times in the production, the shrill tones of the machine would swell and crescendo to a point in which it could be contained no longer, and those moments of absolute tension provoked the horror of uncertainty and a loss of control. Taken as an experience, Superposition seemed to take us to a world in which the line between religion and science is blurred, and the only thing that is certain is the pulsing beat of Ikeda’s visions. The spanning cosmos is revealed to be individual planes of understanding; the random rhythms of dots and dashes are revealed to be communications of truth. At times it was blinding, at times it was deafening, and at times it was uncomfortable to even be in the room. However, the end result of this performance was a glimpse into one artist’s view of the world, and it is a superposition between machine and man.