Sarah, I like your comments about order and how we seek order. This is really different from my perspective– I struggled to see order and a pattern in this performance. Especially in relation to the black and white squares–I just didn’t know what the images had to do with the sounds. I knew it was there– Ikeda is a famous guy so he obviously knows what he’s doing. I just didn’t see it. But it looks like you did. Maybe I should have stopped trying to seek out a correlation/order in this and just listened.

“What is life? What is love?” read the telegraphs. It failed to ask, what is this performance?

Science and art. Math and music. Light and dark. Loud and complete silence. These strikingly opposite words all describe Ryoji Ikeda’s performance. While many enjoyed these varying dynamics, I did not. This performance seemed beyond my understanding.

While the different parts seemed interesting and insightful on their own, their correlation to the piece as a whole escaped me. For instance, the telegraph readings seemed meaningful, but of what? What message did they signify? Initially, the messages discussed information and its meaning with a very unique perspective: “Information is not knowledge.” Okay, so that seems like a very non-traditional approach to how we view information. This telegraph occurred during the black and white sequence of images. Later, the telegraphs moved from questioning the meaning of information to inquiring about the meaning of life, as mentioned earlier. The questioning of deep human values—life and love—were preceded by colored images instead of the initial, geometric, black and white visuals. This seems insightful, right? Adding color to symbolize the shift from a lifeless topic—information—to the emotional topic of human existence. But why? At this point, I still failed to understand what Superposition was trying to say. What was the meaning of this work as a whole? Maybe these two instances showcase a correlation—combining technology with meaning. However, the tuning forks and the zoomed in letters resembling a Scrabble board did not relate to the other two telegraph examples. I am by no means discrediting Ikeda’s skill or artistic perspective in Superposition; I am merely stating I did not understand it. Maybe my comfort with the traditional forms of performing arts hindered me from viewing this with a completely open mind, blocked me from reaping a meaning from his unconventional sounds and patterns. I left asking myself, what just happened? I still do not know.