Ryoji Ikeda Presents: data-verse

Ryoji Ikeda has been working with data for close to 16 years, working with creative coding to develop an audiovisual language in order to explore what he terms “an aesthetics of data, information and computer science”. In many ways, the data-verse trilogy is Ikeda’s final word on this facet of his practice, a dazzlingly complex aesthetic investigation into the science of the natural world. The artist’s upcoming show at 180 The Strand will feature the world premiere of the third iteration of a work five years in the making, following data-verse 1, which premiered at the 58th International Art Exhibition, La Biennale de Venezia in 2019, and data-verse 2, unveiled in Tokyo Midtown, also in 2019. The show will mark the first time all three works will be shown simultaneously. “Three screens will be showing at the same time for the first time, and probably for the last time, so this is a really special occasion,” says the artist.

Commissioned by Audemars Piguet Contemporary in 2015, data-verse represents Ikeda’s crowning technical achievement, a dense visualization of tens of thousands of hours of rigorous scientific research and rhizomatic thinking, distilled into an intense burst of transcendent information exchange. Working from vast data sets lifted from research conducted by NASA and the Human Genome Project, Ikeda folds DNA sequences, galactic coordinates, the structure of proteins, quantum physics and cosmology into the installations, parsing the raw data with self-written programs to be projected in three monolithic audiovisual presentations. The result is staggering, a perspective-altering reminder of the scale of the universe that verges on the psychedelic.

data-verse features as part of Ryoji Ikeda’s upcoming show at 180 The Strand, produced and curated by The Vinyl Factory and Fact in collaboration with Audemars Piguet Contemporary. The show opens on May 20 and will run until August 1. Tickets are available now at: https://www.180thestrand.com/​

For more information about Ryoji Ikeda and his work, you can visit his website and follow him on Instagram.

Directed and filmed by Pedro S. Küster
Additional Cinematography by Laima Leyton

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