Rock The Future

Ryota Kuwakubo, Ressentiment, exonemo
FACT Centre, Wood Street
26th August – 30th October 2005

Reviewed by Emma Wolfindale

I sat gazing at the pixilated thick lines running across the white screen. The effect was almost hypnotic. Sometimes a close image, sometimes far away. At times the composition would be hectic and chaotic; zooming in very close up to the mark, then following the end of the mark wherever it was travelling. You wonder who created the mark and what they were trying to say but despite this questioning the answer doesn’t really seem to matter. The piece of work offers a stillness and contentment. A small haven, an inner peace and release. The line moves downwards and then curls upwards to create a ‘V’ shape. This shape is then repeated in a loop. This repeated image I liken to that of the process of meditating or chanting in a monastery. Focusing on a small phrase over and over again brings enlightenment and revelation. It brings understanding. By focusing on this visual mark-making you begin to understand the process involved in making the mark, you understand the movement, the shape and form.

In a small room on your left as you move into this space is the ‘engine room’ of the visual product. The source and instigation of the marks. The room is painted with diagonal black and white stripes reminiscent of the optical illusion work of Bridget Riley. It’s almost like walking into one of her pieces of art; into a parallel world somewhere away from reality.

There are three computers in the middle of the room. I walked up to one, picked up the electronic pen and began to draw. As I began to draw the screen went black and a sublime sound similar to that of the raging sea projected out of speakers in the room. The sound altered in response to the pen movements. The effect was a very spiritual one. Almost as if the screens were a direct link to a higher being, a language beyond our own.

After producing this ‘unknown language’ you venture back outside and see you own communication projected onto the blank screens in front of you. The process starts again. The meditation on the marks you produced. You familiarise yourself with image. The image becomes live and moving, not a past event but an event that keeps on rolling and moving. The words are lifted from the original screens they were produced on and are now bouncing around in this live virtual dream world.

It is almost like stepping into a virtual mind. You see the mind replaying the image over and over again, digesting and processing the marks. You can imagine the mind, storing the information into organised schema, to recall them and digest them further at a later date.

The screens are the surface, the eyes to the mind. There are many images that have gone before and many images to come. What you have experienced is the dream world of communication from your own hand and thoughts.