Counter Void

宫岛达男

source: intervencionluminicawordpress
En torno a la complejidad de la ciudad, la sobre-información cotidiana, y el concepto de tiempo, se mueve la instalación Counter Void (Fig.29), realizada por Tatsuo Miyajima en el edificio central de oficinas de la cadena de televisión TV Asahi, en Roppongi en el año 2003.

Esta obra de arte está formado por 6 paneles de luz de neón, con una altura de 3,20 metros cada uno. Cada uno de los paneles tiene un contador digital de una sola cifra, que avanza del “1” al “9” , cada uno con una velocidad diferente, y no indican el “0”. Los 6 paneles están ubicados en el espacio de la ciudad, como cerramiento entre el espacio público y el privado, en una esquina de la manzana, paralelo a las calles que la delimitan en ángulo de 90º. Durante el día, la luz de neón de fondo se apaga y los contadores digitales de luz de neón blanco se muestran. Se da la vuelta el escenario en la noche. Muestra los números del contador en negro sobre fondo de luz blanca y brillante. El tiempo infinito que se repite a velocidades diferentes hace referencia al contexto en el que se ubica, un distrito donde se ubican empresa tecnológicas y relacionadas con los mass-media, en el que se mezclan numerosas velocidades del tiempo: la humana, la de los edificios, la información digital….Para el autor, esta obra “muestra el contraste de Vida y muerte”.
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source: uccaorgcn

在日本当代先锋艺术家宫岛达男眼中，数字是抽象的，又是有具象意义的，它们象征着巨大的可能性，时间和空间的永恒，生命、死亡和重生的无限循环。他围绕着 ——“持续变化”、“关联一切”、“永无止尽”为主题进行艺术创作，这些源自古老的东方佛教哲学的概念，结合他运用的LED、计算机集成电路和视频投影技 术后，散发出充满现代感的全新魅力。
宫岛达男的很多作品中都采用了精密的LED设计，使从9到1（或从1到9）的数字——人类最为通用和极简的语言，循环跳转。当他们同时熄灭，整个房间会浸 入一片黑暗，但是在他的作品中却从未出现数字0，因为艺术家认为0意味着否定，否定了人类存在的无限循环，艺术家以让0缺失的方式引发更多对于虚无的思 考。

艺术家自述

从1988 年起，我就开始尝试用LED 和数字化的计算排列方式来进行艺术创作。其中，我想要表达的主旨有三个：“持续变化”,“关联一切”，“永无止尽”。作品的数字排列是从9 到1（或从1 到9），变化的速度因不同数字而异。0 则不被表现出来，用灯光的熄灭来代替。数字运行时所发出的光代表了“生”，而表示0 的黑暗部分则意味着“死”。我把这个计算和排列系统视为生命的象征，这是多年来我一直想表达的观念。这种思想最早源于佛教。中国为佛教的传播做了很大贡 献，因此这次来到中国举办个展，我感到很荣幸。
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source: tatsuomiyajima
The work consists of huge six digital counters with neon lights, each counter 3.2m tall. The digital counters progressively count from 9 to 1 and do not indicate ‘0’. Each counter counts at a different speed.

The background wall is illuminated with neon lights, and it changes its face by day and night. In the daytime, the background light is turned off and digital counters lit up with white neon lights are displayed. The scenery turns around in the nighttime. It displays black digital counters in the brightly lit white background.

The artwork shows the contrast of ‘Life’ and ‘Death’, and a different face in the day or night as well.

Tokyo is the city filled with too much life and Roppongi is the center of it. Mass media is sending too much information, and a TV station is the center of it.

Daytime Scene:
Roppongi Hills offers a daytime show in Roppongi; the place which is filled with too much life, and the artwork will make it more. A TV station is the base, from which too much information is being broadcasted. The artwork will paint over the TV station with ‘too much light’, displays ‘life’ and ‘light’ and offers an opportunity to think of ‘Deeper Death’.

Nighttime Scene:
Roppongi is an area originally known for its entertaining aspect and filled with human desire at night much more than daytime. Miyajima dares to bring ‘Death’ to such time at night in Roppongi, and bring ‘Darkness’ to the center of mass media. The artwork will create a black hole of ‘Death’ and ‘Darkness’, and offers an opportunity to think of ‘Deeper Life’.

Day and Night -The dynamism of the Scene-Roppongi and the artwork create the drama of ‘Death’ and ‘Life’. It continues to change and completes with feelings and thoughts of people passing by..
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source: lissongallery

Tatsuo Miyajima is one of Japan’s foremost sculptors and installation artists. Employing contemporary materials such as electric circuits, video, and computers, Miyajima’s supremely technological works have centred on his use of digital light-emitting diode (LED) counters, or ‘gadgets’ as he calls them, since the late 1980s. These numbers, flashing in continual and repetitious – though not necessarily sequential – cycles from 1 to 9, represent the journey from life to death, the finality of which is symbolized by ‘0’ or the zero point, which consequently never appears in his work. This theory derives partially from humanist ideas, the teachings of Buddhism, as well as from his core artistic concepts: ‘Keep Changing’, ‘Connect with All’, and ‘Goes on Forever’. Miyajima’s LED numerals have been presented in grids, towers, complex integrated groupings or circuits and as simple digital counters, but are all aligned with his interests in continuity, connection and eternity, as well as with the flow and span of time and space. ‘Time connects everything’, says Miyajima. ‘I want people to think about the universe and the human spirit.’

Tatsuo Miyajima was born in 1957 and lives and works in Ibaraki, Japan. He finished undergraduate and postgraduate studies at the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music in 1986 after which he began experimenting with performance art before moving on to light-based installations. In addition to participating in numerous international biennales and important group shows, he has held solo exhibitions at Ullens Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing (2011), Miyanomori Art Museum, Hokkaido (2010), San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (1997), Fondation Cartier pour l’Art Contemporain (1996) and Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth (1996). He has participated in the Venice Biennale (1988, 1999) and in numerous group exhibitions, from the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney (2012) to the Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art (2008). In 2006, Miyajima was selected to serve as Vice President of Tohoku University of Art and Design.
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source: tateorguk

Japanese sculptor and installation artist. He finished undergraduate and postgraduate studies at the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music in 1986 and came to prominence in the late 1980s with installations of digital counters in the form of light-emitting diodes. He made his first counter in 1988 and subsequently retained this form as his basic building block: a large, two-digit red display, it continually counts from 1 to 99, never reaching 100 or registering zero. Often he wired together several counters together so that they triggered each other at various points; he called these groups ‘Regions’ and saw them as representing a symbolic universe. In the first half of the 1990s he produced work as part of his 133651 series: ranging from small groupings of counters to large, complex installations, each work consisted of a row of ten two-digit counters with up to five wired together. Such a unit allows a total of 133,651 combinations to appear, hence the title. The project Running Time (1994; see 1996–7 exh. cat.) showed a formal development in Miyajima’s use of the counters: here he filled a dark room with small toy cars in constant movement which kept bumping into each other, triggering the counters mounted on their roofs to reset. Although Miyajima’s work is indebted to Serial art of the 1970s and to the use of numerical systems by other artists, the artist himself spoke of his work as addressing humanist ideas within Buddhist philosophy.