A sound and music event that is simultaneously extraordinarily, mesmerically beautiful and also so radically disorientating that afterwards you feel as if the world has tilted to one side.” —Arts Desk
MINNEAPOLIS, October 1, 2014—Eyes open and jaws drop during superposition, a state-of-the-art, immersive digital and live performance experience and the newest work by renowned electronic music/visual artist Ryoji Ikeda on Friday—Saturday, October 24—25, 8 pm in the William and Nadine McGuire Theater. Using a spectacular combination of synchronized video screens, real-time content feeds, digital sound sculptures, and—for the first time in Ikeda’s work—human performers, superposition explores the conceptual world opened up by quantum theory. Viscerally thrilling music plunges the audience into the grey space between 0 and 1, true and false, where uncertainty and probability coexist. The powerful display of technology and art takes the spectator inside indescribable structures at the very foundation of all life.
Ikeda was a founder of the groundbreaking high-tech performance collective Dumb Type, which the Walker presented at the Guthrie Lab in 1999 and 2001.
Note: Performance contains strobe effects and high decibel levels. 90 minutes.
Ryoji Ikeda
Japan’s leading electronic composer and visual artist Ryoji Ikeda focuses on the essential characteristics of sound itself and that of visuals as light by means of both mathematical precision and mathematical aesthetics. Ikeda has gained a reputation as one of the few international artists working convincingly across both visual and sonic media. He elaborately orchestrates sound, visuals, materials, physical phenomena and mathematical notions into immersive live performances and installations.
Alongside of pure musical activity, Ikeda has been working on long-term projects: datamatics (2006) consists of various forms such as moving image, sculptural, sound and new media works that explore one’s potentials to perceive the invisible multi-substance of data that permeates our world. The project test pattern (2008) has developed a system that converts any type of data – text, sounds, photos and movies into barcode patterns and binary patterns of 0s and 1s, which examines the relationship between critical points of device performance and the threshold of human perception. The series spectra (2001) is large-scale installations employing intense white light as a sculptural material and so transforming public locations in Amsterdam, Paris, Barcelona and Nagoya where versions have been installed. Ikeda worked on a collaborative project with Carsten Nicolai, cyclo (2000), which examines error structures and repetitive loops in software and computer programmed music, with audiovisual modules for real-time sound visualization, through live performance, CDs and books (Raster-noton, 2001, 2011).
He performed and exhibited worldwide including Australian Centre for the Moving Image, Melbourne; MIT, Boston; Centre Pompidou, Paris; Sónar Festival Barcelona; Tate Modern, London; Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin; Auditorium Parco della Musica, Roma; lCC, Tokyo; Art Beijing; Göteborg Biennale; Elektra Festival Montreal; Le Fresnoy, Tourcoing; Yamaguchi Center for Arts and Media; Le Laboratoire, Paris; Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo; Ikon Gallery, Birmingham; Singapore art Museum; Crossing the Line Festival, New York; Ars Electronica Center, Linz; Grec Festival, Barcelona; Aichi Triennale, Nagoya; Palazzo Grassi, Venezia; Armory Park Avenue, New York; Barbican Center, London; Museo de Arte, Bogota; Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin; Laboral, Gijon; Festival d’Automne, Paris, as well as electronic music festivals and small DJ clubs.
His albums +/- (1996), 0°C (1998), matrix (2000), dataplex (2005) and test pattern (2008) – pioneered a new minimal world of electronic music through his razor-sharp technique and aesthetics. His work matrix won the Golden Nica Award at Ars Electronica in 2001.
Tickets to superposition are: $28 ($24 Walker members) and are available at walkerart.org/tickets or by calling 612.375.7600
Dig Deeper!
The Balcony Bar is open one hour prior to and after performances.
Post-show SpeakEasy, Saturday, October 25
It’s like a book club for the performing arts—your questions, your answers, risk-free. After the Friday show, head to the Balcony Bar to jump into a discussion or just listen in as others hash it out. Led by a Walker tour guide and a local choreographer.
Support provided by Producers’ Council members King’s Fountain/Barbara Watson Pillsbury and Henry Pillsbury.
The Walker Art Center’s performing arts programs are made possible by generous support from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation through the Doris Duke Performing Arts Fund, the William and Nadine McGuire Commissioning Fund, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts.
Producers’ Council
Performing Arts programs and commissions at the Walker are generously supported by members of the Producers’ Council: Russell Cowles; Nor Hall and Roger Hale; King’s Fountain/Barbara Watson Pillsbury and Henry Pillsbury; Emily Maltz; Dr. William W. and Nadine M. McGuire; Leni and David Moore, Jr.; Josine Peters; Mike and Elizabeth Sweeney; and Frances and Frank Wilkinson.