Infinite Quest: Ryoji Ikeda Wants to Disappear

I have a very strong beliefa policyto not

give any interviews, Ryoji Ikeda, the
elusive electronic composer and visual
artist, said in an interview. Mr. Ikeda sat in
a conference room on the second floor of
the Park Avenue Armory with a window
looking out on the buildings cavernous
drill hall, where the artists latest work,
the transfinite, was in the early stages of installation. I want to explain, he
continued. This, he gestured to the window, is everything. I really dont want to
speak about any concepts. Because there are no concepts. Finally he laughed,
breaking the growing tension. If I say something that is a kind of answer, the audience
will be stuck in what I am saying. And there are infinitely many answers.
Mr. Ikeda said he maps out concepts in his mind as he is working on a piece, but that
these are discarded when the piece is complete; he said he doesnt remember much.
Whether this is true or just something he claims in order to evade playing his own critic
hardly mattersMr. Ikedas work is, objectively, difficult. His sound compositions often
deal with the highest or lowest frequencies that the human ear is capable of hearing.
His installations combine these audio limits with harsh visual stimulia digital chart, for
instance, of the first seven million digits of a prime number so large it is beyond human
comprehension, the numbers endlessly flashing and changing, responding to the
music. He discovered at a certain point in his career that numerical systems were a
way to visualize sound and has carried on, for years now, running philosophical
conversations with mathematicians about the nature of numbers. His piece VL,
inspired by a discussion with Harvard mathematician Benedict Gross about the
definition of infinity, is an aesthetic representation of the titular mathematical equation,
which posits that not every set of numbers is constructible, that there are limits to
what can be perceived by the human mind. The piece involves snapshots of infinite
numbers taken out of context. Mr. Ikeda believes this theory on infinity can lead to
transcendence.
The installation the transfinite is his largest and most ambitious work to date. He has
blacked out the windows of the drill hallparadoxically, given the sophistication of the
technology in Mr. Ikedas work, with construction paperthe better to display a screen
the size of a small house that projects, on one side, binary code and, on the other, a
series of infinite numbers culled from the human genome and the astronomical
coordinates of the universe. The numbers respond to a score by Mr. Ikeda, composed
characteristically of high and low frequencies, sounding less like music and more like

an electronic device having a nervous breakdown. It is the culmination of Mr. Ikedas

themestranscendence through the incomprehensible, number systems as art objects,
abrasive sound composition testing the threshold of perception; the transfinite
situates him as one of the most original living visual (and sound) artists, even if he
doesnt feel much like talking about it.
Before I sat down with Mr. Ikeda, Rebecca Robertson, the president of the Park Avenue
Armory, walked me around the drill hall, where a few dozen union workmen were
running about frantically, holding power tools and tape measures. An enormous white
screen ran nearly from floor to ceiling; beneath it was an even larger mat that covered
a good portion of the 50,000-square-foot floor, one half of it white and the other black.
Along the edges of the hall rested six black speakers, only a fraction of what will
eventually be used in the performance. (The others hadnt arrived yet.) Ms. Robertson
and I were standing next to a giant crane that had been brought in for set-up and that
rested next to two smaller cranes.
I dont frankly understand it, Ms. Robertson said with a laugh. Well I do, but its so
abstract. Youre in this sea of data and numbers and sounds. You feel like youre in
infinity. The sound of power tools reverberated through the hall, intermittently mixed
with preliminary soundchecking of Mr. Ikedas compositionan ear-piercing, pulsating
noise with no tone or melody that overpowered everything else in the space. Before
leading me into the conference room, Ms. Robertson added ominously, I hope he talks
to you. He doesnt like to talk.
Mr. Ikeda greeted me wordlessly wearing a pair of sunglasses and a slight frown. His
face was smooth and boyish aside from the thin layer of stubble over his top lip and
along his chin. His body was rail-thin, but his arms were awkwardly muscular from
years of steady installation work. He had a patch of thinning hair at the back of his
head, the rest of it arranged in a small black tuft that pointed, ever so slightly, toward
the ceiling. He was dressed in a white T-shirt, cuffed jeans and black boots. Still
frowning, he poured me a cup of black coffee, his hand shaking with caffeine jitters,
then splashed the remainder of the pot into his own cup. He slumped into a swiveling
chair at the head of the rooms large wooden table, sighed deeply and rubbed his face.
So many interviews, he murmured. Its really tiring. He mumbled at first before
reiterating he didnt want to discuss any of the concepts in his work.
My approach is very practical, he said, not conceptual.
Mr. Ikeda was born in the Japanese countryside. He played guitar in a rock band when
he was 13, which is how he first became interested in music, but he was not skilled
with the instrument. At 18, he left for the city to attend the University of Tokyo. When I

asked him what he studied his face grew stern and he said, I studied nothing. He
could not remember what the program he went to school for was called (economics
or something). He claims the only reason he graduated was because he gave a
professor a large bottle of sake. After this small miracle, he spent most nights D.J.ing
in clubs in Tokyo.
I learned everything in the clubs, he said. Nothing intellectual, just, boom boom
boom. Twenty years ago the club scene was completely different from now. It was all
like this scale, he gestured to his work in progress, really extreme. I dont see me as
having really progressed from clubs to here. He threw his gaze around the room. I
mean, Im 44 years old. I cant play clubs anymore. Im a middle-aged man and I do
installations but it feels the same as when I was a 25-year-old D.J. Technically, my
artistic method has become really sophisticated, but I think at the core, its the same
as it always was.
He became warm and friendly as we talked about music, something he said art critics
rarely want to discuss. This is understandable. Like the incomprehensibly vast
numbers Mr. Ikeda displays in his work, his music is remarkably abstract. He disregards
rhythm, melody, tone and scale in favor of mapping out the limitations of the
equipment he uses, as well as how these extremes register physiologically with the
listener. Test Pattern, for instance, a work from 2008 that lays some of the
groundwork for the transfinite, converts data into binary code and projects it onto a
large screen while a composition made up of the lowest and highest perceptible
frequencies plays, the code responding to the audio cues. It is, according to Mr. Ikeda,
as much a test for the electronic devices as it is for the audiences senses.
His most accessible work, the ethereal album Op. (the abbreviation for opus),
provides the easiest entry point into his styleor really his absolute lack of one. The
work is the exception in Mr. Ikedas oeuvre: as the liner notes state with daunting
bluntness, there are no electronic sounds used. Instead, Mr. Ikeda first recorded
each part for piano, flute, violin and viola onto a computer, a formless kind of
symphony that was written, more or less, spontaneously. He then hired copyists to
transcribe the piece onto sheet music, then guided an acoustic orchestra in playing it,
creating a kind of translation, twice removed, of the music in Mr. Ikedas head. It is the
closest thing listeners have to an Ikeda manifestoa strange combination of organic
sounds playing toneless music, sounding pretty in spite of themselves, constructing
order out of Mr. Ikedas chaos and droning with such tension that it seems like the
notes, each fighting against the context of any conventional theoretical understanding
of music, are calling out in pain.
Theres no message to what I do, he said. Its very pure. Its like a Lego. He locked
together his fingers. Lights and sound, the music and the visual, they melt together.

You see, tomorrow Ill do the soundcheck, but until then, I dont even know how it will
fit.
A few days later I returned to the Armory to see the nearly finished work. At the
entrance, the 40-foot-tall, 60-foot-wide screen projected binary code in quick, fluid
patterns, a collage of black and white flashes that looked something like white lines
moving dizzyingly past a car speeding down the highway. On the other side of the
screen, the room was comparably dark and even a bit frightening. The floor was
painted black. On view was the equally hypnotic movement of numbers and data,
racing just as fast along the screen, with literally millions of tiny digits arising and then
disappearing in fast motions, looking from a distance like television static or a swell of
gnats buzzing against a white wall. The glow from the screens reflected onto the steel
trusses of the Armorys mammoth shell. Mr. Ikeda, adorned in all black now, sat at a
table, silent and stonelike, both illuminated and obscured by his work, the shadows of
numbers falling across his face. He was back to not talking as he stared at the endless
data whizzing by on the screen. I remembered his parting words to me in our interview
in the conference room.
Compared to our planet or our universe, Mr. Ikeda said, I can maybe contribute
some interesting thing for a New York audience, and absolutely I try my best each time,
but its very little. And thats nice, especially as a Japanese, because thats part of my
philosophy of no interviews or no portraits. I want to disappear. Myself is not
important. The thing, I made it, but it is everything. So this feeling, maybe you can see
that in the experience of the work. The installation speaks better than me. Im
inconsistent. Tomorrow, Ill say something completely different.
Artists, he sighed. Its better to not say anything.
mmiller@observer.com