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“knowns, unknowns and the irreversible” [2015]

HIRAKAWA Norimichi

“knowns, unknowns and the irreversible”

Outline

This work is made up of three elements.

1. Strings of alphabetical letters are continuously generated up to a point where the computer's memory can no longer handle the amount of data, and the program crashes, whereas names of actually existing persons are highlighted as they appear in the text.

2. In video footage of 26 interviewed women, each of which is assigned one letter from A to Z, 1-pixel sequences extracted from each image (A to Z) are rearranged to correspond with program-generated strings of 16 alphabetical letters, and thereby reconfigure the facial images in 60 different patterns every second.

3. Through reverse playback of video images of the irreversible phenomenon of accumulations of points dispersing with time, the reversal process from calculation results as displayed in the beginning, to the respective initial state, becomes visible.

While each of these three elements is an independent work in its own right, here they are combined into one installation. The works represent such "knowns" as the massive irreversible phenomenon of computer programming based high-speed, high-precision calculation up to its eventual collapse; such "unknowns" as abstract models of not actually existing "human beings" made based on unique individual faces; and "the irreversible" in the form of visuals creating a supernatural flow of time by realizing a reversal of time as it can never occur in the existing universe or even in computer programs.

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