"optical flat"* 2000
TAKATANI ShiroA perpendicular metal shaft, with two liquid crystal monitors, as though impaled upon it, and on each of them, a tapered magnifying magnifier made of glass fiber. On the displays thousands of image fragments, moments of daily life, spill out in a high speed blur, magnified or compressed through optical fiber tapers** (like a band of optic nerves; their forms even resembling eye balls) mounted on top, presented flat and sharp. The excess of images, as a metaphor of memory, are visualized in high resolution, moment by moment, presenting "now" on the timeline of the space's linearity. The optical and visual images seem outputted from memory to apparition by this machinic "eye". This installation suggests an inversion of seeing the "eye", in order to perceive images from the inside out. Collection of the National Museum of Art, Osaka. *"Optical flats" are optical-grade glass structures lapped and polished to be extremely flat on one or both sides, capable of detecting variations to within 1/10th of a light wave, and used to measure the flatness of optical lenses, in spectrometry, etc.
**"Optical fiber tapers are optical fibers with a greater diameter at one end than the other. Since the pixel number at both ends are the same, the images present either larger or smaller. ProfileTAKATANI Shiro (b. 1963, Japan, resident in Kyoto). In 1984 he was a founding member of Kyoto-based artist group Dumb Type, in charge of the group's videos and installations. From the late 1990s he became increasingly involved in the group's overall direction, and at the same time began exhibiting his solo work, presenting work related to the mechanisms of vision. His solo works include "frost frames" (1998), and "optical flat", on view in this exhibition, "Die Helle Kammer (Bright Room)" (2008), etc. He is also active in collaborations with artists such as NAKAYA Fujiko and SAKAMOTO Ryuichi, including collaborative installation piece "LIFE - fluid, invisible, inaudible ..." with SAKAMOTO Ryuichi (a commissioned work for the Yamaguchi Center for Arts and Media, also presented at the ICC, 2007).
http://dumbtype.com/Past Exhibition / Event