Norimichi Hirakawa

Year
2018 (ongoing)

Medium / Material / Technic
Video

»A study for spacecolortime« explores the technical dimensions of photographs and allows us to see the processes of image conversion unfold in front of our eyes.

Gradations of color, curves in shape, and their changes over time are convertible through a »space-color-time rotation conversion«, which rotates pixels in a digital video file into a six-dimensional Euclidean space (X, Y, time, red, green, and blue). Norimichi Hirakawa converts a series of photographs of the sun taken by the NASA Solar Dynamics Observatory. The result is seemingly monochrome, but some information from the original color is still seen in shape or motion. Relations between pixels are mathematically preserved through the conversion.

The artist, who has a background in mathematics and physics, uses technology unconventionally in this work, opening up new abstract figurations for the viewer. Depicting the process of digital conversion, the work translates data into mathematical moving image and thus focuses on the border between human-perceptible and human-imperceptible beauty. Hirakawa uses algorithms to widen restricted human visual possibilities, and provides a poetic example of how we can experience ever-increasing data flows.