Art, Science and Enthusiasm

The reason why I decided to take Project Development Class at ITP is because I’m not sure about “my way” to go. I had experienced various area such as architecture, bioscience, IT world and ended up being ITP. I can tell I’m interested in ‘any interesting things’, but in some way, it means that I haven’t got anything what I really want to do yet. Even though I have worked on some projects while taking several classes, I was always busy just following the lessons and still couldn’t find the thing or project that makes me solely devote myself to keep working and develop the idea. From this class I would like to have a chance to look at myself and look back what I’ve done so far and try to find something I really want to make and what I’m excited about no matter what it is.

In that sense, reading those two articles about Ryoji Ikeda and Whitman was great chance to reflect upon myself and get inspired from people who are fully engaged in their works. 
I became a huge fan of Ryoji Ikeda not as an artist, but as a human being. It might sound too shallow to represent but if someone ask me about him, I’d like to introduce him as “the person who exactly knows what he is doing.” 

This was my first time I actually take a look at him and his works carefully since I got to know about him after I came to ITP having a chance to see his work at Times square last year. At that time I just thought he is some crazily creative and talented artist but the article provides completely different aspects of him. The most impressive words was “when you make music, in the extreme sense, you don’t need sound, because it is a mathematical structure.” I could see he is extremely logical and doing his work by “composing” all materials under a perfect plan. Also, from all the quotes he says, it’s easy to see how solid his idea is and the way that he articulate his thought.
 
After reading this article, I became more curious about him so I searched other interview of him.
This interview helps me get some more sense about him. He was specifically fascinated by quantum mechanic and he says, “it was absolutely impossible to describe quantum mechanics for my art. So, I just make a piece of art. It’s a performing art piece, which never explains quantum mechanics. It is rather inspired by quantum mechanics. Some of the expressions are scientifically correct. I use lots of data sets from NASA and so on, but the construction, the composition is very intuitive because I am an artist. So, it’s hybrid.” 
He said he can never describe quantum mechanics for his art, however, in a way I think his work could explain about quantum mechanic more intuitively than the way that scientists do. I don’t know about physics well but for me his work seems to describe probabilistic interpretation of quantum mechanic and he controls randomness and composes all the random elements based on every possibilities could happen. (I have no idea what I’m talking..) 

And later the moment I read about Whitman and others such as Proust, Cézanne from prelude of the book, I realized Ryoji Ikeda is a modern version of those people who inspired by science and create works based on that. And later the time may come that people realize Ryoji’s work actually tell a true story of quantum mechanics. Just like Whitman’s imaginations foretold the facts of the future, while Ryoji doing his residency in CERN, his imagination could play a critical role to find some amazing facts.

What’s moving in the reading about Whitman was that he volunteered as a wound dresser in Union hospitals for three years. And he considers that was the most profound lesson of his life feeling “more permanently absorbed, to the very roots.” 
This kind of feeling why I really admire people like Whitman and Ryoji since I don’t think I’ve truly felt those feelings in my life. His experience of volunteering and meeting people like Emerson, Weir Mitchell and others inspired from each others and discover the fact and make history while sharing their thought which is totally incredible. 
In prelude, the writer says “The moral of this book is that we are made of art and science.” Not only this book makes me rethink about the common phrase ‘art and science’, but also there were passion and efforts of talented people from various field that what makes us over the decades. This was another motivation for me and made me eager to develop my work based on what I’m passionate about and "august imagination."