Organic Geometry, 2015, Naoko Tosa
Video, 6 min 48 sec, 3480 x 2160 pixels
Provenance: Ikkan Art International, Singapore.
Internationally acclaimed Japanese artist and professor at Kyoto University, Naoko Tosa believes in the artistic concept that 'various cultures in the world are connected just as one culture from the ancient time of human history at unconsciousness level overcoming nationalism'. She works across the mediums of visual art, video art, digital art and sculpture. Recently she’s been working on the computer to conceptualise ‘Cultural Computing’, where the culture people have accumulated over a long period of history in the forms of action and language, such as emotions, consciousness, stories and ethnicity, are expressed via digital images that touch the hearts of the audience.
Naoko Tosa’s ‘Organic Chemistry’ series are new forms of Rimpa, one of the major historical art schools of Japan founded in the 17th century. Rimpa includes features of rich gold and silver, to which Tosa adds newer techniques like Taraskiomi, a Japanese equivalent to marbling. These artworks are based on the concept that chaotic matters that have originally no fixed forms change themselves into organic and finally geometrical forms once sound vibrations are given. This sumpolises that Rimpas art that was born in chaotic Asia, is merged with European symmetry and becomes new Rimpa art. The process of transparent jelly being vibrated by sound and creating geometric forms together with its optical reflection and refraction is shot by a high speed camera of 2000 frames/sec. This video shows us a marginal physical phenomena that cannot be seen by our naked eyes but actually and physically exists (1).