Binary Interpretation of the Arles period of Van Gogh and Gauguin

Project / Binary Interpretation of the Arles Period of Van Gogh and Gauguin

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Paul Gauguin, Vincent van Gogh in Arles in 1888 / 4 Compilations
Painted by Paul Gauguin, Vincent van Gogh
1. Self-Portrait / Madame Roulin / Madame Ginoux /
Sunflowers by Vincent van Gogh, Vincent van Gogh Painting Sunflowers by Paul Gauguin

2.

Binary Interpretation & One-Time Pad Encryption
White Void: Dual Gazes in Arles
Self-Portrait Painted by Paul Gauguin, Vincent van Gogh

Painted by Vincent van Gogh
3.

3. Self-Portrait & Gauguin's Armchair, 4. Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear,
5. Portrait of the Postman Joseph Roulin, 6. Dr. Gachet Glitch

Other Studies
Painted by Vincent van Gogh, Paul Gauguin
7.

10.

7. Self-Portrait with a Straw Hat by Vincent van Gogh,
8. Self-Portrait Painted by Paul Gauguin, Vincent van Gogh,
9. Self-Portraits Painted by Vincent van Gogh
10. Landscape from Saint-Rémy

Wheatfield with Crows of The 108528 Pixel Colors
from His Last Painting were Scattered Randomly.
11.

This work participated in Glitch.Art.Br 2025.

Project related to "Binary Interpretation"

Project: Bitwise Splitting and Merging of Pixels / One-Time Pad Encryption
Begins with Chaos - Lascaux / 5:00
12.

Open Project: Begins with Chaos - Lascaux

Project: Bitwise Splitting and Merging of Pixels / One-Time Pad Encryption
A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte / 4:00
13.

Open Project: A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte

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Download: 1920x1080
• Paul Gauguin, Vincent van Gogh in Arles in 1888, 227.6 MB
• Self-Portrait Painted by Paul Gauguin, Vincent van Gogh, 86.1 MB
• Madame Roulin Painted by Paul Gauguin, Vincent van Gogh, 109.3 MB
• Madame Ginoux Painted by Paul Gauguin, Vincent van Gogh, 114.6 MB
• Sunflowers by Vincent van Gogh, Vincent van Gogh Painting Sunflowers by Paul Gauguin, 110.4 MB
• Self-Portrait, Gauguin's Armchair by Vincent van Gogh, 113.6 MB
• Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear Painted by Vincent van Gogh, 111.2 MB
• Dr. Gachet Glitch by Vincent van Gogh, 100.3 MB
• Portrait of the Postman Joseph Roulin by Vincent van Gogh, 114 MB
• Begins with Chaos - Lascaux, 1920x1080, 267.2 MB

Show: Japanese / 日本語

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アルル時代のゴッホとゴーギャンのニューメディア解釈：
このプロジェクトは、現代の生成AIの根底にある前提、すなわち蓄積された過去の画像データの再構成を超えた視覚形式は存在し得るのか、という問いを投げかける映像作品です。ゴッホとゴーギャンが短くも激動の共同制作を行った1888年にアルルで制作された絵画に焦点を当て、作品は、規範的な画像が最も根本的なレベルの計算処理にかけられたときにどのように振る舞うかを検証します。膨大なデータセットで学習させた確率モデルによって画像を生成するのではなく、このプロジェクトはデジタル画像の根底にある二進構造に直接介入します。各絵画はピクセルデータに変換され、さらに計算の最小単位である1と0のシーケンスに還元されます。

断片化、置換、時間的遅延、そして意図的な二進数の不整合を通して、画像は解体され、抽象と認識の間を揺れ動く不安定な視覚場へと再構成されます。アニメーションは物語的な動きとしてではなく、計算による解釈そのものの時間的な展開として機能します。グリッチは、AIシステムがシームレスな完璧さを追求する過程で通常抑制する痕跡を意図的に露呈させたものとして現れます。ここでは、不完全さはエラーではなく、計算の構造的な条件であり、時間に基づいた変換を通して可視化されます。

音は視覚処理で使用されるのと同じRGBカラーデータから直接生成され、AI画像生成の視覚優位な論理に挑戦する、より身体的で多感覚的なデータとの関わり方を提案します。画像と音は共通の素材的起源を共有し、統一された視聴覚構造を形成します。歴史的な瞬間を共有しながらも根本的に異なる芸術的ビジョンを体現した二人の芸術家を単一の二進数フレームワークの中に置くことで、このプロジェクトは、アナログ作品がデジタル論理を通して濾過される際の、作者性、記憶、そして意味の不安定性について考察します。この作品は、画像が計算条件下でどのように存続し、断片化し、意味を獲得するのかを再考するための批判的な方法を提案します。

デジタル表現が主流になってきた現在、過去の絵画を言語ではなく、メディアそのものをバイナリーで解釈する試みは、自然な流れと言えます。このプロジェクトは、フランスのアルルで共同制作したヴィンセント・ヴァン・ゴッホとポール・ゴーギャンの作品を取り上げました。二人が描いた同一テーマのペインティングを、一つのスクリーンに並べて表示しニューメディアてき解釈をしています。絵画は少しずつ色の粒子に分解され、全画面にランダムに再構成され、均一に統一された色彩の視覚空間を創り出します。最終段階では、バイナリー・データの「0」と「1」のずれを元の画像データに重ね合わせ、デジタルグリッチを通して元の絵画に戻ります。さらに、バイナリーの色彩データに基づいた背景音が生成されます。

ヴァン・ゴッホに大きな影響を与えた、ジョルジュ・スーラが開拓した点描画技法に着想を得たこのプロジェクトは、有機的なものと合成的なものの緊張関係を探求しています。21世紀において、あらゆる情報は究極的にバイナリー形式で記録されます。1888年、ヴァン・ゴッホとゴーギャンはフランスのアルルで共に制作活動を行いました。二人の共同制作は数々の重要な作品を生み出しましたが、気質と芸術的志向の相違により、関係はわずか2ヶ月で悪化しました。

鮮明なイメージでさえ、断片化や再解釈の影響を受けやすい時代において、アーティストの小島は、このプロジェクトを通して視覚的記憶と作者性というアートについて、鑑賞者に深く考えさせようと試みています。

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Binary Interpretation of
the Arles period of Van Gogh and Gauguin:

Project Overview
Binary Interpretation of the Arles Period is a video work that critically examines how canonical paintings are transformed when subjected to contemporary computational systems dominated by artificial intelligence. The project focuses on works produced in Arles in 1888, during the brief and volatile collaboration between Vincent van Gogh and Paul Gauguin—a historically charged moment that now serves as a testing ground for rethinking visual interpretation under algorithmic conditions.
At a time when generative AI systems increasingly define image production through probabilistic prediction and large-scale training data, this project asks a fundamental question: can a visual form exist outside the logic of recombination and statistical plausibility?

Against Generative AI: Binary as Material, Not Model
Rather than generating new images through AI models trained on accumulated visual archives, the project intervenes directly in the material substrate of digital images. Each painting is translated into pixel data and further reduced to binary values—1s and 0s—the irreducible language shared by all computational systems, including AI.
This approach deliberately bypasses the interpretive opacity of machine learning. Instead of allowing algorithms to “decide” what an image should look like, the work exposes the act of interpretation itself as a visible, time-based process. Computation here does not simulate creativity; it reveals its own limits.

Glitch as Critical Exposure
Through algorithmic fragmentation, displacement, temporal delay, and intentional binary misalignment, the paintings are dismantled into unstable visual fields that oscillate between abstraction and recognition. Controlled randomness introduces glitches—not as technical failures, but as critical exposures of what AI systems are designed to suppress.
Where contemporary AI strives for seamless coherence, visual plausibility, and error-free continuity, this project foregrounds discontinuity, misalignment, and uncertainty. Glitch becomes a methodological tool, exposing the distance between painterly gesture and numerical description, and challenging the assumption that computation naturally leads to visual “understanding.”
Animation functions not as narrative progression, but as the temporal unfolding of computational interpretation—an interpretation that never resolves into a final, authoritative image.

Data, Sound, and the Refusal of Visual Dominance
Sound is generated directly from the same RGB color data used in the visual process. Image and sound share a single computational origin, forming a unified audiovisual structure that resists the visually dominant logic of AI-based image culture.
By translating visual data into sound, the project disrupts the hierarchy through which AI systems privilege optical clarity and recognizability. Data is not optimized for perception; it is experienced as material, rhythm, and noise.

Authorship, Memory, and Algorithmic Meaning
Placing works by Van Gogh and Gauguin—artists who shared a place and moment yet embodied fundamentally different artistic visions—within a single binary framework raises questions central to AI-driven culture: authorship, originality, and historical memory.
When analog artworks are filtered through computational logic, meaning becomes unstable, contingent, and temporal. In contrast to AI’s tendency to flatten historical difference into stylistic patterns, this project preserves friction—between artists, between eras, and between human intention and machine interpretation.
Situated between post-Impressionist explorations of perception and contemporary AI critique, Binary Interpretation of the Arles Period proposes animation not as representation, but as a critical apparatus—one that makes visible how images are processed, normalized, and controlled under algorithmic regimes.

Show: Kenji Kojima's Biography

Hide: Kenji Kojima's Biography

Kenji Kojima was born in Japan. He moved to New York in 1980 and began his artistic career. For the first 10 years in New York City, he painted contemporary egg tempera paintings using medieval art materials and techniques. He was strongly attracted to contemporary art but felt stuck in the future of modern civilization and art with excessive material value. He tried to experience the history of the creation of the European concept of art through actual materials and techniques, that is, the history of art that is not written in literature. He was particularly interested in the basic materials of painting, such as ground, pigment, and medium, rather than the visual theme. He noticed that as society developed, people's minds expanded, materials and tools advanced, and the visual arts changed. Citibank, Hess Oil, and others have collected his egg tempera paintings.

The personal computer improved rapidly during the 1980s. He felt more comfortable with computer art than paintings. Ecologically, he had felt guilty about wasting materials in the name of art. Working on the computer was clean, did not waste material, and made him feel lighter. In the early 1990s, he moved his artwork into the digital arts. He was particularly interested in developing interactive artworks. His early digital works were archived at the New Museum - Rhizome, New York. He studied computer programming himself. In 2007, he developed the computer software "RGB MusicLab" and created an interdisciplinary artwork that explores the relationship between images and music. He developed interactive software for his art, but soon ran into a big problem. The software would not run on the new operating systems. He recorded the artwork as a video while the software ran on the operating system. This is how he started using video as a documentary tool—by filming interactive software in motion. He started making videos, not only about programming art but also about ecological issues in art. His digital art series has been shown at media art festivals worldwide, including Europe, South America, the Middle East, Asia, and the USA.

After COVID-19, he could not go out to shoot a video, but he found numerous free archival artworks online. He has started a new series that interprets classic image data using binary numbers. Artist Kojima believes that the sensory organs construct the world by extracting only certain components from the chaos, such as visual and auditory information, like a filter. So we create our world with the "key" of the sensory organs as if we were deciphering a code. In 2023, "Bitwise Splitting and Merging of Pixels" began with the self-question, "With the development of generative AI, can we create visual art that is not an assemblage of past visual data? Currently, all media is recorded in binary form. This fact leads to the manipulation of color pixels using bitwise operations. He developed encryption and decryption projects based on classic paintings, as well as a binary interpretation of paintings. He developed encryption and decryption projects based on classic paintings, which is a method for deconstructing and reinterpreting color information. As he develops his digital techniques, he prioritizes reproducibility over ownership of his works. He believes that the focus should be on the infinite dissemination of digital art, rather than its ownership and control. Kenji Kojima Resume

Digital Art Exhibitions:
the USA: 2026-2025 The Wrong Biennale, Online & Offline / 2024 OtoZono at HEART, New York. / 2024 the New Media Art Space at Baruch College, New York. / 2024 All Street, New York / 2023, 2020 Torrance Art Museum, Los Angeles, USA. / 2023 THE ELASTIC MIND, BROWARD College, Weston, Florida. / 2023 SOJOURNER, New York, NY. / 2022 Asian American International Film Festival, New York, NY. / 2012, 2016 Light Year, Brooklyn, New York. / 2021 UNCG International Sustainability Shorts Film Competition, UNC Greensboro, NC, USA. / 2019 The Harold B. Lemmerman Gallery, New jersey City University, Jersey City, NJ. / 2019, 2016, 2015 Williamsburg Art & Historical Center, New York, NY. / 2018 The Exchange, Bloomsburg, PA. 2018 WhiteBox, New York, NY. / 2015 ACM SIGGRAPH Digital Arts Community. / 2014 MediaNoche, New York, NY. / 2008 AC Institute, New York, NY.

Europe: 2025 Internationales Digitalkunst Festival 2025, Stuttgart, Germany / 2025 ON SCREEN 2025, Vienna, Austria / 2025 OPEN NIGHTS FESTIVAL Vol.10, Thessaly and Lárisa, Greece / 2025 Selected in the TAA (The Art Association) TAA Open Call Video Competition 2025 Final Candidates (2024 YouTube Exhibition), Geneva, Swiss / 2024 Profusion of Colors, A.E. Corner, Galleria di Tirano, Viale Italia / 2024 Summer of Anthropocene, The New Museum of Networked Art, Cologne, Germany / 2024 DIGITAL VIDEO ART INTERNATIONAL STREAMING FESTIVAL 'The films of the Official Selection 2024', Season 3 & 5, Vienna, Austria / 2024 Technocene Berlin Templehof, Germany. / 2024 Open Media Art, Košice, Slovakia / 2025, 2024, 2023, 2022, 2020, 2019 Ie Rencontres Internationales Traverse, Toulouse, France. / 2021 FEX comtemporary media art, Cologne, Germany. / 2020 Institut für Alles Mögliche, Stützpunkt Teufelsberg, Belrin, Germany. / 2019 The festival BINNAR, Vila Nova de Famalicão, Portugal. / 2019 MADATAC X New Media Arts Festival, Madrid, Spain. / 2018 Athens Digital Arts Festival, Athen, Greece. / 2018 Mitte Media Festival, Berlin, Germany. / 2017 Simultan Festival, Timisoara, Romania. / 2016 Simultan Festival, Timisoara, Romania. / 2016 Brave New World Beyond the Wall, Berlin, Germany. / 2015, 2013 ESPACIO ENTER, Tenerife, Canary Islands, Spain. / 2014 BRAVE NEW WORLD, Berlin, Germany. / 2011 Jyväskylä Art Museum, Jyväskylä, Finland. / 2010 PROCESS Festival, Berlin, Germany. / 2009 RE-NEW Digital Art Festival, Copenhagen, Denmark. / 2002 Free Manifest, Frankfurt am Main, Germany.

Brazil: 2025, 2023, 2022, 2020, 2016, 2012, 2011, 2010 FILE (Electronic Language International Festival) São Paulo, Brazil. / 2012 FILE RIO, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. / 2010 FAD (Festival de Arte Digital), Belo Horizonte, Brazil.

the Middle East: 2026 The Ras Al Khaimah Art Festival Biennale, United Arab Emirates / 2020, 2012 Istanbul Contemporary Art Museum, Turkey. / 2020, 2019 Paadmaan Video Event, Isfahan, Iran.

Asia: 2021 Thailand New Music and Arts Symposium, Bangkok, Thailand. / 2020 the 150th Anniversary Gandhi Event, Kolkata, India. / 2019 Capital Normal University College of Cape Cod, Beijing, China & China University of Mining and Technology Yinchuan College, Yinchuan, China. / 2018 Gunung Sunda Festival, Sukabumi, West Java, Indonesia. / 2016 CeC 2016, North-Eastern Hill University, Shillong, Meghalaya, India. / 2010 Contemporary International New Media Art Invitational, Wuhan University of Technology, China.

Hide: Kenji Kojima's Biography

Series "After Paul Gauguin and Vincent van Gogh in Arles" is licensed under
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Credit must be given to the creator.

Please Support Kenji Kojima's Artworks.
日本からのドネーションはここをクリック。日本から任意の金額のドネーションはできません。

https://kenjikojima.com/
Email: index@kenjikojima.com