Begins with Chaos - Lascaux

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Other "Bitwise Splitting and Merging of Pixels" Project

A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte
ALL STREET (Online Solo Show), New York, NY, on March 1 - 31, 2024

Wheat Field with Cypresses Ver3 French Subtitle
XXVIIe Rencontres Internationales Traverse, Toulouse, France on March 5 - March 17, 2024

The Project Studies
Metamorphosis Caterpillar, Van Gogh, Sargent and Velázquez



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Show: Japanese / 日本語
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プロジェクトは「混沌と秩序」「知覚と認識」「テクノロジーが作る新しい価値」等、幾つものテーマを含んでいます。

混沌と秩序:
アーチストは自身を取り巻いている世界は、混沌な情報に溢れていると考えています。感覚機関は混沌から視覚や聴覚といったそれぞれに応じた情報を、フィルターのように特定の成分だけを取り出して世界を構築しています。例えれば感覚機関という「鍵」を使って、暗号を解読するように自身の世界を構築します。
プロジェクトの始めに現れる無秩序に並んだ色彩のモザイクは、one-time padと言われる暗号技術で、ある画像の色彩情報に乱数でビット単位の XOR 演算をして暗号化した画像です。ひとつひとつの正方形にはRed, Green, Blueの情報が含まれています。もうひとつ同じ量の情報の乱数データがありますが、このビデオ画面には画像として見せていません。その乱数は画像を解読する工程で、ビデオ画面に表されたバイナリの値で見ることはできます。暗号化された画像に対して、この乱数は鍵と考えることができます。
モザイク画像は、1970年代初頭のゲルハルト・リヒターの「シリーズ・オブ・カラー・チャート」等の絵画と同じように正方形の色彩の配置い見えるかもしれません。しかしこのプロジェクトのモザイクは、物理的に混合した色彩をキャンバス上に並べた画像ではなく、光学的に色を混ぜることで見る人の目を惹きつけようと、フランスのポスト印象派の画家ジョルジュ・スーラにインスピレーションを得ています。スーラのアイデアのように色彩要素を混合してして、元の画像を再現します。これはone-time padと言われる暗号技術を使って、すべての画像データに乱数をビット単位の XOR 演算をして、色彩情報を暗号化します。別な言葉では、暗号を解く鍵(乱数)とその暗号(無秩序に並んだ正方形の色彩画像)に分離するとも言えるでしょう。

知覚と認識:
無秩序に並んだ色彩のモザイクは鍵に当たる乱数で復号化され、フランスのラスコーにある洞窟絵画になります。アーチストの小島は、混沌から視覚で得た情報には、聴覚の情報も混在していると考えています。プロジェクトの次のステージは、ラスコーの洞窟画の色彩情報をバイナリで得て、音階への変換を試みました。彼はRGB値の中央を、ピアノ鍵盤の中央のCと設定して、自動的に12音階に割り当てました。ビデオでは5ヶ所のRGB値をランダムに採取して、その数値から音符にしてピアノ、オカリナ、ベルで演奏しています。視覚・聴覚に限らず、現在すべてのメディアはバイナリに変換されて、データとして記録されます。アーチストはバイナリー・データをアートワークとして、視覚から聴覚のように別なフォーマットに変換する可能性を考えています。

テクノロジーが作る新しい価値:
アーチストの小島は「NFTアート」はアートではなく、金融商品と考えています。デジタル・アートの最大の特徴は本物のアートワークを、無限に複製できることにあります。本物のアートワークを無限に複製すると、その金銭価値は消失するでしょう。彼は資本主義に組み込まれたアートの、異常な金銭的状況を無くして違う意味を持たせようとしています。もしアートの金銭的価値がなくなっても意味があるならば、アートはここの鑑賞者とのつながりを復活させるでしょう。

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The project includes several themes such as "Chaos and Order," "Perception and Cognition," and "New Value Created by Technology.

Chaos and Order:
The artist Kenji Kojima believes that the world around him is full of chaotic information. Sense organs construct the world by extracting only certain components from the chaos, such as visual and auditory information, like a filter. It is that you construct your world with the "key" of a sense organ as if you were deciphering a code.
The chaotically arranged color mosaic that appears at the beginning of the video is an encrypted image created by bitwise XOR operations of random numbers on the color information of a given image using a cryptographic technique. Each square contains Red, Green, and Blue information. There is another random number of data with the same amount of information, but it is not displayed as an image on this video screen. The random numbers can be seen as binary values displayed on the video screen during the image decoding process. This random number can be thought of as a key for encrypted images.
The mosaic image may resemble the arrangement of color squares, similar to paintings such as Gerhard Richter's "Color Chart Series" from the early 1970s. However, the mosaics in this project are inspired by optical color mixing, rather than the physical arrangement of mixed colors on canvas. The project is to recreate the original image by mixing color elements as Seurat did. This uses a cryptographic technique called a one-time pad to encrypt color information by performing a bitwise XOR operation on all image data with random numbers. In other words, it can be said to be separated into the code-breaking key (random numbers) and the code (colored images of randomly arranged squares).

Perception and Recognition:
The chaotic mosaic of colors is decoded using random numbers that match the key and becomes a cave painting in Lascaux, France. The artist Kojima believes that the visual information obtained from chaos is also mixed with auditory information. The project's next stage was to obtain the color information from the Lascaux cave paintings in binary form and attempt to convert it into a musical scale. He set the center of the RGB value to be the middle C of the piano keyboard, automatically assigning it to the 12-tone scale. In the video, RGB values are randomly sampled from five locations, and musical notes are made from those values and played on the piano, ocarina, and bell. Currently, all media, including visual and auditory ones, are converted into binary and recorded as data. The artist is considering the possibility of converting binary data into other formats, such as visual to auditory, as artwork.

New Value Created by Technology:
Artist Kojima believes that "NFT art" is not art, but a financial product. The greatest feature of digital art is that it allows for unlimited reproduction of real artwork. If a genuine artwork were to be copied infinitely, its monetary value would disappear. He is trying to eliminate the abnormal financial situation of art that is embedded in capitalism and give it a different meaning. If art had meaning even after its monetary value disappeared, it would revive the connection with the viewer here.


Show: Kenji Kojima's Biography
Hide: Kenji Kojima's Biography
Kenji Kojima is a digital artist. He has been experimenting with the relationships between perception and cognition, technology, music, and visual art since the early 1990s. Primarily he has interested in the relationship between seeing and hearing. He was born in Japan and moved to New York in 1980. He painted egg tempera paintings that were medieval art materials and techniques for the first 10 years in New York City. His paintings were collected by Citibank, Hess Oil, and others. The personal computer improved rapidly during the 1980s. He felt more comfortable with computer art than paintings. He switched His artwork to digital in the early 1990s. His early digital works were archived in the New Museum - Rhizome, New York. He developed the computer software "RGB MusicLab" in 2007 and created an interdisciplinary work exploring the relationship between images and music. He developed interactive software for his artwork, but it happened a big problem, the software did not work on OS soon. He turned his artwork into a video while it worked. He programmed the software “Luce” for the “Techno Synesthesia” project in 2014. His digital art series was exhibited in New York, at media art festivals worldwide, including Europe, Brazil, the Middle East, and Asia, and the online exhibitions by ACM SIGGRAPH and FILE, etc. Anti-nuclear artwork “Composition FUKUSHIMA 2011” was collected in CTF Collective Trauma Film Collections / ArtvideoKoeln in 2015. After Covid-19, he could not go out to shoot a video. In 2021, he started the new series "The Musical Interpretation of Paintings", which creates music from classic image data. The latest project is "Bitwise Splitting and Merging of Pixels". Generative AI will be wonderfully improved in 2023. He began to use Music Generating AI. LiveCode programmer.



Digital Art Exibitions:
the USA: 2024 All Street (Online Solo Show) New York, NY, 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: 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: 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: 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.

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