Test Pattern

TCS121: Intro to Sonic Arts

November 19, 2015

Blog 7

Ryoji Ikeda "Test Pattern"

Imagine your experience of these versions.  How is this piece different in each of the two venues? What is the same?  How is this "one" piece, or not?  What are the implications of this for sound art?

Ryoji Ikeda's "Test Pattern" piece was incredibly engaging and fascinating to me. I found that the venue inside (at certain camera angles) positioned people into the work. At certain angles, it made the people in that space appear to be placed in a digital broken realm. In the other version outside in New York, it was more of a spectator experience because the audience isn't physically interacting with the piece, but rather engrossed in the sound and watching the visuals quite separate and distant from them. What is the same for both, however, is the appreciation for the synchronistic experience of the sound and visuals, giving a satisfaction to the audience. Especially from the first version where the piece was located inside, I found it to be a campaign or message about people and technology. With the flashing lights visual and the static, tech music that matched, and the people interacting or placed on top of those visuals, seemed to be this message about how engrossed society is with technology and how the world seems to have gone "silent" with each other in this otherwise "noisy" buzzing tech-focused world.