hyper.data-N°1

Text論述

A set of four pieces: hyper.data-[N°1a- π], hyper.data-[N°1b- γ], hyper.data-[N°1c- e], hyper.data-[N°1d- φ]

When the Tōhoku earthquake struck on March 11, 2011, Chang Yung-Ta was in Tokyo on an artist residency. Cut off from direct information, he spent his days piecing together the world outside through online news and messages — and became aware, in the process, of the thoroughness with which Japan records, preserves, and makes public its seismic data. He began to collect and study this vast body of data, developing it into the Seen/Unseen series; one strand of the project is a series of sound installations in which custom-written software translates the seismic waveforms recorded within twenty-four hours of the quake into sound.

hyper.data-[N°1a–1d] returns to the substrate of that translation program: the four mathematical constants that drive its conversion of waveforms and signals — π, γ, e, and φ. The artist encodes the first 100,000 decimal places of each constant into QR codes. An earthquake is perturbation at its most extreme; a constant is invariance at its most absolute — on any computer, in any computation, every digit remains precisely the same. Images and sensory experience, by contrast, drift with each act of viewing and interpretation; we habitually trust what we see, hear, and smell, while overlooking what truly never changes.

The QR code was conceived as a medium for the rapid reading and exchange of information, yet a single code holds, at most, just over seven thousand digits. One hundred thousand decimal places must therefore be split across multiple codes, each pushed to the very limit of its data capacity. They lie fully open to the eye, yet remain legible only to machines — everything is there to be seen, while the whole can never be grasped. This is the very threshold of the seen and the unseen.

With the support of the National Culture and Arts Foundation, Taiwan.

作品共四組件：hyper.data-[N°1a- π], hyper.data-[N°1b- γ], hyper.data-[N°1c- e], hyper.data-[N°1d- φ]

2011年311強震發生時，張永達正於東京駐村。對外資訊的斷絕，使他只能終日在網路新聞與訊息之間拼湊世界的樣貌，也因此注意到日本對地震資料記錄、保存與公開的完整體系。他開始蒐集、研究這批龐大的數據，發展出《Seen/Unseen》系列創作計畫——其中一支，是以自製程式將強震後24小時內記錄的地震波形轉譯為聲音的系列聲音裝置。

《hyper.data-[N°1a–1d]》回到這套轉譯程式的最底層：驅動波形與訊號換算的四個數學常數——π、γ、e、φ。藝術家將每個常數小數點後的十萬位數編碼為QR Code。地震是極端的擾動，常數卻是絕對的恆定——無論在哪一部電腦、哪一次運算之中，每一個位數皆精確不變。相對地，影像與感官經驗總隨觀看與詮釋而流動；我們慣於相信所見、所聽、所聞，卻往往忽略了真正不變的事物。

QR Code原是為快速讀取與交換訊息而生的媒介，單一圖碼至多僅能承載七千餘個數字；十萬位數因而必須分割為多個圖碼，每一格都被推至資料承載的極限。它們全然敞開於視線之前，卻僅對機器可讀——一切可視，全貌卻始終不可得。這正是「看見的／看不見的」（Seen/Unseen）之臨界。

本作品獲臺灣國家文化藝術基金會贊助。