- Do you think about the life-span of your own works? If you do, please elaborate on your thoughts.
- (answering both questions 1 & 2)
My works use sound as main media/material. These works exist both as analog media, and digital data. Given the amount of hard copies (CDs, etc) and of digital data available now on the internet and elsewhere, some of my works will probably be still available in their present form, in 100 years from now. But I wonder what will happen in one million (or billion) years. How long will last digital information media? Shorter or longer than stones or paper? We don’t know. Actually, digital data might still be readable in one million years from now. Even when humans have all disappeared, other intelligent beings might find that digital data, read it, and hopefully enjoy it. - Assuming you can time travel, in what way would you like to re-encounter your works 100 years from now?
- (continued from question 1)
Actually I don’t worry about the future of my music, because its main purpose and function is an invitation to listen/pay attention to the sounds of the environment. If the Earth is still orbiting around the sun in one million years from now, there will probably still be sounds, and hopefully someone to listen to them. - As there exist various definitions of “death” in the case of a human being, how exactly would you define the state of “death” of an artwork?
- An artwork, as any object, is continuously transforming and disappearing. Disappearance is especially obvious with time-base arts like music or dance: a concert or a performance can happen only once, and dies as soon as it is ends. Mona Lisa is also continuously transforming as time passes. We can never see exactly the same Mona Lisa twice. It is possible to record, document, and reproduce it, but as space and time are constantly changing, the original and its copies are also in a constant state of transformation and disappearance.
In other words, an artwork remains alive as long as there is information about it, and therefore the possibility to actualize or reproduce it. Paleontological research about 30,000 years-old cave art shows that some paintings might have been used as music scores too. Thus, even if we don’t have recordings of the music of that era, we nevertheless have a score, and can try to actualize it. Some artworks, for example 4’33” by John Cage, or “Instructions Paintings” by Yoko Ono, or “Définitions/Méthodes” by Claude Rutault, can be performed/realized by almost anybody, and can be actualized each time a performer decides to do so.
Listening to the work, looking at it, is also necessary in the process of actualization: The spectator makes the picture, said Marcel Duchamp. If nobody actualizes the work and if nobody looks or listens to it, the work only exists in a state of “possible”, and has an undetermined/unforeseeable future. - Is there any particular work of your own you would like us to include in the “Mausoleum of Media Art”(*) at YCAM? In that case, what kind of work is that, and in what form do you think it should be “buried” here?
- My works exist both as analog media and digital data, but their raison d’être is to listen to and look at the environment. In other words, the works are devices which invite to pay attention to the environment. Most of the installations and objects were made with simple materials, and can be easily reproduced with instructions (texts and drawings). The format of each work depends on the place where it is exhibited and the equipment which is used, but the works will adapt to any situation.
These works can be transferred as digital data on a memory device (hard disk, etc), or printed on paper or any other material: wood, metal, stone, etc. and buried in the “Mausoleum of Media Art”. - If you have other comments or requests, please feel free to share them.