Takashiku IIMURA
AIUEONN Six Features
Japan

Biography

Taka Iimura has been a pioneer artist of Japanese experimental film, video, and new media since 1960. Residing in Tokyo and New York, Iimura has had numerous exhibitions in Japan, the USA, and Europe. One of his early films, Onan, was awarded Special Prize at the legendary Brussels International Experimental Festival.

Conceptual Description

AIUEONN Six Features simultaneously examines the relationship of words in the Japanese and Roman alphabets with the sound and the image. The words are the basic letters of Japanese vowels: 'A,' 'I,' 'U,' 'E,' and 'O.' The final 'NN' is not a vowel, though it sounds like one and comes at the end of the phonetic Japanese alphabet. These letters are visual representations, yet the form of the Japanese hiragana and the Roman alphabet is quite different. The sound on the video comes from an undistorted voice which is initially synchronized with the image, but is later de-synchronized. Of the three elements--letters, sound, and image, which are distortions of the 'real' image made by a computer (a System G developed by Sony)--the image is the most appealing. Though the images appear to dominate the piece, the sound works differently. The de-synchronized voices may initially puzzle the audience, but the repetition shows that the de-synchronization was done intentionally.

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