TIME — Irrational Algorithm / Nonlinear Time
Random fuck, 2004
Video & Flash MX, sound, 2004
While I was cutting and reassembling video frames—staring at a monitor until my eyes ached—a curator watching the process casually mentioned the idea of “randomization.”
At that moment, years of painstaking manual editing suddenly came to an end.
My mind cleared instantly.
I picked up a camcorder and began filming new work.
The material consisted of 28 frames—less than a single second—showing the moment I shouted the word “fuck.” That brief fragment was enough.
Applying an irrational algorithm, the frames were recombined into a sequence that would never repeat in the same order.
Alongside this randomized version, the same footage was also presented in its original sequential order, creating a juxtaposition between linear time and non-linear time.
Looking back, I sometimes feel that I may have spent all those years editing video simply to arrive at this algorithm.
Random walking, 2004
Video & Flash MX, no sound, 2004
Viewers usually encounter the phenomena that appear as images.
Artists, however, tend to pay attention to the principles operating beneath them.
Random walking emerged from the same discovery of irrational algorithms.
Instead of rearranging frames, the algorithm was applied to spatial movement.
Filmed in the exhibition space of the museum where I was working at the time, the work produces a strange visual effect:
the body appears to move through space, yet its position shifts discontinuously, creating the illusion of sudden displacement or teleportation.
Through such disruptions of perception, I hoped to reposition the act of viewing itself—
not as passive appreciation, but as a form of re-creation, inviting the viewer to approach the underlying principles behind the image.
Artist Descending a Staircase, 2004
Video & Flash MX, no sound, 2004
The irrational algorithm also brought to mind a work that had deeply affected me when I was a young student:
Nude Descending a Staircase by Marcel Duchamp.
Duchamp attempted to represent movement within the stillness of painting.
In my own way, I wanted to respond to that problem through the structure of time itself.
Artist Descending a Staircase was filmed on the staircase of the same museum space where Random walking was shot.
The work was conceived as both a parody and an homage—a gesture of respect to the artist whose work had first opened the path of contemporary art to me.
This was my answer.