Test Pattern by Ryoji Ikeda

This latest audiovisual work from Ryoji Ikeda, presents intense flickering black and white imagery, which floats and convulses in darkness to a stark and powerful, highly synchronised soundtrack.

Through a real-time computer programme, test pattern converts Ikeda's audio signal patterns into tightly synchronised barcode patterns on screen. The velocity of the moving images is ultra-fast, some hundreds of frames per second, so that the work provides a performance test for the audio and visual devices, as well as a response test for the audience's perceptions.

Test Pattern is the third audiovisual concert in Ikeda's Datamatics series, an art project that explores the potential to perceive the invisible multi–substance of data that permeates our world.

Taking various forms: installations, live performance and recordings - Test Pattern acts as a system that converts any type of data (text, sounds, photos and movies) into barcode patterns and binary patterns of 0s and 1s. The project aims to examine the relationship between critical points of device performance and the threshold of human perception, pushing both to their absolute limits.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k3J4d4RbeWc&feature=player_embedded#!