Vol.02　Takahiro ANDO

A “photomultiplier tube” converts light signals into electronic signals and exponentially multiplies and outputs these electronic signals. As both an artist & creator, Takahiro Ando was fascinated by the possibilities offered by the photomultiplier tube. He utilized the photomultiplier to produce a unique device that detects very weak light leaking into a completely dark room and converts those individual particles of light into a sound that we can hear as a high-pitched chirping sound noise to our ears.

Ando says: “I have been fascinated by light since I first started studying drawing before entering the university.” When Ando painted pictures, he depicted light with monotone colors of white, black, and gray rather than using the conventional technique of painting that faithfully and accurately reproduces the details. He mentions what impressed him about this technique was that “When I see a picture close up, it only looks half painted, but when I see the same picture from some distance away it looks amazing.”

Art involving light is a gift of chance resulting from the passage of time. There was another work that made him feel this same way about the passage of time. In that work, Ando hung a black plastic sheet over windows on the veranda-like porch of a villa located deep in the mountains. He then made small holes with a heated soldering iron one by one in the black plastic sheet from the inner side. This created an arrangement where the incoming light projects the outside scene.

Ando goes on to say: “I imagined the incoming light as gradually spreading the outside scenery throughout the room as the number of holes increased. And the black plastic sheet would ultimately be like a starry sky. Well, most stars we presently see are light reaching the Earth after traveling here for tens of thousands of light years. The original stars creating that light might have already disappeared by the time we see it here on Earth. In the same way, the scenery we see every day includes temporal distances and so we are actually seeing the past. I wanted to express those distances in the scenery we see every day and so decided to give this artistic work a try.”

On the inside of the black plastic sheet with small holes making it resemble a starry sky, Ando hung a thin white curtain and applied an air flow to make it flutter. Each of the holes served as a camera lens to project the countless pieces of inverted outside scenery onto the waving white curtain. Watching the undulating light and shadow that almost seemed to be giving off a sigh proved both fascinating and beautiful. Time seemed to be flowing through this very quiet yet dynamic scene as if just gliding along.

Artists often put a social message into their contemporary art. However, Ando’s art seems to originate from a genuine interest in light. Just hearing the word “photon” seems to make him excited and thrilled. What is the next artistic work of light that Ando plans to create?

Ando also says: “I am now pondering for example what I can do with light technology using equipment that visualizes transient changes in an extremely short time of femtoseconds.*3 At Hamamatsu Photonics I saw an apparatus capable of femtosecond measurements. Since then, how I could use this to create art that expresses both light and time has been constantly at the forefront of my mind.

What will these ideas and concepts from Ando lead us? We can hardly wait to see what surprises wait in store for us.