In her sculptures, paintings, videos, and installations, artist Mika Tajima interrogates the techniques and technologies developed to shape and control the human body—its physicality, its productivity, and its imperceptible desires. From architectural systems to ergonomic design to psychographic data, her works operate in the space between the transient and the tangible, highlighting the complex networks of power and submission that we experience in relationship to both our physical bodies and our virtual selves. They speak to the ways our lives are influenced by invisible forces that surround us, saturate our environment, and ultimately regulate our bodies and behaviors. Using technology and data as materials, Tajima interrogates the infrastructures of power that shape our perceptions, choices, and emotions.
Negative Entropy (2012–ongoing) is a series of textile works that translate acoustic data into abstract compositions. These woven portraits of different sites of production are made on a Jacquard loom, a machine invented in 1804 that industrialized textile manufacturing via punch cards that were used to store and transmit data—an invention that many historians consider an important step in the development of computer and machine programming. Each work in this series is an individual field recording of diverse acoustic information transmuted into a digital spectrogram using linguistic audio software. Sources range from voices of individual translators, to technicians working in factories, to ambient server sounds of computer infrastructure providers.
Negative Entropy (Kim Reddick Jacquard Card Cutter, Pink, hex) (2016) translates the sonic information of technician Kim Reddick as she is producing Jacquard punch cards. The patterns in the two columns appear nearly identical, as Reddick’s repetitious movements in producing the punch cards appear to follow a distinct rhythm, yet are subject to slight variations in movement and human error. The work thus operates in the space between human body and machine as Reddick collaborates with her mechanical counterpart to produce the composition. The deeply saturated fuchsia and purple threads are taken from trends in activewear, reflecting aesthetic decisions purposefully designed to shape the body’s experience and performance.
The title Negative Entropy comes from quantum physics, where it refers to the reverse of entropy (disorder or randomness), by which chaotic information is measured, ordered, and systematized. Like many of Tajima’s works, this piece speaks to the difficulties of calibrating the qualities of life itself, especially when measuring such abstract properties as the body’s own physicality. With Negative Entropy (Kim Reddick Jacquard Card Cutter, Pink, hex), Tajima speculates on the paradox of how bodily movement can be quantified, and questions how we might contend with the mercurial qualities of life.
In her sculptures, paintings, videos, and installations, artist Mika Tajima interrogates the techniques and technologies developed to shape and control the human body—its physicality, its productivity, and its imperceptible desires. From architectural systems to ergonomic design to psychographic data, her works operate in the space between the transient and the tangible, highlighting the complex networks of power and submission that we experience in relationship to both our physical bodies and our virtual selves. They speak to the ways our lives are influenced by invisible forces that surround us, saturate our environment, and ultimately regulate our bodies and behaviors. Using technology and data as materials, Tajima interrogates the infrastructures of power that shape our perceptions, choices, and emotions.
Negative Entropy (2012–ongoing) is a series of textile works that translate acoustic data into abstract compositions. These woven portraits of different sites of production are made on a Jacquard loom, a machine invented in 1804 that industrialized textile manufacturing via punch cards that were used to store and transmit data—an invention that many historians consider an important step in the development of computer and machine programming. Each work in this series is an individual field recording of diverse acoustic information transmuted into a digital spectrogram using linguistic audio software. Sources range from voices of individual translators, to technicians working in factories, to ambient server sounds of computer infrastructure providers.
Negative Entropy (Kim Reddick Jacquard Card Cutter, Pink, hex) (2016) translates the sonic information of technician Kim Reddick as she is producing Jacquard punch cards. The patterns in the two columns appear nearly identical, as Reddick’s repetitious movements in producing the punch cards appear to follow a distinct rhythm, yet are subject to slight variations in movement and human error. The work thus operates in the space between human body and machine as Reddick collaborates with her mechanical counterpart to produce the composition. The deeply saturated fuchsia and purple threads are taken from trends in activewear, reflecting aesthetic decisions purposefully designed to shape the body’s experience and performance.
The title Negative Entropy comes from quantum physics, where it refers to the reverse of entropy (disorder or randomness), by which chaotic information is measured, ordered, and systematized. Like many of Tajima’s works, this piece speaks to the difficulties of calibrating the qualities of life itself, especially when measuring such abstract properties as the body’s own physicality. With Negative Entropy (Kim Reddick Jacquard Card Cutter, Pink, hex), Tajima speculates on the paradox of how bodily movement can be quantified, and questions how we might contend with the mercurial qualities of life.