Video/Film
Film: 16mm film (sound) 19’00”; original drawing: pen, ink and whiteout on paper (set of 18); copy: Xerox print (a. 10, 000pieces)
Takashi Ishida Die Kunst der Fuge (The Art of Fugue), 2001 Film: 16mm film (sound) 19’00” Original drawing: Pen, ink on paper (set of 18) Copy: Xerox print (a. 10,000 pieces) Unique Visualizing the music through moving image is a pursuit with a long history dating back to European avant-garde cinema. Based on three of the 18 parts of Johann Sebastian Bach’s (1685-1750) composition of The Art of Fugue (Die Kunst der Fuge), the work is Ishida’s attempt to translate the highly contrapuntal, multilayered development of the theme into moving images. By replacing individual themes in Bach’s original composition with images and movements, Ishida establishes a fundamental artistic pattern. Then he paints a little on a piece of paper, copies the results, adds more paint to the original paper, copies that, and on and on, building up a series of original pictures and film frames through a process of repetition. More than simple perseverance, “drawing animation,” created by translating music into something visual, requires a monomaniacal approach. 