If Now or Never is about the intersection of art and technology then Japanese audiovisual artist Ryoji Ikeda sits at the pinnacle.
ultratronics is Ikeda’s 2022 album performed as a one-night only live set inside Melbourne Town Hall, marking the artist’s in-person debut in Australia. It’s an intense sensory experience that rattles the body with flashing lights and piercing noise, but yet, instantly hypnotic. The trick is to lean into it, rather than trying to fight, and ultratonics will reward you with total immersion from the first collective ‘wow’ to the scalp-tingling finale.
Ryoji Ikeda – quick links:
Pixels, digits, sound waves and miscellaneous compositions pulse on the massive screen, dwarfing its composer who holds a still, solid posture throughout the 55-minute set. The flashing lights create an optical illusion where one is always slightly detached from the reality before them – hanging chandeliers and rows of seats no longer have clear boundaries.
Ikeda is a master at creating spectacular visual sensations with simple means, as with his installation Spectra, a super beam shot up into the sky accompanied by an ambient, extraterrestrial soundscape at Dark Mofo 2023.
The music of Ryoji Ikeda
His sonic language is defined by the digital and robotic, where data itself is the material and meaning is less than secondary. One will be able to discern numbers and counting, which I later found out was Ikeda’s robot narrator named ULT 708X, creating a danceable beat through the repetition of one to 30.
Were this in New York or Tokyo, ultratronics might’ve been met with a less uptight audience on the dance floor, who in Melbourne offered little beyond head bobs. I wonder what that’s like for Ikeda, whose music career began as a DJ in clubs right out of university, to now facing this vastly different crowd, and what it says about our era. Some have expressed the meditative quality of the performance, but perhaps there is too much internalising and not enough of letting go, physically and mentally.
Indeed, Ikeda has bought into this difference – his art mostly shown in museums and art fairs these days, rather than the raw grunginess of a club. In turn, our appreciation is trimmed into polite smiles and toe taps, while our brains are met with this explosion of techno glitch.
The ending of ultratronics can only be described as ‘astronomical’ without giving it away. It taps into the deepest roots of our existence. Don’t compute, just feel.
Ryoji Ikeda performed on 28 August at Melbourne Town Hall as part of Now or Never 2025.
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Also on ArtsHub: Artbank On Display review: 45 years worth celebrating ★★★1/2
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