Tampopo
Kentaro Yamada

Ramp Gallery, Hamilton, New Zealand
10 October - 28 October 2005

‘Earlier this year, my friend from Tokyo and I were talking about lives in Tokyo concrete jungle - how you get up in the morning, you go to the nearest subway station, ride the train under the concrete surface for an hour, then you walk through number of concrete paths, and then enter into your office building without seeing a sky once. Same story goes when you leave work after dark. And it’s the same route back again.’

TAMPOPO is Japanese for dandelion, and in Japan, as is in New Zealand, dandelions occupy a sphere of folklore. A simple action of blowing creates a space amongst the bustle of human doings, it creates a direct relationship with nature, and it acts as a trigger of memories and nostalgic journeys. Perhaps it triggers memories of wishes made and long since forgotten.

The subject in TAMPOPO is a giant looming dandelion, an interactive digital work that lets you blow on the head of the dandelion and watch its spores gently drift away. Yamada is interested in creativity in computer programming, and how creative code has opened up new possibilities for new worlds. He creates environments using computer-programming techniques, and generates a simulation of the natural environment in a digital realm. Yamada sees programming as a structure that is not the antithesis of nature, but also as a responsive environment in itself. Both the programming environment and the natural environment are full of conditions and variables, of predictable and non predictable patterns.