FUNDED
Arrangement, Phase transition
vol. 43 2021-06-29 0
Arrangement, Phase transition
In "Hyakunin Isshu", each of the "100" poets gives "1" poem, which denotes the corresponding poet as an "element" of the set. However, if those 100 poets are perceived as "parts" instead, with all the possible combinations exhausted, the number of those parts will explode up to 2^100 (2 to the 100th power). The "101" poems in "Hyakunin Shuuka", recently discovered and considered to be the prototype of "Hyakunin Isshu", with political sensitivities suggested such as excluding the poems of the two emperors, Go-Toba-in (the author of 99th poem in “Hyakunin Isshu”) and Juntoku-in (100th), seem to fix such an explosion.
2^100 ≡ 1 (mod 101)
Thus, Fermat's Little Theorem turns the diverging parts (2^100) into a cycle that recurs to "1" as seen in the sequence below, which would be the projection of the hyper-structure onto the original structure.
However, the symmetry of "Hyakunin Isshu", in which the two emperors are located at the beginning and the other two at the end of the book, is possible to be preserved by reversing the second half of the above sequence (100 - 51), as shown below. This order, which, so to speak, seems to be in between structure and hyper-structure, has been used for the composition “Comments for Hyakunin Isshu” as if the 100 poems were arranged without being arranged.
The "Hyakunin Isshu," crystallized by the differentiated repetition of "5 – 7 – 5 – 7 – 7," was firstly solidified as a representation of the passed Heian Period, by using the poems as decoration for the sliding doors of a residence near Mount Ogura. Since each of the poems was cut into two parts, the 5 – 7 – 5 called "kami-no-ku" (upper phrase) and the 7 – 7 called "shimo-no-ku" (lower phrase), in a uniform manner by the ingression of the "karuta," the poems have been liquefied. Today, in the overflow of "0"s and "1"s, these have been further cut into pieces, gasified, about to be consumed globally. According to this "phase transition," the subject of enjoyment seems to have shifted and expanded from aristocrats to warriors, from men to women, and from Japanese to others.
Composed in 2012 with an engineeristic elaboration of the "Hyakunin Isshu," not as a "set" of 100 poems, but as one undividable “entity,” the "Comments for 100 poems by 100 poets" might encounter the risk of inclusion into such a context even more than it did when it was composed. The "Karuta Installation Performance" at the beginning of the program might be even more exposed to such contextualization. In this overwhelming, inclusive contextuality, I feel grateful for the opportunity to offer this de/re-contextualizing work towards an auditory experience: an event yet to come.