Patterns of Flow | Revisiting Hiroshi Kawano

“Patterns of Flow” channels Hiroshi Kawano’s curiosity and experimental spirit in the realm of computer art. It is said that Kawano began his investigations in 1963, but since he could not yet use an actual computer he conducted his experiments through manual calculations. In 1964, he finally obtained permission to use the OKITAC 5090 at the University of Tokyo.¹ After learning assembler language in two or three months, Kawano wrote a Monte Carlo method program, which produced patterned designs printed by a line printer. The monochrome works, called Patterns of Flow (also known as Series of Pattern: Flow), were created using computers like the HITAC 5020, and there are multiple versions of these works that vary in their approach to production.²

Kawano’s experiments were influenced by Max Bense’s (1910-1990) Aesthetica series, which he encountered in 1961, as well as John R. Pierce’s book, Symbols, Signals and Noise, which introduced examples of pattern generation using computers by Béla Julesz at Bell Labs.³ Kawano was deeply inspired by Julesz’s work, which prompted him to embark on his own “experiments in computer design”.⁴

Rather than focusing on “computer-aided art,” where computers assist in human art creation, Kawano aimed at “artistic simulation,” where the computer itself learns and creates. He continued experimenting with his own image-generation system, known as the “K-system,” although he ceased creating computer art by the mid-1970s, pursuing aesthetic research into artificial intelligence into the ’80s that drew on the works of Noam Chomsky, Marvin Minsky, and Seymour Papert.

This new exhibition, taking place simultaneously at NEORT++ in Tokyo and on Feral File, features two works by Kawano on loan from the Tama Art University Museum. One is the iconic Title Unknown (date unknown), characterized by Kawano’s symbolic use of red, blue, and yellow. The other is Series of Pattern: Flow (1966), created with Fortran IV and the HITAC 5020. It is likely that the last time Kawano’s work was exhibited in Japan during his lifetime was in a retrospective exhibition that he helped to plan: “20th Century Computer Art: Beginnings and Developments: The work and thought of pioneers and contemporary practitioners of algorithmic art” at Tama Art University (2006). The show not only displayed works by Kawano and other Japanese computer artists but also those of international artists including Herbert W. Franke, Vera Molnar, Frieder Nake, Georg Nees, and A. Michael Noll.

The Association for Algorithmic Art, which hosted the exhibition, comprised such figures as Koji Kusabuka, who translated Bense’s work into Japanese and taught graphic design at Tama Art University, as well as Kawano, Chihaya Shimomura, and Akihiro Kubota.⁵ They engaged in lively discussions about whose works to showcase. 

Speaking to Kubota, he shared with me that Kawano was incredibly inquisitive and loved discussions, actively approaching the planning of the exhibition with the phrase, “Let’s have a debate today too!”⁶  

Kubota added that Kawano, who by 2006 was in his later years, had a desire to exhibit computer art while still alive. I raised the issue of Kawano’s major work Computer and Aesthetics: Searching for the Art of Artificial Intelligence (1984) being out of print, and Kubota responded that while the book is certainly interesting, it was written in the context of its time. He emphasized the importance of building on it actively and writing a new book on computers and art for today’s era. I hope that “Patterns of Flow” will prompt a rethinking of Kawano’s work and writings, as well as the relationship between computers and art.

The exhibition features works by ten contemporary Japanese artists who have worked energetically in recent years, presented alongside Kawano's work. One of the standout artists is Shunsuke Takawo, whose practice of daily coding, which he began in 2015, along with the financial success of his NFT project Generativemasks (2021), has been instrumental in shaping Japan’s current generative art and NFT community.

Takawo, who engages in active communication with artists and institutions both in Japan and abroad, has been involved in numerous exhibitions and workshops aimed at promoting generative art. Having read Kawano’s writings, he has also been deeply influenced  by the former’s pursuit of aesthetics through programming as well as his vision for social transformation. Takawo’s work for this exhibition, Flows of Pattern, resonates with Kawano’s own “flow” through the motif of geometric tiling, a hallmark of Takawo’s style.

Let me now introduce the other nine artists:

‍Okazz, known for a pop style, presents Resonant Echo, a rhythmic and vibrant work that directly echoes the vivid red, blue, and yellow of Kawano’s Untitled (Red Tree)(1972).

‍Misaki Nakano, known for her delicate chromatic gradients, exhibits Nostalgia, a piece that fluidly transforms shapes through noise, manipulating pixel-level colors using WebGL shaders. The flowing blue gradient pixels evoke Kawano’s 1962 essay on aesthetic information, in which he referenced Max Bense and supported the idea that art moves toward “eternal stability embraced by nature” from the perspective of entropy.⁷

‍Kazuhiro Tanimoto and ykxotkx, artists renowned globally for their high level of technical skill, present works inspired by Kawano’s direction toward autonomous beauty-generation by computers. Tanimoto’s Sea of Code features an algorithm for color generation and Markov chain-based melody generation, while ykxotkx’s Flow Painting employs an autonomous painting-generation algorithm.

‍Senbaku explores human-computer co-creation through With You, incorporating Markov chains and the Monte Carlo method used by Kawano, while maintaining the soft colors and forms characteristic of the artist’s style.

Kaoru Tanaka’s work, Path of Tones, relies on the collection of everyday sounds to create art. Inspired by Kawano's “K-system,” Tanaka’s work captures the moments of daily life, crafting them into an artwork through the accumulation of noise and events.

‍Satoshi Aizawa, known for his minimalistic style and “Path” series, presents Grey Path, continuing a ten-year-long investigation. Following Kawano's experimental spirit, Aizawa adopted Python’s NumPy library, known for multidimensional array calculations, in line with Kawano’s use of Fortran.

‍Saeko Ehara, whose style features sparkling jewel-like visuals, presents an AI-generated work using Stable Diffusion and TouchDesigner, inspired by Kawano’s Artificial Mondrian (1966) as well as Piet Mondrian’s Broadway Boogie Woogie (1942-43), depicting a dazzling night drive through the city.

‍mole^3 takes note of Kawano’s generation, with its personal experience of the Second World War, speculating that Kawano sought to transcend the negative emotions provoked by the war through the pursuit of beauty.⁸ This unique perspective is reflected in mole^3’s work, Changes, Cycles, and Shapes in Between, which references Mondrian’s shapes and colors while oscillating between the abstract and the figurative, creating a distinctive “pattern of flow”.

The exhibition features a special essay by Jasia Reichardt. Renowned for her curation of two ground-breaking exhibitions at London’s ICA in 1968: “Cybernetic Serendipity” and “Fluorescent Chrysanthemum,” Reichardt’s inclusion of the Japanese Computer Technique Group (CTG) in the former led CTG to achieve international recognition alongside a generation of Japanese computer artists. The international dialogue initiated by Reichardt is now being carried forward by the curators of “Patterns of Flow,” Yusuke Shono of Massage Magazine and Alex Estorick of Right Click Save. Thanks to the collaboration of NEORT and Feral File, the exhibition is being passed on to us, the audience, both online and in downtown Tokyo. 

The experimental works of Hiroshi Kawano and CTG during the 1960s and ’70s have not garnered the attention they deserve in Japan for a long time (as is true of other computer artists). Yet today, discussions surrounding computers and art are more important than ever.

If, through this exhibition and the fresh energy of emerging artists, Kawano’s curiosity and the experimental spirit of early computer art can spread anew across Japan, the UK, and the world, it would be a remarkable achievement.