Holistic Strata & Split Flow

Holistic Strata

In Umeda’s works, all components on stage – bodies, lights, and sound – are treated as equivalent means of expression based on his post-anthropocentric perspective. In Holistic Strata, all the elements are dissolved into the same information units (pixel) and, by doing so, Umeda searches for an ‘axiom of kinetic movements’ that exists as a common denominator of all movements.

‘The individual stratum decides the holistic strata, and the holistic strata decide the individual stratum: there are two equal determinants in the world”. Based on this philosophy, Umeda creates a holistic living organism in which all movements transcendentally coalesce into a harmony. Immersed in this harmonious world, where all movements are expressed through pixels, the audiences’ senses are challenged to the limit: to experience sensations preceding the materialization of emotions.

Split Flow

This optical dance juxtaposes two distinct physical conditions, dynamic and static, in order to visualize the duality within reality. This work, first created as a light installation commissioned by Van Abbemuseum (Eindhoven, Netherlands) in 2011, is an experiment in expressing velocity with strokes of light. Through the dynamic intervention of the body into the static space, a different reality came into existence.