In the early 1980s, Tatsuo Miyajima was well known for his performance pieces on the streets of Tokyo. His realisation that time was both the essence of his performances and what restricted their accessibility was fundamental to his process of experimenting with numbers at this time. Counting down from nine to one became a source of infinite potential for Miyajima, who embraced the simplicity and universality of numbers while revelling in the endless possibilities of their arrangement and association.

Numbers are abstract until they are applied to a measure, and in particular cultural contexts they immediately conjure a referential system. In Japan, they can allude to fluctuations in the world’s third-largest economy or suggest technological and manufacturing developments or, more recently, remind us of a Richter scale or Geiger counter. For Miyajima, numbers are not bound by their application to defined units of measure, but rather function metaphorically, evoking a spiritual dimension. He recognises their ability to define minutiae, while at the same time operating as a vehicle to express vastness beyond comprehension.

Describing Buddhism as a ‘religion about time’, Miyajima, who began studying Buddhist philosophy in 1980 at the age of 23, sees the understanding of time as fundamental to a definition of religion.¹ In Zen painting traditions, time is integral to the artistic process, where a single line may be the subject of meditation for hours, while the enso (circle) embodies both emptiness and everything, bringing together time and space. Miyajima extends these sentiments by avoiding the use of zero at the same time as maintaining its importance by focusing attention on its absence. Without zero (symbolising death), numbers repeatedly count to represent the cycle of life, where nothing stops or is ever complete.²

Miyajima’s numbers are always digital, often represented in LED (an interface synonymous with technology), and are constructed in a multitude of arrangements, from glowing counters in a pool of water in a traditional Japanese interior to a riverbed in Nagasaki, to towering five-metre-high panels on a 50-metre-long wall in Tokyo’s Roppongi Hills district.³ His ‘U-cars’ (‘uncertainty cars’), developed in the early 1990s, carry LED counters on 20-centimetre-long battery‑powered cars. In Running Time 1994–99,⁴ the cars change direction when they bump into a wall or each other, resembling the streaking lights of a night-time aerial view of a modern city. This activates the stationary counters, introducing randomness to their path, to an otherwise ordered counting sequence. The U-cars also allow Miyajima to explore transportation, the development of which he believes is integral to our understanding of time and history.⁵

Displaying a more static approach, the ‘Time landscape’ series 1993–94 reveals numbers painted in negative over antique landscape paintings, unveiling the original image within the outline of the digits. These works pay homage to the tradition of landscape painting and the literati arts of East Asia, where scholars would depict scenes with an appreciation for the timeless, spiritual and contemplative qualities of their surroundings.⁶

Over three decades, Tatsuo Miyajima has continued to explore his subject with curiosity and admiration, acknowledging that time permeates people’s lives and affects our understanding of our place in the universe. Whether in the context of technology or spirituality, he exposes the limitless nature of numeric symbols and their ability to ‘keep changing, connect with everything, continue forever’.⁷

Endnotes

1. Michael Auping, ‘Theatre of time’, in Tatsuo Miyajima: Big Time [exhibition catalogue], Hayward Gallery, London, 1996, p.13.
2. Yvonne Spielmann, Hybrid Culture: Japanese Media Arts in Dialogue with the West, trans. Anja Welle and Stan Jones, MIT Press Books, Cambridge, Mass., 2013, p.42.
3. Refer to the artworks: Sea of Time ’98 1998 (Naoshima Contemporary Art Museum), Revive Time in the River 1995 (Urakami River, Nagasaki) and Counter Void 2003 (TV Asahi Building, Roppongi Hills, Tokyo).
4. Running Time 1994–99 was included in the ‘Third Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art’, Queensland Art Gallery, 1999.
5. Auping, p.27. Miyajima has also worked with model trains; refer to the ‘Time Train’ series 2008 (Kunsthalle Recklinghausen, Germany).
6. Auping, p.28.
7. Alexandra Munroe, Japanese Art After 1945: Scream Against the Sky [exhibition catalogue], Harry N Abrams in association with the Yokohama Museum of Art, Japan Foundation, Guggenheim Museum and San Francisco Museum of Art, New York, 1994, p.223.