Ryoanji

Ryoanji (龍安寺, The Temple of the Dragon at Peace) is a Zen temple located in Kyoto, Japan. The Ryoanji garden is considered the grail of kare-sansui ("dry landscape"), a type of Japanese Zen temple garden. Kare-sansui features distinctive larger rock formations arranged amidst a sweep of smooth pebbles raked into patterns that facilitate meditation.

Given the reality of physics, rearrangements of Ryoanji is not feasible. John Cage composed his Ryonaji with chance, pencil and paper. In 1982, when Cage was commissioned to design the cover for a book to be published by Editions Ryôan-ji, he developed a process of chance-controlled creation, consulting the coin oracle of the I Ching and later computer-generating randomized numbers, reducing the subjective aspects of both composition and performance.

Here, artist Jimi Wen recomposes Ryoanji exploring the limits and boundaries of generative art. Instead of rearranging the stones, which he fixed, everything else is by way of chance. Every aspect of this piece - the original physical walls, imaginary walls, p5js raked sands, trees beyond the walls, and including the visions we see with our mind not our eyes, elicit a form of meditation on screen.

Jimi Wen: Ryoanji #45