Octfalls

Octfalls is an eight-channel audiovisual installation by Ryoichi Kurokawa. Eight screens, each with its own speaker, are hung in an octagonal formation; on them, close-up footage of falling water is cut and synchronised so that the cascades pass from screen to screen around the visitor, while the sound of the water is composed as a spatial field in the centre of the room. The image is treated as a time-based material: slowed, reversed, split and rejoined until the waterfall becomes a rhythm rather than a view.

The work had premiered at the 54th Venice Biennale in 2011, according to the surviving curatorial record, before its presentation at Day for Night 2017. The artist's own project record documents the piece; the archive holds no photograph of the Houston presentation.