Shot Kennedy No. 2

Name: Ragnar Digital, LLC
Price range: $

Computer Technique Group (CTG) Fujio Niwa

1968

29"x31.5"

The CTG Collection The Ragnar 100 Highlights

Description

In this work, every dot of the Kennedy data becomes a dash pointed at one of three set points. The dashes get shorter as they near their point, so each convergence looks like a burst tearing through the face.

At Cybernetic Serendipity it was described as: “Data from a photograph of Kennedy is converted into straight lines converging at one of three points. Idea and programme by Fujio Niwa.” In the Oizumi monograph Niwa explains that each dash’s direction was worked out geometrically using the circle of Apollonius.

Ohtake remembered the idea coming out of a brainstorm, though no one could say later who proposed it: there was an ordinary Kennedy, someone said, it would be fine to shoot it with an arrow, someone else suggested a bullet. In the single-shot version Niwa put the convergence point near the temple; the eyes seemed too direct, and a vital point was meant to shock. Time reviewed the London show in October 1968 and described the photograph as “a series of dashes, all of which converge with sinister impact on the left ear.”

This converging-dash technique was used by CTG before the Kennedy portrait, in cover diagrams for the Iwanami engineering series in 1967.