Where Fractals Become the “Structure of Consciousness” Rather Than a “Geometric Shape”
TRANCE is a 1989 video work by Naoko Tosa. A six-minute piece with color and sound, featuring music by Akio Morimoto, it is currently held in the collection of the Nagoya City Art Museum.
The significance of this work lies in the fact that it does not treat fractals as mere mathematical diagrams. Fractals are self-similar structures found throughout nature—underlying the patterns of clouds, coastlines, trees, blood vessels, nerves, and the flickering of flames. In TRANCE, these structures unfold visually, allowing the viewer not just to “see a shape,” but to experience the sensation of form self-propagating, transforming, and drawing the consciousness into its depths. In essence, TRANCE does not explain fractals; it is a work in which consciousness becomes entangled within fractal generation.
The title TRANCE is vital here. It does not refer to a mere hallucinatory visual, but to a state where ordinary perception wavers and the boundary between form and consciousness becomes unstable. The image is not an external object; it acts upon the viewer’s interior, altering the very rhythm of perception.
From an art historical perspective, TRANCE stands at a crucial junction between computer imagery and video art in the late 1980s. At the time, computer graphics were often regarded simply as a “new imaging technology.” However, Tosa did not use CG as a futuristic ornament. Instead, she utilized it to visualize the mathematical structures underlying nature and the morphological principles that act upon the depths of human consciousness.
In this regard, TRANCE is deeply connected to the later Sound of Ikebana. While Sound of Ikebana features sound acting upon fluids to give rise to fleeting forms invisible to the naked eye, TRANCE features the mathematical structure of the fractal multiplying and transforming within the video to act upon the viewer’s consciousness. What they share is a refusal to represent pre-existing forms; instead, they deal with the process by which form is born, changes, and reaches our awareness.
To put it most sharply for Akira Tatehata: TRANCE is not a visualization of fractals. It is a work that allows the viewer to experience, within the temporality of video, the generative structure common to both nature and consciousness.
If An Expression generated the relationship between sight and sound, ECSTASY visualized internal physical sensations, and GUSH! reconstructed the body through multiple perspectives and time, then TRANCE is the work that deals with the structures of repetition, proliferation, and self-similarity at the heart of nature and the mind.
As such, this work is a vital precursor to Tosa’s later exploration of “the moment nature emerges.” In TRANCE, nature is not depicted as a landscape. It appears as a mathematical force that gives birth to form. Therefore, the art historical value of TRANCE extends beyond early CG experimentation; it is a work that transformed the moving image from something “to be seen” into a site where the structures of perception and nature resonate.

NAOKO TOSA
Title: Trance
Year:1989
Medium: movie (color) , sound, 6min.
Music by Kosei Morimoto

Collection

名古屋市美術館