Hideki Nakazawa originally studied medicine graduating from the Medical School of Chiba University to work as an ophthalmologist until, in 1990, he decided to work with computer graphics as an illustrator. His experience of art during university and his shift to illustration saw him explore representation with repetition and geometry, taking cues from the early Dada-ists, such as Kurt Schwitters.
As one of a blossoming group of independent Japanese artists who had been working outside of traditional art culture circles, his collaged geometries began what became the artist's long-term exploration of computer science as a raw source material for art.
Traditional materials gave way to the code of HTML and the fabric of websites, which he saw as sculptural and manipulative. The ownership and license of tools Nakazawa created became industrial materials in the form of patented software. Focusing art ideas on method instead of style or form was the principle of Methodicism, a movement he initiated in the early 1990s alongside other artists including a poet and a composer.