In Plato's Allegory of the Cave, the shadows on the wall are illusion and the world outside the cave is the ideal. In one respect, people usually consider the external world to be the real truth and continue to follow it. However, I think we should not just blindly follow the so-called external truth and ignore the internal world.
Many people just want absolute truth that will last forever and not be overthrown. But they do not know that these primitive so-called illusions are rooted in our minds and are still growing unconsciously. Some objects that we normally think of as lifeless things can be different in our subconscious.
JUNE NIGHT (2018) 7:19 min/ Sound
Memories of spring and summer are more vivid and impressive for some people. One of the reasons is that the fragrance of this time is richer and stronger. In fact, the olfactory field in our brain is very close to stored memory.
People usually think similarly about the memories when the season comes year after year.
JUNE DAY (2018) 2:56 min/ Sound
The sound of June Day and June Night all have the sound of cicada as part of the background. The tracks are about the stories of the plants, but the sound can remind us of our own memories. The combination of sensations makes us have a deeper perception of the plants' life, and also our life.
INNER INSIDE (2019) 4:30 min/ Sound
People are unsure of the actual size of the paper ball in this video. In this video work, I chose to use real objects instead of creating animations because I want to express some kind of strange feeling that allows people to connect with themselves when they watch it. The image of the paper ball in these two videos was also intended to emphasize the existence of the subconscious or unconscious mind.
Folding and playing with a paper ball or paper toy usually happens in our childhood, that is, in the period when we do not have much common sense yet. Although we learn more common sense as we grow up, feelings and thoughts from our childhood can still grow in our inner world. Maybe it's the inside you thought you had, or the inside you want to have, or the inside you didn't know you had.
In the video work June-Night, June-Day and the print series Still Growing, I used the shadows and marks of flattened plants as an impression of existence. I found that those plants left many beautiful marks on the papers I used for flattening. Since those tracks and marks had very dimensional textures, I used two different zoom distances to scan them to express depth.
Besides that, I made the video piece June-Day which has a feeling of wandering over the tracks. I think the whole process of making these works of different media is a kind of research into the realizations of life. When the prints were made from the traces of the plants, the signs of life that had passed away physiologically were intensive.
It is a kind of strong impact on life that we can feel has existed before.
THE SMELL
THE SMELL (2018) 8:24 min/ Sound
I wanted to treat smell as a medium that can connect emotions, memories and other sensations.
SOUND
ORANGE (2018) 1:21 min
ALMONDS (2018) 3:15 min
GRASS (2018) 1:21 min
SOIL (2018) 1:42 min
SNOW CRYSTAL (2018) 3:40 min
PRINTS
INTERACTIVE WORK
EMPATHY (2018) Interactive Installation/ Sound
In the interactive work Empathy I tried to build an environment and imagine the communication between people and plants. They derived color therapy, which uses the color energy or light in life to perform natural therapy on the body and mind, and to provide a sense of physical and mental comfort for us to return to a balanced state of health. If we want to grow some indoor plants, we project the best LED color lights on them.
The colors of light projected on the plants will be changed due to people's movements and the sound we hear will also be changed by these plants at the same time. We know that people cannot really know the feelings of other creatures, but we can use this form to experience and imagine this kind of empathic feelings. In this work I used a software patch made by Max7 to change the color of light projected onto the plants.
When the light above one plant has changed, the camera detector above the other will pick it up and cause the other side to start working as well. It makes us feel that the two groups of plants are talking and reacting to each other. I can even make a program that has preset pitches and tones so the plants can make their own music.
However, I think that no matter what forms I use for interaction, the essentials are the same. Although an in-depth research can make the atmosphere closer to the environment we want to simulate, it is still impossible to get the same feeling with plants. The purpose of this interactive work is to make us focus on feelings and help us imagine plant life and the connection between human beings and other types of creatures.
TOGETHER SERIES (2018) Archival Print on Watercolor Paper
HATSUMI
HATSUMI (2017) 3:47 min/ Sound
It is an enlightenment from now that affects the recognition of emotions that we felt in the past. However, after a certain amount of time, when we watch or do something, we can suddenly realize what that feeling was. Memories are like stones that accumulate in our lives and hold us every moment.
