“Observing the act of observation.” The act of observation and the fundamental question toward the visual mechanism itself are where this artwork starts. The participant experiencing the work interacts with the 3D space created in real time from the traces of his or her visions.° We unconsciously receive a tremendous amount of information through our eyesight. This artwork visualizes every moment of our eyesight endlessly moving from consciousness to unconsciousness, and visions always in the changing process. The participant relies solely on changing visions as moving forward in the virtual space where no concept of top and bottom exists. He or she can enjoy a first-person point of view while leaving a linear trace of changing visions. As the traces of visions immediately develop into a 3D structure, he or she can broaden the perspective to see the whole scope of experience. The structure is an organic shape like a neural network which arouses more of a tactile than visual sense. In the space, an observer and an object rotate self-referenti ally. In this circulatory loop, the traces of the observatory action become a spell which immediately restrains the observer. Each participant will develop different relations with these loops.
This work, produced in cooperation with Yamaguchi Center for Arts and Media [YCAM] by leveraging the latest technology and equipments, originated with the Molecular Informatics°° developed in 1996. Thanks to eye-tracking technology which uses the open source “The Eye Writer Ver 2.0.” and the progress of computing technology in 15 years, the original work was completely reborn. The world depicted in the work has transformed into something more complex and seamless due to the extraordinarily fast, smooth graphical realization, but it may also imply that the vision -“A massive information system that penetrates through the body and city” of which Mikami tried to deliver through the large-scale installation work in the 80’s- has sophisticatedly realized through digital technology.
° The work is made for two people enabling interaction between the two.
°° Seiko Mikami, Molecular Information (1996), co-produced with Canon ARTLAB.
