Beyond Media, Connecting Senses


'Toshio Iwai Toshio Iwai

This age is full of moving images, but why do we, myself included, find simple things such as flipbooks and phenakisti-scopes fascinating? This was the first question that interested me in interactive media. I find these things fascinating probably because they expose the mechanism of our physical body. Flipping a flipbook by consciously moving your fingers confirms each function of your body. And this is a totally different experience to feeling something unconsciously and passively. Think of your eyes. Just seeing something, or actually looking at something should produce different emotions, if you understand the mechanism itself. To manipulate something by actually putting your hand on it and to actually look at something real, something that is not a created image, is very important. Looking at something real has nothing to do with frame rates and resolutions. When you look at something, the more you look, the more you can see and the more the resolution improves. Similarly, it is also possible to break down time into microseconds or into smaller units. We understand this naturally through our body. After all, I believe that watching a created image is a totally different experience to seeing something real, something that actually moves.

Since the invention of time movies and videos, the aspect ratio of frames and the number of frames per second have become common property for creators. And these formats have never been thought over. Everyone just accepts these formats and creates their work within these formats. But if you stop and think about it, these formats were imposed by people who have nothing to do with the work of the creators. These formats have been set as the standard for commercial reasons, and to facilitate things. If everybody had to draw pictures in a frame of the same size, wouldn't that be very restrictive? It is the great diversity that fascinates—and not just in paintings and sculptures. That is why it is important to break away from standards and consider what you really want to create, and what you really want to see. By doing my bit in creating things that do not correspond to the existing format of image devices, I express my doubts. And at the same time, I wish to see things from beyond existing standards.

I want to see images not as a world apart, but as part of our environment. I probably have developed this perspective from flipbooks as well. Flipbooks are much more enjoyable when you flip the pages yourself, in your own hands, rather than just watching someone else flip the pages for you. When I saw animation films that I had made on a projector, I felt like the machine was doing everything for me. I worked on the animation for days, drawing and shooting each frame, but it seemed distant to me. I felt like something was missing. On the other hand, flipbooks are close to me. I feel like I am always in the same position as the piece of work I create. This feeling is what led me to the ideas of my later pieces of interactive work.
My ultimate goal is to be honest to my own body. I want to see and experience with all of my senses something that I have never seen or experienced before. And to create such a thing is a challenge to me. I find things that stimulate my senses, which I normally do not use, interesting without the need for reasons. I want to make something that will push those buttons of one’s senses that have never been pushed before. I have many buttons that I am not aware of, and I am looking for these and am pushing them, one by one, as I make new creations. What I want to achieve is to find out what kind of fascinating things I can do using all the senses of my own body. Every time I naturally sense that something is interesting, I try to connect each of these senses. I try to connect my visual senses with my auditory senses. I also want to connect these to the movement of my body and hands.

I have also always felt that the world we see and hear is only a part of a thin layer of the universe. There are high and low frequencies that cannot be heard by the human ear. Also for the eyes, there is only a certain range of lights that we can see. As you know, infrared and ultra violet rays are not visible. But there are other animals that can see these rays. If aliens existed, they might see the world in a very different way. When you think of height, humans cannot live in deep water. Where we live is in an extremely thin layer of air. In the same way, if you consider the world we see and hear from a cosmic point of view, you will realize that the range of stimuli we receive and perceive is very narrow. I wonder what it would be like if I could see and hear every sound that comes through a mobile phone or every electric wave received by a television and radio.

Finding beauty in things that exist in nature, or transmitting the fascinating aspects and beauty of something through pieces of work is what artists have always been doing. I follow this same path, although the media I use is different. In the 20th century, everyone was interested in expressing things visually or through sound. I would like to go beyond this, and create pieces of work that will stimulate all of the senses through various elements.