OUTLINE
In September of 2009 the World Wildlife Found for Nature (WWF) announced their prediction that sea levels will rise 120cm by the end of this century. This new prediction is twice that of the previous calculation. For the people of the island of Japan this problem seems very real, and it has become something that we believe the Japanese must think about.
[100 YEARS SEA] is a video work with a running time of 100 years. Based on the 2009 prediction of the WWF, the movie depicts the sea rising over a 100 year period, and therefore runs in parallel with the real sea.
After a 100years, whilst looking at the original artwork, what will be the state of the real sea? Will the rise in sea levels be more serious than the WWF calculated? Or will the sea have calmed? The sea in this movie keeps rising as we head towards that inevitable time.
Concept
Historically Japanese artist painted and expressed waves using a combination of lines. These assembled lines give the impression of the life and energy of the sea as one living creature. Looking at the sea we feel awe, and it is probably due to this awe that Japanese artists chose to express the sea as a living entity. Japanese ancestors possibly saw the world exactly as it is depicted in a classic Japanese print. Based on this idea, we considered recombining the subjective view of that of our ancestors with the fixed objective view of the modern world. We constructed virtual waves in a 3D environment that regardless of the cut, have the appearance of the combined line style of Japanese painting. As a result we think it might be possible to gain an impression of what the world looked like to our Japanese ancestors.
This movie attempts to recreate the recognition of space of our Japanese ancestors’ in 3 dimensions.
In doing so, we may be able to discover a new mode of expression in which viewers feel there is no border between the world of the movie and the world in which they live. As a result viewers may be able to feel the movie more physically.
About 100 YEARS SEA -Animation Diorama
(@ Konica Minolta Plaza, 10th to the 21st of December 2009)
[100 YEARS SEA -Animation Diorama-] is an installation movie that is an edited version of the longer [100 YEARS SEA] movie, reducing the time frame from 100 years to approximately 10mins in order to give viewers a faster and more intense experience of the original [100 YEARS SEA]. The movie recreates the recognition of space as depicted in Japanese classic painting. It uses a 20meter screen which gives viewers the feeling that there is no border between the movie world and the real world, and the rising sea that eventually swallows the viewers.
We hope that this installation will cause viewers to feel the intensity of the problem of the rise in sea level.