Conceptual Art Work that constructs major part of this project
■ Description
Excerpt from “Searching for the Door into Summer Exhibition” pseudo-radio …
📻As for this exhibition, it marks the conclusion of the “Project Meteoroscape” that began in 2014, bringing it to a close. However, there are still just under three weeks until the end of the exhibition period, so during this time I would like to look back on this project and have some radio-like casual conversations here on X (formerly Twitter).
First, the name of the project is ‘Meteoroscape’. It is a coined term that combines the Greek word ‘meteoros’ and the English word ‘scape’, and you won’t find such a word in the dictionary.
However, this doesn’t mean everything is ‘Western’. The term ‘meteoros’, which means ‘all phenomena between heaven and earth’, is drawn from the work “Astronomy and Haiku” by Torahiko Terada, who was also a haiku poet.
The “Project Meteoroscape” began in 2014, during a time when personal blogs were gaining legitimacy, and I started by publishing it there.
So strictly speaking, does it really start that year? You may ask, but the idea itself had been conceived a little earlier, and I consider the time when I acquired the domain meteoroscape.com as one ‘milestone.’
Now, the idea is the concept of creating “One and Only by an individual”. And it was about presenting that as a single artwork.
I didn’t envision everything from the beginning, but from the start, “meteoroscape” did not intend to take photos of ‘all phenomena between heaven and earth’ to create something unique in the world. The act of ‘taking photos’ and ‘creating art’ are completely different layers, matters of ‘dimensions’. ‘Uniqueness in the world’ and ‘its value’ are also in different ‘dimensions’.
For those of us, creators should know it, this is self-evident, but there are so many interwoven intentions in each layer that it is difficult to untangle them. Everything had to be done in parallel and together.
Well, that being said, there is a certain order to things. So I started by talking about ‘how to take photographs’ despite that I am not in a position to lecture others.
But if I just started off with something like,
“Suuu… what does it mean to be one of a kind in the world…”
it would sound crazy and no one would listen to me. So, I have to attract people using a conventional approach. You could say it’s like ‘fishing.’ 🎣
Thus, photograph lecture was just for a lead for the concept of creating “One and Only by an individual” however, it was unexpectedly a fine play to categorize photographs into people, objects, and landscapes.
This is because you can separate the photo from its role and concentrate on the ‘consciousness,’ and that separation directly leads to a categorization of living beings, inanimate objects, and both, which serves as foreshadowing.
In the latter part concerning “Individual and Emergent Properties,” the discussion will delve deeper into the realm between living and non-living things, as well as consciousness.
That said, what I initially aimed for was to create ‘One and Only’ item. In other words, I got a plan to make up the first half regarding the “One and its Duplications” part, so I wasn’t that committed up to that point. The plan is to smoothly transition the discussion into the ‘interior art introduction program’ and summarize it as creating “One and Only by an individual.”
The “Interior Art Introduction Program” had a terrible naming sense, even I think so, but I planned to unveil a unique specification featuring a fictional interior shop and later provide theoretical supplements.
So, to connect the discussion about photography to “Interior Art,” it may seem abrupt, but I decided to insert a dialogue with an interior designer.
That was the conversation with haloct. Some may doubt it, but I did invite him/her properly for the discussion.
Initially, I thought I would just include expert references as stories. However, since both parties were amateurs in their work, things didn’t come together at all.
So, the result of considering what to do led to the interview format. This was inspired by articles from “Omokoro” and “Daily Portal Z”, which are japanese joke sites that I often read at that time. They might have been influenced by applications like LINE.
Well, what I’m saying is, perhaps that’s why the ChatGPT UI turned out the way it is. After all, chat UIs are quite rare, aren’t they? A bulletin board type UI that stacks on top or branches down is more common.
In any case, conversations allow for a gradual exchange of dialogue, which have an advantage in reducing confusion.
I would also be at a loss if someone asked me to introduce myself for three minutes all of a sudden. For some reason, if it’s in a dialogue, I can manage to respond somehow. I think that’s the interesting part about ‘consciousness’.
So, finally I am going to review the part, but discussing it now would introduce bias, so I hope you’ll refer to the original source. However, for those who have never seen such a thing and have no desire to, let me elaborate a bit…
If we assume that an infinite number of reproductions are occurring beneath the surface, we need to consider under what conditions it would indicate the value of .
For example, a digital photograph can be reproduced infinitely, limited by the capacity of the computer, right? What conditions must be met for it to be identified as a original?
Going even further, infinite reproductions are like insubstantial ‘waves,’ so to speak, but how can we transform them into ‘particles’ that have the value of being ?
One answer would be to ‘crack down on bad people who make copies.’ In fact, we live in such a world. However, this is only possible when the number of copies is relatively small, and it’s impossible when dealing with ‘infinity.’
So what do we do? Well, we no longer crack down on them. But we’re not just leaving them alone. Instead, we impose a condition that ‘forgery is not allowed.’
You may be wondering what it means that it can be replicated infinitely but cannot be forged, but that is exactly how BTC (= Bitcoin) works.
This explanation makes you think, ‘It can be replicated infinitely but cannot be forged? That is Bitcoin? Howdy hell?!’ If you’re wondering this, then when you heard that Bitcoin is a cryptocurrency, you probably thought, ‘They must be protecting the money with an incredibly difficult code.’ That’s what I thought.
However, as you know, Bitcoin is a “decentralized digital currency with no central bank or single administrator,” and does not protect bank money with cryptography.
What Bitcoin does is record and share transaction history (= blockchain). This creates a place for transactions that cannot be forged. In other words, the Bitcoin mechanism itself is cryptography.
Therefore, even though BCH, which is a fork of BTC itself, and altcoins, which are copies of BTC are competing on the streets, these are not possible to duplicate BTC transactions there. That’s what I think, right?
So, in order to convert from an infinite state of copies under the surface into a converged , we need a ‘place to share transaction history,’ in other words, ‘dimension.’
But Bitcoin does more than that. It also weights people who join the Bitcoin community according to their contributions, right?
For example, they could give out free bitcoins to people who take the trouble to run their computers to mine for bitcoin, and create an exchange for people who want to buy bitcoin with cash as an easy way to participate.
If left alone, something could remain static forever, but by creating such a gradient, the whole thing can finally start moving.
I used this as a great reference when I came up with the idea for the personal version of Bitcoin, the ‘Interior Art Introduction Program.’
What do I have to say…I have no idea who you are, but thank you, Satoshi Nakamoto!
This radio style self-conversation continues on to the description of “Art and Photography”…
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