Intercepting Perception

When I was a junior high school student, my friends Bito and Umeki often talked about the “mysterious road.” They would say, “‘the mysterious road’ was especially amazing yesterday. We can’t see it today.”

According to their stories, the mysterious road would sometimes transform. We can find something precious there. The road suddenly narrows down. The slope becomes so steep that we can’t pass through. The ground undulates. What? It even has a scent? My expectations were mounting.

After all, they kept telling me that it was too early for me to go to the “mysterious road.” I kept wondering, “Why is it too early?” They never took me to the place and we eventually graduated.

I managed to identify the location of the “mysterious road” from their conversation, but looking back at it now, they could have been simply playing with their words as a prank on me. However, even after graduating, I continued to look for it every time I happened to be in the area, until I was around 30 years old.

I recently had the chance to see two of them. I asked them about the “mysterious road,” but they didn’t remember it at all. It was funny to know that it was only me who had been thinking about it for years.

There’s another meandering story. An architect I once met said to me, “The perfect stair for humans hasn’t been invented yet.”

Because of his occupation, he had been documenting the depth of the tread and the height of the riser (the size of one step) of every staircase that he uses every day and has used while traveling. He is such a mysterious person.

He also mentioned that the perfect stair hasn’t been invented because the “optimal” condition varies depending on one’s age, gender, skeletal muscle strength, walking conditions, and the purpose of using it.

When encountering this yellow artwork, some may wonder, “What are the steps and diagonal boards?” Some may unconsciously think that it’s a staircase. Others might think that it’s a bench, slope, or wall.

However, since they do not have any practical function, the viewers try to fit their bodies into the gap between their first impressions and the work’s actual form including its height and width. The viewers’ imaginations stem from their prior experiences and the delivered information and they try to align their bodies with the information, but there will still be a temporal gap that cannot be filled.

That was what I intended to create.

Each person assigns different purposes and meanings to the work. That yellow thing, by simply being there, motivates us to take action. There is a possibility of finding something mysterious. Based on one’s experience, everyone finds meaning in each moment and takes action.

There is always something that doesn’t quite fit and it is similar to the moment when someone sees a decorator crab in the sea.