Art on the Net 1997

"Japan in the Future"


The Grand Prize
Han Rhyu (USA)

As environments now migrate their way onto the "virtual sphere" of the internet, we can comfortably say that a duality must be met in terms of how we conduct the everyday activities of our lives. "Symbiosis" as a piece that tries to metaphorically illustrate not only the duality of this concept, but also the duality of many aspects of life and existence in general.
It addresses specifically a dual illustration of life found in Japanese culture, and I took for example the metaphors of the home and the randomness of life into consideration when creating this piece.
The Japanese tatami mat, as a prominent architectural metaphor in Japan creates an underlying balance between the proportions of home and translates that proportion from our own proportions as humans in order to create an association of our our physical bodies to the physical architectures that we inhabit.
In cyberspace however, what becomes of this relationship between the body and of architecture? As the internet evolves into what it will eventually be, a fully navigable 3-D environment, we as humans must still find some sort of link to it's dimensions as "virtual" inhabitants of this space. Cyberspace unrestrained by economic and physical boundaries can offer us endless possibilities to it's formation. I believe however, that we as human inhabitants to this environment must still find some sort of link to it, that relates to us physically, and not just mentally.
And yet cyberspace must not be relagated to the re-iterations of physical reality and the mundane representations of that reality, but in it's attributes strive to explore it's unbound possibilites while maintaining a physical "essence" that still relates to us as humans.

Han Rhyu


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