Blinded by the Light

CG: So Goh, tell me, when did you get involved with art?

GI: Well, I would say, when I was very young. I was born in Hokkaido, Japan, and honestly as far as I can remember I was always drawing or constructing something. When I grew a bit older I changed my technique and started doing oil paintings. But somehow I felt I needed more. So, at the age of 18 I attended the Hokkaido University of Education, in Sapporo, where I studied art, focusing on sculpture.

CG: Why sculpture?

GI: Well, it offers me more freedom, more possibilities to explore. They had the facilities and I wanted to try as much as I could.

CG: And how did you continue?

GI: Well, I then continued by taking part in the Research program of the CCA in Kitakyushu, after which I started a 2-year residency program at the Rijksakademie in the Netherlands. Then I continued with another residency in Japan, and I’ve been living here ever since.

CG: Goh, concerning your work now, every time I confront your creations, I realize that your main interest is human perception and its interaction with light and space. Is its exploration your passion?

GI: I would say yes. I find that human perception is the basis of everything. All of our information input reaches us through our sensors. Without these salient points we are nothing–no feelings, no action–nothing.

Space is the dimension we live in, whereas light mediates the ability to perceive and register it. Two-thirds of our brain activity is interrelated with visual perception. I believe the process is as follows: space–light–humans–perception–mental representation and modulation–understanding. Because of this mental modification of information input, there is always a gap between what we perceive and what is really there, and this often causes misunderstandings. It is an unstable balance.

CG: I like this theory of informational disruptiveness. It reminds me a bit of Wittgenstein’s early philosophical tract. So Goh, would you say this is your message?

GI: I do not try to make messages. What I try to do is create specific situations. My projects are like scientific experiments. First I create a mental, structural master plan and then I try to make it happen. I do not really know what feelings I will experience when it is finished. I am driven by curiosity. I want to witness the reactions of the visitors and of my own, in relation to these newly created, naturartificial, spatiotemporal dimensions. I always think I could be a neutral observer, a third party when it comes down to my work. Of course this is impossible! (laughs.)

CG: As far as I remember, you completed your first major work in 1998. I am still impressed by it, but since then you have continued with many projects, mostly constructions and installations. Would you like to talk about three of your biggest projects?

GI: Well, first was Lights in 2004, followed a year later by Insideout and by Blind in 2006. Lights consists of a 16-spotlight floor projection. It makes the floor appear divided into 16 squares. Since the spotlights project light from various directions, the shadow of an object or person in that space is divided, appears and disappears in unexpected ways, depending on its position. Lights is all about perspectives. Everyone has a personal point of view; one can speak about an infinite number of opinions. On the other hand, we consider light, the sun, as something universal–it is the center of our universe. My attempt was to deconstruct this universality and create a peculiar, but mild disbandment of the absolute.

CG: I was really impressed by Lights when I first saw it and I must say the idea behind it fascinates me still. Nevertheless, Insideout is one of my personal favorites. This endless implosion of the two spatial layers, the outer and the inner, into each other relays to me an uneasy feeling of aesthetic completion.

GI: This wooden construction represents, as you said, the constant interchange between two layers. I would say, the inner and the outer, the physical and the mental, brain and perception. We live in parallel realities–both inside and outside of ourselves, with our perception, our bodies and our minds being the nexus between them.

CG: This is a nice way to continue to your final, major work, Blind. I see the demarcation of a similar pattern with Insideout, don’t you think?

GI: It is a similar idea with one crucial difference. I do not want to elaborate on the technical details of its production, but I would just say that I created even, circular spaces by placing a swirl-shaped rail on the ceiling, from which white plastic sheets hang. When the visitor moves into these spaces, infrared sensors activate motors eliciting movement from the plastic sheets. The structure and the appearance of the spaces are constantly transformed as the visitor moves. It is not only the “insideout” feeling I wanted to prompt here, but the full experience of being part of it, of the process I mentioned in the beginning (space–light–humans–perception–mental representation and modulation–understanding) but here with no particular order; a complete four-dimensional interactive chaos, a simulation of life.

CG: I find your works deeply Japanese. Not only the ideas behind them, but also the way you implement them. Would you like to comment on that?

GI: I could not say of course that I was not influenced by Japanese culture. However, I think I was more influenced by nature. Growing up in a rural area in Hokkaido must have had something to do with it!