A Shift and Progress on a public art project

I have been talking with Aaron and also Brooke and Kate, and we have come to collaborate all together for our final project for Suzanne Lacy's class****






We have discovered that all four of us have been thinking about the use of "radio" for a future project...


We talked about how we listen to the redio in our cars, and how we could have multiple radiowave trasmiters along a street, which have live sound of different contexts, (maybe the real time sounds of other streets/sound of inside of the stores that are along the street/sound of someone's house/voice of pedestrians/people telling stories about their perosnal atachment or detachment of the context, ..etc) so that a person driving a car along the street would pick up the signal as s/he proceed on the street. By having multiple stations and transmiters, what the person hears changes as s/he drives around But this is still a sketch and we are not sure exactly what kind of sound we will broadcast, or how and where we will locate the trasmiters.





We have decided to have a Group Blog together to communicate
please check it...
>>http://zigbees.blogspot.com/

Akai-ito #2 > Completed.

My second project with my 30ft long scarf has finally been finished. If interested, please contact me for a viewing.







-----*****



“Akai-Ito @ Playa Del Ray 2006“
Video Projection (9 min)
Mika Soma 2006


“Akai-ito” means a thin invisible red string that connects people in Japanese. It is often used for describing how two people are attracted to each other, and how there is a mind-to-mind communication, instead of describing and putting the feelings into words to understand what you are feeling.


My brother wanted to run with my scarf on, so that the other end of the scarf would not touch the ground, like how ninjas used to train themselves to run very fast. I really liked how energetic it sounded. My brother and I went to a beach together. Every time I go to the beach, I think of Japan beyond the horizon of the Pacific Ocean. There seems to be a sense of connection to the “other side” beyond the horizon over the sea, while the ocean is so big and spread that it is very vague.


My brother and I physically use our connection, the scarf, to achieve an invisible connection that we both share. My goal in the process of creating the work became to generate another invisible string, the waves of energy, which comes out from my video for the viewer to experience, while bringing questions of boundaries. People often want to put things into their categories so that they feel that they understand things better. But what is the space between people? What connects and divides things? What is honesty and fallacy? What is documentation? What is an illusion? What is the line between art and life? What is the line between anything?

Public Art Final project update

As for my final project for Public Art with Suzanne Lacy,
I will be working on two different projects, with teo different goups of people.

with Aaron Freeman:

We have decided to work on a project together for the first time, which I think we both have always wanted to do.
At first, we were going to do the project that I mentioned a couple weeks ago, the "floating somen noodle project", but we decided to come up with 'our' project, instead of doing the project that I came up with myself.

We have talked about planting "poppies" in areas that are in 'public' and enclosed and , such as Aaron has done a lot of research on various kinds of plants that contain drug contents since last semester. And I have been interested in drug issues here in America, which I was not familiar with the idea at all when I was in Japan.
But as we were talking about this project, we have realized that the poppies will not be flowering by the end of this semester, and we would like to be able to show somwthing that we can actually "show" to the class. Therefore, we have decided that we will start this project soon, but not for this class.

Than, we started talking about "food", since we are both interested in food. Aaron used to be a chef before and he is a great cook. I am not a good cook but I love eating, and I like the act of eating. We talkedd about how food brings people together, and how it is used as a "tool" for socializing very often. I think we can come up with something with food, or the idea of food.




I will also be working with Brooke Rollo and Kate Stewart on a project.We talked a little bit about our interests. I will post it later. But we still need to get together and talk more.

(Title not yet decided) But One Must Support the Others Project

This is a simple idea for a project, which could turn out to be interesting, and it may also require a lot of effort to achieve. (which I would like.)


Humans need to support each other.

And the word for "cooperation" in Japanese is consisted of charactors of "10" and "strength", "strength", and "strength".



Project>>

10 people in a circle sit on each other, holding onto the person in front's shoulders.

(Location not yet decided, but places where there is a fair amount of people around.)

Things that I want to deal with in my art making...

I decided to keep some of my notes in my blog.

Things that I want to deal with in my art making...

Who I am/what I like and why/what interests me and why/
question of what is private and public
my identity within the context of 'public'
my identity as a Japanese
question of ethnicity
analysis and breaking-down of ideological ideas
my idea of art as a life style
act of eating
idea of 'right' 'normal' 'good' and 'beauty'
sense of touch
internet and mutiple identities

connection in between people and the separation in between people
and how the use of language plays out

The fact that English thinking process makes me feel like I have another identity

The limitation of language

the idea of sharing/unifying

responsibility as an artist in a society - connection maker/confronting of every single aspect of life = how honest one can be to heself or himself / bringing of questions by engaging with the viewers through my work /


The power of mass media as a strong social ideology generator. I fear it for making people more and more regressive of themselves.


What can a person do within a life time?



more to be added ...>

thinking of public art...#1

I intend to execute several projects, which takes the context of 'public' for this semester.
I will decide what I will be doing for my final project before this Thursday.
Those are some of my projects that I am considering to do in the future, whether I will do them this semeter or in the future.


Floating Somen Needle Poject (Performance/Video)
short description:
I would like to eat floating somen needles, which would be floating on a pvc pipe that is cut in half vertically, possiblly at the end of Ballona Creek where the creek and the ocean meat. This is a project that I thought of when thinking more about Ballona Creek project, and thinking about my relationship with the context.
There is a Japanese seasonal custom for summer, where people get together and sit around a bumboo that is cut in half verticaly, and have a constant flow of small amount of water and float somen needles (really thin Japanese needles) from one end to the other, so that the people can catch them as the needles go by with chopsticks.

"Akai-ito" Project ~ continued
I intend to go to many other places to do my "Akai-ito" (A Red String) Project.
Considering places in America : Las Vegas, Hollywood Blvd, Desneyland, 3rd Street in Santa Monica, The Getty Museum, Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills...
I will be doing this project in Japan also this summer, probably in May or June.


Wrong Number Project
I would like to call random people and try to have a conversation with total straingers.

Trip to Nowhere Project
Derived from the idea of chance operation which John Cage dealt with in his practice, I would like to have no aimed arrival point and take a road trip. Turns will be decided by a rolled pencil which has 'left', 'right', and 'U-turn' on its sides, at any point that I have to stop. The duration of the project is ideally one week, but I would like to at least try a day.



more ideas will be posted....