© IAMAS
At a time when an unknown virus was raging across the world, I sought to express the pervasive feeling of anxiety we were all experiencing through a sculptural form.
The work was inspired by nine audio recordings captured every three hours from midnight onward on a single day in June 2020. Each waveform represents the rhythm of my breathing at that moment, embodying the emotional states I passed through over time.
Due to Japan’s mizugiwa (border control) policy during the pandemic, re-entry from Korea to Japan was impossible, and I was therefore compelled to collaborate remotely with Keizou Tanji. I modeled and disassembled the sculpture digitally, sending Tanji the data in STL format. He received the fragmented files, printed and processed them, and then displayed the completed piece in Japan.
Reflecting on the process, Tanji remarked that as the object gradually took shape, “the act of contemplating what it originally meant completely disappeared. In making something without knowing, we forget even our unknowing, and then try to remember what we do not know once again.”
The complex emotion of anxiety cannot truly be embodied by a 3D-printed form. Much like our process itself, this work speaks to the repeated cycles of disconnection and fragmentation that define human experience in such extraordinary times.
00:00
03:00
06:00
09:00
12:00
15:00
18:00
21:00
24:00
Image Capture of 9 Recordings