Fragmentations of Unity

So Kanno + Takuro Yonezawa + Yutaro Kyono

Artwork Description:

Fragmentations of Unity is a robotic light installation that behaves as a swarm, asking what it means to be social and what it means to be an individual. Twenty-nine translucent tubes hang from the ceiling, each housing a rotation mechanism, RGB LEDs, and a thermal sensor. Each unit is designed as a tube with an orientation — the minimal form that can still feel alive. With a clear front and back, it is a vector, and a will. The design takes its cue from the evolutionary history of life. When organisms first acquired a digestive tract, orientation came into being. These tubes take on the primitive communication that creatures exchange across species. Six choreographies, each with its own theme, are generated in real time and give form to the relationship between the individual and the group. The choreography is not a drill-like mass formation. It focuses instead on the aliveness that arises from kinematics, and on intimacy at close range. The tubes' behavior is minimal and carries no fixed meaning. Sometimes they turn toward a visitor who comes near, sometimes toward one another; they turn away, shift tempo, fall in and out of step. In these exchanges visitors read relationships — affinity and hesitation, affection and conflict, the elation of belonging to a group, and conversely the pressure to conform or the sense of being left alone. Each person interprets this wordless exchange through their own experience and memory.

Project Collaborators:

Project by So Kanno, Takuro Yonezawa and Yutaro Kyono Hardware & Software by Yutaro Kyono, Hiroshi Hirano, Shohei Suzuki Robot choreography by So Kanno Sound design by So Kanno, Takuro Yonezawa Thermal presence detection system by Naoto Ichikawa, Kazuma Kano, Akio Sakakibara Electrical setup by Chikashi Kato, Yurika Uematsu Cinematography by Kaiya Shimura With Nodira Tillayeva and Yuriko Yoshioka Support by Akio Sakakibara, Madoka Okoshi, Yoshiki Watanabe, Kaiya Shimura, Shotaro Kamijo Commissioned by Common Nexus, Tokai National Higher Education and Research System This research is supported by JST CREST (JPMJCR22M4) and the GAP Fund Program (Step 1) on Tongali Platform.