Photography: Kawashimatekkojo
Photography: Kawashimatekkojo
Photography: Kawashimatekkojo
2022
森の資料室
Forest Energy / Forest Reference Room
Hokkaido University Wakayama Research Forest Main Building (Wakayama)
Mirrors, video footage, materials from Hokkaido University's Wakayama Research Forest, and others.
Cooperation: Hokkaido University Wakayama Research Forest
2022
森の資料室
Forest Energy / Forest Reference Room
Hokkaido University Wakayama Research Forest Main Building (Wakayama)
Mirrors, video footage, materials from Hokkaido University's Wakayama Research Forest, and others.
Cooperation: Hokkaido University Wakayama Research Forest
Photography: Kawashimatekkojo
Photography: Kawashimatekkojo
The Power of the Forest XIII
This work focuses on the inherent cognitive framework of a "specimen room" and attempts to reorganize its perceptual structure. People interpret meaning and choose actions based on the information emitted by the forms of space and objects, which is related to the concept of affordance in perceptual psychology. In this work, while preserving the form of the specimens themselves, the arrangement and relationships are rearranged through artistic context and technology, shifting existing understanding and presenting the possibility of newly perceiving and enjoying the specimens.
“Forest Energy / Forest Reference Room” is an installation that focuses on the perceptual and institutional frameworks inherent to the space known as a “specimen room,” with the aim of reorganizing the underlying cognitive structures. As viewers ascend the weathered staircase and approach the door marked “Specimen Room,” they anticipate the space’s function and the objects within based on past experiences and memories. This anticipatory understanding is closely related to the concept of affordance in perceptual psychology, which refers to the way objects and spaces implicitly suggest possibilities for action and meaning through their form and arrangement.
In this work, Nanjo temporarily suspends the institutional roles of “collection, classification, preservation, and understanding” that specimens typically fulfill. While retaining the specimens’ own forms and materiality, she rearranges their configurations and interrelationships through artistic manipulation. As a result, the system of meanings that specimens have traditionally and correctly afforded is disrupted, and viewers are required to engage with the objects themselves without relying on existing knowledge or classifications. What emerges here is not a specimen grasped as knowledge, but rather the form of the specimen reconstructed through perception and imagination; this work can be positioned as a practice that reexamines the very framework of understanding surrounding specimens.