Stone, camera, and display are suspended in a straight line. While the camera and the display each perform pendulum motions with different phases, they capture and present the stone in real time. The motionless stone, within this linkage, is constantly transformed as an image. What emerges here is not the movement of the object itself, but a relational fluctuation made visible by the phase difference between the apparatuses. While identification with the camera draws the subject as an “eye” into the interior of the image, the movement of the screen pulls it back into physical space as a body subject to gravity. The shift produced by the asynchronous movements of the camera and the screen, in this back-and-forth, gently suspends the very framework of seeing itself.

A display suspended by wire ropes continues its back-and-forth rotational motion according to the principle of a torsion pendulum. The screen shows footage shot while circling a motionless stone. The rotating display and the camera that captured the footage have different periods, and their relationship repeatedly shifts between synchronization and asynchronization. Within this, two appearances emerge in the image: the motion of circling around the stone, and the motion in which the stone itself appears to be rotating. Through both, the work moves between an optical/distant mode of visual experience, which has assumed identification with another point of view, and a tactile/near mode of visual experience that comes into presence through the viewer’s bodily involvement.

Description: This video installation consists of a display that moves up and down and footage of falling rocks projected onto it. The work addresses three spatial dimensions: the “space of images” created by the video, the “real space” in which it is viewed, and the “virtual space” that connects them. In cinema, events and spaces outside the frame are called “off-screen,” and their presence is suggested through sound or the reactions of characters. However, in the contemporary age, where video experiences through computer multi-window displays have become commonplace, it is also possible to recognize the video content itself as an object off-screen. In this work, the bodily act of following the moving display with one’s eyes, together with the reciprocal experience of the video in response, evokes the singular event of “falling rocks.” Yet the visual synchronization/asynchronization produced by the mismatch between the movement of the display and the rhythm of the video continually shifts the perceived location of the object in our minds. Where, exactly, is the stone falling?

An audiovisual installation composed of five wide displays and a 3D sensor. The displays show a 3D model of the artist generated using volumetric capture technology, continuously casting its gaze in various directions. In this work, the vertices of the viewing frustum that constitutes the perspective of the image are always set along the extension of that gaze, so the viewer continually experiences dynamic anamorphosis (distorted imagery). However, only when the viewer’s viewpoint is tracked and the 3D model turns its gaze toward that position—that is, only when the viewer and the 3D model “meet each other’s eyes”—does a single integrated space emerge across display planes oriented in different directions. Invented in the 15th century, perspective drawing has continued to exert a strong influence on dualistic ways of understanding the world, centered on the subject/object divide. In this work, by making the reciprocity of the gaze a condition for the existence of virtual space, those boundaries and hierarchical relationships are dissolved, while the visual experience that arises there presents a current reality in which multiple dimensions coexist.

We developed the idea while exploring a method of adapting the “visual experience that traverses fiction and reality,” which the artist collective Yofu has long valued in its work, to the filmmaking process itself—from shooting to post-production. In practice, the piece was created through a one-take long shot and time-axis manipulation in post-production. During the one-take shoot, the condition for realizing the concept of this music video was that, throughout the chorus as confetti fell through the air, only Satoko Shibata would remain perfectly still. By applying detailed time-axis adjustments to specific sections in post-production, the confetti alone—falling around the motionless Shibata—could be made to move in various ways, such as reversing direction, being drawn toward the center of the screen, or becoming extremely compressed and transformed into a noise-like texture, even though Shibata herself showed no change. The contrast between stillness and motion creates a distortion of reality that forms the basis of the direction. In the middle section as well, by moving the camera while keeping Shibata’s framing fixed, even the background is warped and distorted, and the shimmering paper fragments drifting down in time with the song’s progression create a striking scene that gives the impression of an unreal world, somewhere at the edge of the galaxy. Yofu also created “Behind the scenes of Satoko Shibata ‘Understood’ Music Video” (https://youtu.be/xOK0IlVjdH8), which captures the behind-the-scenes process of the one-take shoot.

While exploring a method of adapting the “visual experience of traversing between reality and fiction,” which the artist collective Yof has prioritized in its work, to the filmmaking process itself—from shooting to post-production—we developed the concept. In practice, the video was made through a one-take long shot and manipulation of the time axis in post-production. In the one-take shoot, during the chorus, confetti falls all around while only Satoko Shibata remains completely still, which became the key condition for realizing the idea behind this music video. By applying detailed time-axis adjustments to each section in post-production, the stillness of Shibata remains unchanged, while the confetti falling around her displays a variety of behaviors: only the confetti moves in reverse, it is drawn inward toward the center of the frame, or it becomes extremely compressed and transforms into something like noise. This contrast between stillness and motion serves as the foundation for creating a distorted sense of reality. Later in the middle section, by moving the camera while keeping Shibata’s framing fixed, even the background is warped and distorted, and the sparkling paper fragments drifting down, combined with the progression of the song, create a striking scene that evokes an otherworldly atmosphere, almost as if at the far reaches of the galaxy.