Tomoki Ota

WOW was responsible for the planning, direction, and production of a permanent installation to be installed in the outdoor plaza, Sunken Square, of The MixC, a massive shopping mall in Shanghai. The installation consists of 20 towers, each approximately 2.3 meters tall, with glass tiled over LED, spanning more than 10 meters in width. It was placed within the existing overflow structure in the plaza so that it would harmonize with the environment. There are two types of presentation, themed around natural phenomena and Shanghai’s nightscape, and the projected images repeatedly reflect and refract through the glass. Like a landscape of nature in constant transformation, the appearance of the work continually changes depending on the surrounding environment and the viewer’s position. Video works are often considered best when they are high-resolution and have a clearly defined beginning and end within a fixed timeline. However, this work was born from the idea that human imagination may possess infinite resolution and an infinite timeline. When you carefully observe the rippling surface of water or the bottom of a river, you seem to see reflected images of the surrounding scenery repeatedly forming and falling apart, creating a mysterious sensation as if you were seeing abstract and representational landscapes over and over again. Based on such an experience, this work expresses, through a visual interpretation, the distinctive scenery created by the properties of light—reflection and refraction.