Master's Graduation Works: Installation

This sequence is inspired by 2 concepts: Leonard Koren's metaphysical view of Wabi Sabi and the origin of the 'emptiness' or 'nothingness' character - kuu 空. According to Koren, Wabi Sabi can be understood as: "Things are either devolving toward, or evolving from nothingness". On each glass plate is a painted "gel print" using spreading, touching lightly and seeping techniques. By looking through all the glass panels we see an expression of "nothingness" as well as an ascent and a descent through time/space.

On the bottom right of the layout photo there is a pedestal with the "Design with Taction" book which you can see in the project: Master's Graduation Works: Design with Taction Book.

Works Layout

Nothingness 空

This phono-semantic character has two parts. The top part represents its semantic part and means "hole"「穴」 .The bottom part is its phonetic part pronounced "ko"「工」. That sound seemed to be related with curvature and, like a rainbow 「虹」viewed like a loosen bent archery bow, it is probable that ancient people associated the "bent or curve concept" to this "emptiness" character「空」 due to its sound. We should notice that the rainbow character also has the「工」on the right side. So, they might be conceptually related. Because there is nothing in the middle of a hole, this character came to mean vacant, open, hollow, void. Also, one must admit that the dug shape of a hole in the ground is normally curved. By enlarging bigger that hole’s dome shape, by extrapolating and examining the firmament「天空」or the heavens 「大空」, the written meaning of sky「空」 also came into existence.

Wooden pedestal drawings

Wooden pedestal axonometric view