Yuichiro Katsumoto: Inside Out
Artist(s):
Title:
- Inside Out
Exhibition:
Creation Year:
- 2020-01-16
Medium:
- 3D printed structure, Servo motors, Micro controllers, Wireless communication modules, LiPo batteries.
Size:
- 25cm x 25cm x 25cm
Category:
Artist Statement:
“Inside Out” is a kinetic installation that expresses the pointlessness of boundaries. We humans draw lines to write letters and sketch pictures. Drawing lines can be said to be an essential part of our culture and making art. However, we also draw lines to divide people by nationality, ethnicity, and religion. These lines rely on ephemeral and constantly shifting social contexts. Making meaningless boundaries between people hinders mutual understanding and does not solve global problems. Therefore, I decided to create an object that does not differentiate inside and outside by lines to embody the pointlessness of human boundary making.
Extended Summary:
After living in Singapore for eight years, I came back to my home country, Japan in 2018. And I realized that Japanese clearly distinguish people between their insiders and outsiders. This insider means not just a family member, friend, or colleague, but a group with a close backgrounds and ways of living. Japanese are generally kind to insiders and even tolerate injustice. On the other hand, Japanese are too strict than necessary to outsiders. Now, I am also one of the outsider of Japanese society. That’s why, I could notice that there are so many visible/invisible lines in this world to divide people. And it motivated me to create arts. This artwork is built as a cube-shaped robot with twelve edges. Side edges rotate actively, and it consists servo motors, a microcontroller, a wireless communication module (XBee) and a LiPo Battery. Other edges are passively expanded and contracted by telescopic structures. By combining these edges, this artwork repeatedly inverts the inside and outside. As a result, this work invalidates the boundary between the inside and the outside.
Other Information:
The artist has been exploring expressions of moving lines since 2016. Robotype (SIGGRAPH 2018 Art Paper), the previous work, expressed letters four-dimensionally by folding a line with robots. Inside Out is the latest result of his research.
