ANTI-OBJECT
and phenomenology, which sees phenomena as absolute. Morphing provides hints about ways to do so. First, I set a course from Takasaki to Mount Haruna, then I undertook a morphing operation along that course and compressed space, taking in the entire topography. However, I felt that the landscape that was made manifest was still inadequate. The subject was certainly inserted into the space, but the result was not yet clearly different from a bird’s-eye-view proportional compression, or a map. To eliminate this type of perception I added a further operation: the folding of the set linear course. Only through such controls on a metalevel does the alternation between metalevel and introspection begin. A maze (which is what I had produced) is a device that uses folding to control the metalevel and generate space. One cannot distinguish the geographical entity called Gumma Prefecture, no matter how one looks at this maze from overhead. Nevertheless, the course, though folded, is still continuous. That is, although the whole cannot be grasped, it is possible to experience each moment and to experience a succession of moments in time. In that way, spatial extension is compressed within a temporal axis. What I tried to do was to criticise the ordinary form of spatial compression. Ordinarily, space is compressed into a combination of object and plan pattern. However, something of crucial importance is lost in that process, namely time, which gives space richness and depth. A criticism of such forms of compression is central to the Japanese cultural tradition. Take, for example, the illustrated horizontal scrolls (emakimono). These make it impossible to get a bird’s-eye view of the depicted space, as they are unrolled gradually from right to left, revealing only a portion at a time. As a result, space appears only along a temporal axis: space and time are inseparable. In a Japanese stroll garden, too, the appearance of space is in time: a major objective of the garden is to show that space and time are inseparable. As a building can be easily reduced to two-dimensional patterns, the architect often neglects time as a factor. That was why gardens
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Substituting
were created: to continue to remind people not to forget time, and to criticise architecture. In Japan, garden design is thoroughly anti-architectural. The bird’s-eye view is eliminated and space appears only successively, in time, along the route (although modern designers may try to uncover a two-dimensional pattern – to compress space into a pattern – even in the route of a stroll garden). The route of this memorial park has been folded many times in order to foil such compression, just as a scroll, being rolled, foils attempts to reduce it to a two-dimensional pattern. The garden wants to remain a garden; it wants to remain anti-architectural. Dependence on visual perception must also be avoided, if the end result is to be a genuine garden. Vision abhors time, it always desires a still image, which is why objects and two-dimensional patterns are always in demand. I decided to design the garden as an acoustical rather than a visual space. I explored the possibility of making sound the main source of spatial information. This was to be a garden people visited to hear sounds – sounds which would evoke memories of the departed. A monument is a form that preserves time through the compression of space, a form in which visual perception is the parameter. This, on the other hand, would be a garden in which the sense of hearing would be the parameter; it would preserve time, not through compression, but through an audio playback function. A visitor to this garden first calls out the deceased person’s name; he calls out to the dead. The sound is received by a computer and cast back in the form of a special type of echo. The system was built by Ken’ichi Sakakibara, who is both a composer of contemporary music and a researcher on the human voice. The name that is called out is first converted into overlapping sine waves (tones) that change in the manner of a time series; next, tones that are not important components of the overall sound stream (that are low in power or extremely short in connection time) are shed from the original name. The phonemes that indicate the called-out name are broken
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