Only after omitting the dimension of time from what is practical can we try to determine space as it relates to both imagination and ideas. Upon the omission of depth from an imagined space ─ and subsequently recognized in such a way ─ we can then try to figure out a two-dimensional plane and a container in imagination and ideas. After removing the surface from the imagined plane ─ and then recognized in such a way ─ we can attempt to evaluate lines and the system of lines or cloth in imagination and ideas. Whereupon rays of light are taken away from the lines imagined and recognized in such a way, we can try to figure out the dots and the system of dots, or the mosaic, in imagination and ideas. As a result, various unpractical worlds are created through these abstract games.
─ Vilem Flusser, “Für eine Phänomenologie der Medien”
As a site that reveals a historical pattern, Promise Park highlights weaving and proliferation through various metaphors derived from the contact point between technology and art. Indeed, the park breaks down the border between the natural and the artificial, includes the expansion of our senses, and suggests a future vision in which Promise Park becomes an organic space. The park is also linked with the irregularity and unpredictability of a computer, as the random signals of a computer can break a firmly repeated historical pattern. This abstract image is the result of today’s symbols, which are rearranged in the new context of embracing the unspecified possibilities that are suggested by a computer.
The relationship between humans and technology is ambivalent. While our senses and thoughts are expanded through technology, there is a contradictory result which stems from this in that we become subordinated to technology when we trust / depend on it too much or too often. Art has also gone through structural changes of friction / fusion that saw it tear down traditional borders when people began combining it with technology.
The carpet at Promise Park was materialized through an encounter with technology and is a combination of weaving (manual weaving) and the unpredictable proliferation that a computer program provides. The irregular patterns created by random algorithms are a powerful symbol created by binary-system-like elements of the warp and weft, and remind us of the sum total of civilization’s enormous amount of Information. This carpet captures a weaving process that continuously changes over a certain period, while using parameters as its medium as it expands its scope by means of diagnosing the possibilities of uncertainties. Ruins, a weaving machine, the weaving process, and the completed atypical patterns are translated into images on a computer screen in the process of weaving the carpet.
The huge carpet that was woven by making use of Japan’s traditional weaving skill, referred to as Nishijinori (a generic term for silk produced in the Nishijin District of Kyoto), is a movable park, not literally but figuratively, that provides a venue for unity and solidarity just by folding and unfolding it. Various patterns are created when years of experience and hard work are combined with technology, making us think about what parks will mean to us in the future. These thoughts are in turn combined with other elements such as images, light, space, sound, and movement. Ultimately, this leads to a general space that produces organic relationships. Viewers expand the horizon of their consciousness as they stroll along an imaginary trail where responses between many different elements are brought into harmony with one another. In the end, nature and science, as well as human beings and technology, are subsequently fused and help to break a historically repetitive chain.