In the Gifu Prefecture of Japan is Yoro Park, a site of reversible destiny by architecture/poetry duo Arakawa & Gins. Appropriately, they provide clear ‘directions for use’:
· Instead of being fearful of losing your balance, look forward to it (as a desirable re-ordering of the landing sites, formerly known as the senses).
· Try to draw the sky down into the bowl of the field.
· Always question where you are in relation to visible and invisible chains of islands known as Japan.
· Vary the rate at which you proceed.
· Associate each of the extreme forms your body is forced to assume in traversing the Field with both a nearby and a distant form.
· If accidentally thrown completely off-balance, try to note the number, and also the type and the placement, of the landing sites essential to reconstituting a world.
· Frequently swing around to look behind you.
· Minimize the number of focal areas (perceptual landing sites) at any given moment.
· If an area or a landing site catches your eye and attracts your interest to the same degree as the area through which you are actually moving, take it up on the spot, pursuing it as best you can as a parallel zone of activity.
· Make use of the Exactitude Ridge to register each measured sequence of events that makes up the distance.
· Within the Zone of the Clearest Confusion, always try to be more body and less person.
· To make a decision or to become more subtle or more daring (or both) in regard to a previous decision, use the Mono no Aware Transformer.
· Inside the Geographical Ghost, renege on all geographically related pledges of allegiance.
· Wander through the ruin known as the Destiny House or the Landing Site Depot as though you were an extra-terrestrial.
· Move in slow measured steps through the Cleaving Hall and, with each arm at a distinctly different height, hold both arms out in front of you as sleepwalkers purportedly do.
· Close your eyes when moving through and around the Trajectory Membrane Gate.
· In and about the Kinesthetic Pass, repeat every action two or three times, once in slow motion.
· Walk backwards in and near the Imaging Navel.
Images courtesy Figure Ground
I have put this on my list as one of those things I have to do before I die. And I don’t have many on my list. Hopefully it will still be around till then.
Comment by Rin — February 28, 2010 @ 5:54 pmMe too! This looks fantastic.
Comment by Hue — March 4, 2010 @ 9:01 pmlove love love your blog! best I’ve ever seen!
Comment by leslie — April 27, 2010 @ 2:59 amThank you!
No way. Love the design.
Comment by Kel — May 18, 2010 @ 2:50 pm