EXPERIMENT ON IMAGINARIUM (1977)
The below is a revised translation of the version of this text that appears in English and Japanese in the monograph Yamaguchi Katsuhiro 360º (Rikuyosha, 1981).
All images: © and courtesy Katsuhiro Yamaguchi.
When and if the Imaginarium is implemented, it will come into being in the following information environment.
There are three kinds of media for transferring images in real time:
1. Video camera, video tape recorder, television monitor
2. Polaroid camera
3. Color photocopying equipment
This equipment will record a given environment and events taking place there daily, moment by moment.
Video and Polaroid will be the media for recording. However, as it is recorded onto video tape, the image information captured by the camera will also be simultaneously transferred to a television monitor, which the public will be able to see live. In turn, by photographing the images on the television monitor with the Polaroid camera, the video image information will be transferred into photographic information.
Then, by transferring the photographic information taken by Polaroid through color photocopying equipment into copied information, the photographic information can be pluralized. Through the conscious control of the color photocopying equipment, the information in the color photocopies can be diversely deflected; ie, the copying process will result in deviations in the quality of the copied information (in a dissimilation response to the integrity of the copies).
Irrespective of the nature of the original image, the innumerable deflections created in the process of this manipulation of various media are related to the play of human imagination.
That the very transferring process of images can be recorded on videotape, Polaroid film and color photocopy indicates how the feedback function of information is exercised in the environment in which these systems operate. As with other organisms’ use of metamorphosis, protective coloring or heliotropism to adapt to their environments, humans have implemented an ecosystem between information and environment based on this kind of info-environmental system.
Through this transfer process, seasonal changes, the transition of scenery from morning to midnight, events in and out of home, records of visitors and other occurrences will be linked to the imagination. For example, in the near future when each home is equipped with its own info-environmental image transferring system, the output of these images will immediately transform the internal space of the home into a kind of information space. The image space generated by wallpaper, paintings, tablecloths, sliding screens and other furnishings will be converted into a message space. The age in which people live in a unilateral communication system or as the recipients of an image space formulated by the decisions of others will come to an end, as will the age of the printed word as the means to spread communication between people and environments. Your own manipulation of images will transform your environment into an imaginary environment. The image space that was once entrusted to architects and interior designers will be transferred to the environment itself and its inhabitants. The information environment of the home will be directly linked to life and daily events.
For me, this is also the place where the Imaginarium will be realized. All kinds of software will be developed for this image transferring system, linked to a global system for the exchange of images utilizing computers and satellite relays. A fully equipped data bank of art and design image patterns from all eras and cultures will also be necessary.
For the first time in millennia, humanity will be able to retrieve control of the image transferring process that so far has been the sole domain of architects, artists and designers. That is, humanity will regain the power of imagination through daily life, and in essence return to the era of the caves, when imagination was firmly linked to life and the environment.
A program for the socialization of imagination based on the Imaginarium will be germinated through such experimentation.
*From Yamaguchi Katsuhiro jikken dorōingu no tame no nōto (Notes for Katsuhiro Yamaguchi Experiment Drawings)