New Way of Visual Experience

Inter-Discommunication Machine (1993) created by an Japanese artist Kazuhiko Hachiya is a very interesting installation in which two persons exchange their visual fields to one another through a hi-tech visor which functions as a device transmitting one's view to another. The concept of the piece is that one look at things from the perspective of the other person by seeing what the other see. It's not only a new way of visual experience that go beyond human 's sense of sight but also an experiment on how human's senses react with their bodies when those visual messages input into their brains.

I found the motif of Yin Yang very interesting in the installation. The artist applied the Taoism cosmology into his art work, indicating the importance of interdependence and compound of being in the opposite's shoes in the sight-exchange experience. In Taoism, Yin Yang is a very fundamental philosophical concept  describing the interdependence and interaction between two opposite elements as a whole. Yin represents the feminine and weak side, and Yang the masculine and strong one. Although everything in the universe is different and opposite to one another, such as masculinity and femininity, fire and water and day and night, the two sides are changing and interconnecting together as one. In the symbol, Yin and Yang are shown flowing, circulating and infusing itself into its opposite. It means Yin doesn't not mean 'all weak', but its weakness can be strong in some aspects, and at the same time, Yang can become weak anytime too. This concept is always a crucial concept to Chinese people across time, suggesting everything has a balance to sustain a harmonious universe, or otherwise our planet will become a big mess to live in.