Firstly, I was inspired by Hiroshi Sugimoto’s photograph series “Theater” and “seascapes”. Maybe it’s because I was influenced by the Eastern culture as a child, it’s easy to be attracted by the kind of simple but significant work. Philosophical thinking of time and timeless is always brought from his works such as “Theater” series. In the “Theater” series, the only thing we can see from the center of screen is white light and nothing else. That’s because he captured a whole movie in one frame. Behind the simple white screen, it may be a very touching movie. His work makes me think about the meaning behind it, that’s what I hope my work might have.
Then I saw a John Maeda’s speech about simplicity and read his book The Laws of Simplicity (2006). John Maeda is a contemporary digital artist who did a lot of beautiful and complex visual work. And now he is currently working on SIMPLICITY, a research project to find ways for people to simplify their life in the face of growing complexity. In his book, he offers ten laws for balancing simplicity and complexity in business, technology, and design—guidelines for needing less and actually getting more. For my project, what I want to achieve is the balance described in Law 10: “Simplicity is about subtracting the obvious, and adding the meaningful.”
Jack Cohen and Ian Stewart write a book The Collapse of Chaos (1994), which shows how simplicity in nature is generated from chaos and complexity, and how to discover simplicity in a complex world. Their articles can guide the project I will do and become critical theory. John Maeda’s theories on simplicity and complexity will define my experimental work as well, like his Law 5 “Differences: Simplicity and complexity need each other”, Law 9 “Failure: Some things can never be made simple.” Key 2 “Open: openness simplifies complexity.” And Law 10 I’ve quoted before.
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