2025
EMBODIED SPECTRUM
Light Installation (Synchronized Slide Projectors, Arduino, Slide Films, Wooden Table, Steel Plates, Concrete Bricks)Installation: Various
Embodied Spectrum brings together language and image in an immersive installation. Here, I combine multiple modalities to evoke experiences, relationships, and physical phenomena that are difficult to represent in visual form.
The installation is centered on slide reproductions of the first photographic image ever taken of the sun, flanked on either side by two poems written by me. This work evokes the unique connection between the sun and human-generated nuclear energy. In their reliance on nuclear processes, the sun and nuclear weapons are linked, although their fundamental impacts on humankind are diametrically opposed; the sun’s energy is the foundation of life on Earth, while nuclear weapons embody the possibility of its total destruction.
Taken in 1845, the image at the center of Embodied Spectrum pre-dates the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by 100 years. By the standards of a human lifespan, these are distant events. In the span of the Earth’s history, they occur in a single epoch, a short period of drastic acceleration in both the productive and destructive capacities of humankind.
The poetic texts include references to Amaterasu, the Goddess of the Sun in Japanese mythology, and Ra, the Egyptian Sun God. These two beings reflect our relationship with the Sun throughout human history. With the creation of nuclear weapons came the dawn of a new mythology, one centered on human “mastery” of the Sun’s power.
Embodied Spectrum begins with a singular moment of an individual life and expands out to consider the history of nations, the half-lives of nuclear fallout, and the deep time of the sun's energy. In the process, the work considers the weight of history on our most intimate relationships and the need to grapple with the human capacity for both creation and destruction.
© 2023 by Kei Ito.
Created on Editor X.
2025
EMBODIED SPECTRUM
Light Installation (Synchronized Slide Projectors, Arduino, Slide Films, Wooden Table, Steel Plates, Concrete Bricks)
Installation: Various
Embodied Spectrum brings together language and image in an immersive installation. Here, I combine multiple modalities to evoke experiences, relationships, and physical phenomena that are difficult to represent in visual form.
The installation is centered on slide reproductions of the first photographic image ever taken of the sun, flanked on either side by two poems written by me. This work evokes the unique connection between the sun and human-generated nuclear energy. In their reliance on nuclear processes, the sun and nuclear weapons are linked, although their fundamental impacts on humankind are diametrically opposed; the sun’s energy is the foundation of life on Earth, while nuclear weapons embody the possibility of its total destruction.
Taken in 1845, the image at the center of Embodied Spectrum pre-dates the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by 100 years. By the standards of a human lifespan, these are distant events. In the span of the Earth’s history, they occur in a single epoch, a short period of drastic acceleration in both the productive and destructive capacities of humankind.
The poetic texts include references to Amaterasu, the Goddess of the Sun in Japanese mythology, and Ra, the Egyptian Sun God. These two beings reflect our relationship with the Sun throughout human history. With the creation of nuclear weapons came the dawn of a new mythology, one centered on human “mastery” of the Sun’s power.
Embodied Spectrum begins with a singular moment of an individual life and expands out to consider the history of nations, the half-lives of nuclear fallout, and the deep time of the sun's energy. In the process, the work considers the weight of history on our most intimate relationships and the need to grapple with the human capacity for both creation and destruction.
Sungazing
2015 - Ongoing
108 of 8”x10” prints, Scroll: 12” x 150’ to 220’ depending on the edition
On August 6th 1945, at 8:15 AM, my grandfather witnessed a great tragedy that destroyed nearly everything in Hiroshima. He survived the bombing, yet he lost many of his family members from the explosion and radiation poisoning. As an activist and author, my grandfather fought against the use of nuclear weaponry throughout his life, until he too passed away from cancer when I was ten years old. I remember him saying that day in Hiroshima was like hundreds of suns lighting up the sky.
In order to express the connection between the sun and my family history, I have created 108 letter size prints and a 200 foot long scroll, made by exposing Type-C photographic paper to sunlight. The pattern on the prints/scroll corresponds to my breath. In a darkened room, I pulled the paper in front of a small aperture to expose it to the sun while inhaling, and paused when exhaling. I repeated this action until I breathed 108 times. 108 is a number with ritual significance in Japanese Buddhism; to mark the Japanese New Year, bells toll 108 times, ridding us of our evil passions and desires, and purifying our souls.
If the black parts of the print remind you of a shadow, it is the shadow of my breath, which is itself a registration of my life, a life I share with and owe to my grandfather. The mark of the atomic blast upon his life and upon his breath was passed on to me, and you can see it as the shadow of this print.