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"Wishing to Make Art Works Express
the wonder of Sense and Life"
"It is hard to
tell where we should place Minori yamazaki's words in the path
of modern arts.
He creates spaces which
involve us. With his technique of communication though all of
the five senses he is attempting to reach for newer horizon in
art."
The Search for Free Expression
In my school years, I majored in molding art crafts,
and I was in the midst of tradition. Making traditional crafts
though dozens of processes, made me wonder if these processes
meant anything significant to our daily activities.1 couldn't
help feeling there was something more real in the primary materials
such as clay, straw, or charcoal, in the ancient wisdom of treating
water and fire, in a structure of molding through the complicated
and mysterious processes, and in the way of metal melting into
the smooth and shining liquid. I was more interested in a sort
of animism, in other words, the way materials and space presented
themselves to me.
There was a time when I was so overwhelmed with the
magical power of the things themselves that I couldn't mold anything
at all. It was about then that I became involved in performance
art and eventually moved into the modern arts, with the 
burning of wood by heated iron. But it was
not long after that I realized that the concept of expanding space
could not be adequately expressed by the phenomena of burning.
In the late 1970s, the Asahi newspaper carried a serial
column entitled "Asobi-no-Hakubutsushi (The Play Museum Journal),"
written by lwao Sakane. Ginza Matsuzakaya Department Store created
an area called "Asobi-no-Hakubutsukan (The Play Museum),"
which attracted a record number of visitors.
It seemed to me that this represented a medium between
the two accepted extremes of "commercial design", and
"art for art's sake," containing the elements
of play
while welcoming various expressions of art. We were impressed
by this interactive open space for the public, which was created
using various visual techniques, like optical tricks, illusions
or computerized display technology. We couldn't help but feeling
new possibilities for better designs and wider boundaries of expression.
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From Micra BOX to Micra Space
The start point of my current activities was in a tiny
box "CUMOS" which I made while ignoring the required
subjects during my freshman year in college. I placed mirrors
on the inside panels of a cube box with 10cm sides and let in
a small ray of light. The light could not escape from the box,
repeating its reflection inside, creating an illusion of an infinite
number of nesting boxes. It was a kind of three-dimensional kaleidoscope.
This box allowed only one person at a time to view
the image. Interesting it was, it was itself limited. Naturally,
I wanted to take out "macro space" from "micro
box" and expand macro space to a huge lighting space which
would allow people to enter and experience it from the inside.
I was fascinated by the light and primary materials of this inner
world of CUMOS. 
In 1988, I participated in the inauguration ceremony
for the Tokyo Branch of the Koyasan temple. I created "Mandala
Pavilion", which was inspired by the doctrines of esoteric
Buddhism and its mandala charts depicting two worlds, Taizo and
Kongo. This led me to design the Taizo dome and the Kongo pyramid.
The spherical Taizo dome is filled with soothing light to represent
a mother's womb filled Buddha's love. I made the dome with relaxing
light and comfortable music and fashioned it to slowly swell and
shrink. The inner space was designed so that people could share
an image which gave the feeling of expanding from the interior
of the womb to the end of the universe. In Kongo, I tried to express
the hard ascetic practices and the spiritual awakening of satori.
I buried the monitors under grids in the floor and
made the image of satori by repeating reflections on the insides
of the pyramid's ceiling, all four of which were covered with
mirrors. It was a visualized space of the virtual image through
which I tried to make visitors simply feel the cosmology and the
complexity of Stinging Buddhism. I have to admit that I was surprised
to learn that CUMOS' nesting box shared the ideas of Buddhism,
cycle of reincarnation, and the concept that micro existence contains
macro universe.
Spaces that Move
I attended the birth of each of my three daughters
through the Lamaze technique. I wanted to see the moment when
a human being is born into the world and I wanted to express this
experience through spatial art.
I created "Conception of Light" for the 100th
anniversary of Sendai City in 1989, and I presented "Emanation
of Light," the exhibition in Sumida River-side Gallery in
1992. 
Through these works I had the opportunity to express
the mixture of charm, magical strength, and the wonder of life.
Using various electronic techniques, I built spaces and installed
the controlling system which gave the illusion of breathing spaces.
However, techniques are just techniques. In "Back to the
Womb" and "The Memory of the Fetus", my theme was
to express the feeling of an entire world which nobody had ever
seen. If we could just trace back to our potential and hidden
memories, we could then imagine what that space would be like
and try to visualize it.
My role is to provide visitors with the opportunity
to take note of the wonder of life and to contemplate self-existence
and the universal theme of living things. I have always believed
that I should continue to create spaces which communicate feelings
that will move and touch people, keeping in mind the concepts
of design, the arts, and the realities of modern society.
Minori Yamazaki April 1995
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