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KARAKURI BLOCK interactive installation, Natsu Kawakita & Nubuya Suzuki
"KARAKURI BLOCK" created by Natsu Kawakita and Nobuya Suzuki uses two small LCD monitor blocks covered with transparent acrylic material, which can be freely placed onto a grid. Beyond the physical gap between the two blocks, animation characters appeared on the monitors move from one to the other based on the arrangement of the blocks. The characters passing through the blocked borders are symbolized to bridging the gap between the two different communities with and without disabilities. by Byeong Sam Jeon
KARAKURI is onomatopoeia in Japanese that represents a mechanical device with gimmick. The blocks have some internal capsule images, so when you trigger the device an image appears. Trigger the blocks by placing them side by side. A further gimmick is that the two aligned blocks display one connected image. Two blocks can take many positions. A different image is assigned to each position. Therefore, images which are not visible can be seen through a block. The fun act of joining the blocks together leads to the formation of an unseen image in your mind made from all the combinations of the the images included in the blocks.
Technical Information "KARAKURI BLOCK" is a device with which you can create an image pattern that is displayed on two monitors by placing two blocks onto a 3x3 grid. Players enjoy the changes in the image displayed on the two monitors by manipulating the placement and order of the blocks. When placing the blocks on the stand, an image appears on the display embedded in the block. When the position of a block is changed, altogether different images will appear. Since two blocks mutually understand the other's positional relation, you can see different images according to the combination of both block positions. If two blocks are put on an adjacent position, one connected image can be seen.
Biography: Natsu Kawakita Natsu Kawakita graduated from Shizuoka University, Faculty of Information. Afterward, she entered the Institute of Advanced Media Arts and Sciences (IAMAS). She likes drawing and moving around and became more interested in interactive art at IAMAS. She produced "KARAKURI BLOCK" from making a story with pictures and adding the shape of interface. She researches mainly interface development and contents production. "Sei No!" (Game Project for PC), Dare to be Digital: Computer Game Development Competition, received Second Prize.
His main research is on cooperation work through computer networks, and his themes are interactive systems and interface design. Extending over the fields of information technology, art and design, he researches and creates works with the objective of fusing these fields together. Representative works include "Three men three legs", "Co-draw", and "Rotary Images". He received honorary mention for the Interactive Art Category in 1996 and 1997 at ARS ELECTRONICA.
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