The Blind Men & The Elephant, in Sapporo
<群盲象を評す、札幌>

Audio Visual Interactive Installation, 2016

“Hey, the elephant is a pillar,”
“Oh, no! it is like a rope,”
“Oh, no! it is like a thick branch of a tree,”
“It is like a big hand fan”
“It is like a huge wall,”
“It is like a solid pipe,”

Have you ever heard of the story “The Blind Men & The Elephant”? The story is about a group of blind men (or men kept in the dark), who feel an elephant to learn what it is like. Each one touches a different part of the elephant, but only one part; side, tusk, ear, leg, so forth. They began to argue about the elephant and everyone of them insisted that he was right. The implication is that one’s subjective experience can be true, but that such experience is inherently limited by its failure to consider other truths or a totality of truth. In the process of truth finding, accessibility of information, communication, and respect for different perspectives are paramount.

“The Blind Men & The Elephant, in Sapporo” is an interactive audio visual installation derived from this story. The installation is framed in an empty dark space, and the audio is composed from various sounds unique to one object, familiar to the people of Sapporo. Audiences will be given a torchlight in their hand and invited to enter the empty darkroom as the role of ‘blind men’, visual projections will be triggered by the casted light while the audiences are in search for the sounds.

Audiences have to figure out the object (the elephant) by gathering hints from the deconstructed sound from their hearing experience. After that, they are welcomed to join the process of seeking the truth by discussing and guessing the related object.

“Oh!” everyone said.