Nobuho Nagasawa Bodywaves, 2007 Woven optical fiber, extruded vinyl cord, steel, accelerometer, sensor, illuminator, DMX controller, recorded sound, computer, speakers, MDI Interface, medicine jar, gray hair, Petri dish, umbilical cord

Bodywaves maps the artist's own life narrative, producing a landscape of private memory and history between her past (origin) and present. The rocking chair is a visualization of personal body waves; her recorded heartbeat is reflected in actual light pulsations coursing through woven fiber-optic strands that comprise the rocking chair sculpture. As visitors sit and rock, their motion drives the accelerometers, layering additional real-time light pulsations (similar to biofeedback) and modulate her body waves; representing her relationship with others whom she encounters in her life.

The wave sounds are recorded from rivers of the Pacific Northwest that empty into the Pacific Ocean, the great body of water between Japan and the United States. These filaments are currently the world's only side-emitting optical fiber. The weaving tool was invented by traditional kimono weavers and woven in Kyoto, the artist's "official home" on her birth certificate. The sound of running water represents her father's life; he was born in Kyoto, but passed away when the artist was young. The rocking chair is Nagasawa's stake in the ground, New York, her new home. A glass table next to the chair display corporeal specimens: the artist's own umbilical cord in a Petri dish, and a collection of her gray hair in a small medicine jar, representing her origin, and the current stage in her life.

The installation was conceived for an exhibition “Making a Home: Japanese Contemporary Artists in New York” at the Japan Society, October17, 2007 through January 13, 2008. Sound, lighting and software design, in collaboration with Andrew Schloss and Dale Stammen.

BIO

Based in New York since 2001, Nagasawa received her MFA at Hochschule der Künste in Berlin, and came to the US through the invitation of CalArts in 1986, where she studied art, critical theory and music. She is an interdisciplinary artist whose site-specific work explores the places, politics, ecology and psychological dimensions of space and people. She received grants, and fellowships from DAAD, Berlin, Rockefeller Foundation, California Arts Council, Brody Arts Fund and Japan Foundation, among others. In New York, she was a recipient of the Marie Walsh Sharpe Foundation Studio, and Established Artist Studio Fellowship from Urban Glass. In the field of public art, she has won more than 20 public art commissions, and received two Design Excellence Awards (Los Angeles,1997 and New York, 2007). She has been a representative of the Asian Art Biennial (Bangladesh, 2002), International Biennial (Egypt, 2002), Sharjah Biennial (United Arab Emirates, 2003), Echigo-Tsumari Triennial (Japan, 2003) and Sinop Biennial (Turkey, 2006), as well as exhibited in the Czech Republic, Denmark, Germany, Hungry, Italy, Japan, Mexico, and the United States.