THE FUTURE STARTS NOW

MEIJIRO ELEMENTARY SCHOOL, Meijiro Station

2009 Tokyo

varnished aluminum letters, aluminum punching sheet panels, acrylic transparency film

50 x 70 meters

Currently in construction,art work to be completed in 05/2009 and open in 08/2009.  A new elementary school located in Meijiro, Tokyo`s prestigious Ivy League academic district. The school is a combination effort of education for teachers and children between the ages of 4-6. The top section of the building is dedicated as a school for teachers to introduce this new semi radical structure reform of the Japanese education system. The objective is to eliminate curriculum from early education and concentrate on fertilization of free thinking and experimentation. To nurture an individual learning process as opposed to organized pattern of thought. Considering Japan`s infamous archaic education system I was drawn to the idea of progress and creating the future for something so effective and affective.

So for this work, I was commissioned to create the facade of the building. I immediately thought of a photograph of mine of 2 children holding hands reaching in to an emptiness. Also at the time  I had been fascinated with ASCII art from the 80s. The idea of translating an image in to a language. It was literally the future where instead of “a picture is  worth a thousand words” now the picture was a thousand words. This had so many depths and I had no plan B. I created an ASCII art work from my photograph and began to imagine it as refrigerator alphabet magnets that I had as a child stuck on the face of a building. As I thought more into it it became clear that this text in in digital form was also a brand new language that children will grow up with as an automatic second language. A “Neo-Neanderthal” age where symbols and icons are used to reform communication.

Ultimately I believe from communication education is born.

Within these text symbols are messages in English and Japanese such as Teaching is the best way to learn, The future starts now, Live,Love>Learn, etc. Behind this facade panel of letters, on the windows of the building are layers of ascending transparency film to be best viewed from lower levels where the train line passes. The effect will represent a colored road in to the sky in front of the children reaching in to it.Each floor of the building has separate degrees of translucency to create a feeling that there is always a road going ahead and the future is right in front of us...