The ‘thinness’ is given to the plane: A study of the ‘plane’ in Masaki Fujihata’s works

This article examines what the ‘plane’ in Masaki Fujihata’s works is. Although Fujihata is known as one of the most famous media artists, the work Unformed Symbols is not that well known—just an animation work which Fujihata started his artistic career from. In making this, and other works—i.e., the ‘sculpture,’ Forbidden Fruits and interactive art works like Beyond Pages—however, he discovered, for himself, the possibility of computer graphics, and, as I explore in this paper, came to tackle the problem of the plane with, for perhaps the first time, the computer.

I consider three of Fujihata’s works in order to consider this handling of the plane as it exists in his works. First, I compare the plane in Forbidden Fruits with Leo Steinberg’s the flatbed picture plane. This consideration makes clear that the plane is no longer the privileged role for the image in a collection of data. Secondly, I make a comparison between the interactive work Beyond Pages and the Graphical User Interface in order to show that the plane in the computer, through both artwork and utilitarian feature, becomes too thin to grasp with our hands. Thirdly, I ponder why the animation Unformed Symbols overlaps the image with the real, showing that there is no difference between the plane and the solid in this ‘thin’ world. Accordingly, I conclude that Fujihata may have created a new plane itself by creating a ‘thinness’ which causes a ‘switchover between dimensions’ to that of the plane.

Incidentally, the architect Junya Ishigami’s Table, which has a very thin tabletop shows some similarities to Fujihata’s ‘thin’ plane. And furthermore, in his architectural critique, Taro Igarashi refers to the tabletop of Table as Superflat. Thus, I finally point out that Fujihata’s ‘thin’ plane shares a homology with Superflat, which, as proposed by the artist Takashi Murakami and developed into the discussion about information by the philosopher Hiroki Azuma, has come to be fundamental concept for modern Japanese art, and also suggest this ‘switchover between dimensions’.