Thoughts are ‘a god’
2015‘<Thoughts> are “a god”.’ ̶ Joshua Jung
When I read Joshua Jung’s proverb, one of his proverb ‘<Thoughts> are “a god”.’ (想法就是神) really inspired me. I ‘thought’ deeply how to translate this proverb into a graphic display.
I tried to use Chinese characters suspended away from a flat surface. I projected a light source to create shadows of the Chinese characters against the flat surface. The suspended Chinese characters ‘想法’ universally translates as ‘thoughts’ in the Chinese, Taiwanese, and Korean language. Interestingly (and even amazingly), the projected shadows produced an entirely different Chinese character, and that was ‘神’, which means ‘God’ in all of the aforementioned languages, and in Japanese as well. Therefore, starting with the transformation of the characters ‘想法’, the character ‘神’ was created. Indeed, ‘Thoughts are a god’.
When the light shines onto the characters: 想法 (thoughts), its shadow turns out to be the character 神 (god). It is like when people are connected with God’s thoughts, they become a god on earth. However, in the exhibition the light is not always on, so the visitors need to use the flashlight to find the proper angle to create the correct character ‘神’.
This is an interactive display for people to discover secret behind my artwork.