Drue Kataoka Artist Statement
For society and even for our survival, creativity is extremely important due to the unprecedented complexity of the problems we face today. The arts are a key fuel for creativity. However I believe they need to adapt to meet the increasing demands placed on them to generate creative inspiration and energy throughout society. My artwork focuses on two dimensions for this:
1) Breaking the artificial boundary between art & technology/science
2) Developing new, highly interactive artworks with mirror polished steel and with technology such as A.I., Virtual Reality, EEG, and mobile apps which engage and provoke the viewer’s own creative and esthetic impulses.
Bridging Art & Tech/Science
Who are the people who are in the profession of creativity? Artists and technologists/scientists. Moreover, the greatest scientists often had deep artistic talents, and vice versa. Leonardo. Einstein playing the violin. Feynman jamming on the bongo drums. Steve Jobs and Zen. Yet today, these two fields are impossibly siloed.
I believe that Technology is Art, and Art is Technology. And to say otherwise is to do a tremendous disservice to both.
I am very interested in organically integrating the two, and subverting the current “Berlin Wall” separating these two cultures and social forces. I am actively working with brainwaves, which I feel are a new kind of paint for artists. Recently, I created an installation called The Tree of Pascal where a tree depends on the disembodied brainwaves of over 100 participants from all over the world for its survival. I am deeply interested in visual design, and interaction design. I also incorporated the effects described in Einstein’s Special Relativity Theory into my conceptual portrait of a father and a son for the first zero gravity art exhibit at the ISS.
Turning the Viewer/Curator into a Co-Artist
I like mirrors. Mirror shards have a wabi sabi energy. But more importantly, I like how mirror shards can serve as mini-gateways between artwork and the environment in which the artwork is exhibited. I am fascinated by the idea of merging reality and artistic reality into the same plane, ever changing & visible to the viewer. I want the viewer, or curator, to control much of the experience of the artwork through selecting, and possibly changing, placement, lighting, surroundings, who views the artwork and when. Some of my artworks are vessels that capture but also hide (Magic Box Magic Box). Some of my artworks are lenses inviting you to look through them, or via them (Membrane, After the Celestial Axe). Either way, much of my art is inspired by the cognitive processes, where memory serves as a glue to hold together incomplete and fragmentary snapshots of the objects viewed.
Art As A Puzzle
Finally, I am fascinated by the concept of art as a new kind of puzzle. While a mathematical or logical puzzle exhausts itself and becomes boring once solved, an artistic puzzle can be reinvented through every interaction.
Art Inspiring Creativity
Society today faces many problems—from global warming to pandemics, cross-generational equity, financial contagion, informational security, etc. These problems are tough exactly because traditional solutions have failed. So we all, leaders and society at large, need a hyperboost of creativity to face these problems. I believe that the arts can, and will play an important part. However, I believe that our times call for a new kind of art—one that is more open, more interactive, less designed to statically hang on walls, and more to serve as your daily cup of double espresso—to energize and inspire you. That’s what I strive to do in my art.