Masaki Fujihata
«Impressing Velocity»

Fuji-san, the volcano visible from his office, inspired another work by Fujihata. In 1992, he and several friends climbed Japan’s landmark for the Fuji-san project. In a rucksack they carried, for the purpose of acquiring the primary data, a Blobal Posotioning System (GPS) and a laptop computer. Strapped to a frame above the wearer’s head was a video camera. Not surprisingly, the recorded velocity increasingly dwindled as they approached the summit. [...] Back in the lab, Fujihata mapped the data to a 3-D dataset of the volcano, and distorted the representation on the basis of the pace of movement. The slower the ascent of the group of friends, themore extreme the over-drawing. Thus, the summitof that most holy of Japanese mountains explodes in an eruption of geometrical spikes. [...] Under the title «Impressing Velocity», the work was first shown, in 1994, in the ICC Gallery in Tokyo, and in various representations: a topographical layer model made of laminated wood, a computer graphic, a video database. Visitors were also invited to take out on loan s ‹data rucksack›, and in this way add their own contributions to the videographically acceleratory surveyance of the urban space.

(source: Volker Grassmuck, «Explorations into the Realms of Possibility. Sketches on the work of Masaki Fujihata», in: Small Fish, Kiyoshi Furukawa, Masaki Fujihata, Wolfgang Münch (eds), digital arts edition, ZKM, Karlsruhe, Ostfildern, 1999, p. 42f.)