Atami City has been cherished as a hot spring resort since around the 10th century. Once blessed with rich nature and a historic landscape overlooking both the sea and mountains, it lost much of its natural beauty and cultural scenery due to reckless development driven by human greed for economic growth during Japan’s 1980s bubble era.
This digital artwork connects the remnants of Atami’s once-abundant natural coastal and mountainous scenery with the urban landscape of Kabukicho in Shinjuku, Tokyo—one of the most bustling centers of economic activity in Asia. It expresses the fragility of beautiful natural environments, which can collapse in an instant through the will and desires of humankind.
A pair of LED monitors is installed—one in Atami and the other in Kabukicho—linked to each other in real time through a network. The frameless LED screens evoke a mysterious sensation, as if a slice of Kabukicho’s cityscape has been cut out and superimposed onto Atami.
This work conveys that Earth’s natural beauty and the urban landscapes shaped by human economic activity, though seemingly worlds apart, are in fact inseparable and interconnected.