MAN-MACHINE

I am interested in technology and human perception and so my art work is usually set up with devices such as electric waves, infrared rays, the internet, jet engines…etc. I usually do the engineering and produce the parts I need myself. It usually takes me about a year or two to finish one work. I always start out with a new team for each work. My art works are usually never complete on their own and need to be worn, ridden or used to be able to function. I like to measure the human communication or response of the body to the tools used.

Kazuhiko Hachiya and Akihito Onohara began their collaboration as the artists' unit "Man-Machine" in 1996. Born in 1966 in Saga, Japan, Hachiya graduated in 1989 from Kyushu Institute of Design, where he studied visual communication design. His inventions include "PostPet," an entertaining e-mail software program that is very popular in Japan. For each of his art works he assembles a new team, and each work is completed in a year or two. Onohara was born in Tokyo in 1974 and studied engineering at Toshima Gakuin. He is a member of Romancika, a theater troupe known for bizarre performances.

Hachiya works with the latest technological media—electric waves, infrared rays, the Internet, jet engines—to produce interactive works of art. In these works, artist and  participants come together to explore aspects of communication and perception. Though the artist's tools are highly scientific, he always preserves individual bodily experience  and the tension of the object-subject relationship. For example , Inter Dis Communication Machine, which allows two people to exchange visual and audio images of each other, provokes confusion of the participants' individual identities. However, these equipments have been improved under the line that they keep the form in which both can kiss or make love. And in Seeing is Believing, the diaries of many people, collected from the Internet, are displayed in infrared rays. They are invisible, but still exist. Such a work implies that, even with the most advanced technology, human beings can never understand each other completely, and that a distancing effect is found at the core of every form of communication.