Jun Takita – Light, only light

The installation consists of transgenic moss, capable of emitting light, which covers a mould of the artist’s brain.

About 3.5 billion years ago photosynthesis opened the way to the abundance and diversity of living organisms in the world as we know it. According to traditional classification, photosynthesizing organisms belong to the plant kingdom. Plants transform light into energy but are usually not capable of bioluminescence. That is, they cannot emit light. With the exception of a few species such as the Dinoflagellata, which belongs to both the plant and animal kingdoms, bioluminescence is only found in a few animal species. In other words, according to the biological evolution, a single organism cannot both consume light as energy and use that energy to emit light. However, genetic manipulation has allowed us to create bioluminescent plants. Acting simultaneously as plants and non-plants, these artificial organisms transgress the ‘laws of nature’.

In traditional gardens the landscape is organized to please the viewer’s perception: his reality and the world around him are brought together as one. Now, by placing these technological plants in a landscape, the viewer sees the light he has ‘himself’ created; a technique of man’s own invention allows him to create a luminous ‘other’. The utopia of our era is the unrealizable desire to possess light. In Light, only light, a sculpture in the shape of a bioluminescent brain superposes the light-emitting man with the light-receiving man, and hence embodies the ability to emit and to perceive.

THANKS TO
Eva Murén and Anders Nilsson, Uppsala Universitet, http://www.imbim.uu.se/forskning/ronneresearch.html
PAV: PARCO ARTE VIVANTE, Italia, http://www.parcoartevivente.it/
Centre for Plant Sciences (CPS) of University of Leeds, England, http://www.plants.leeds.ac.uk/

BIOGRAPHY

Jun Takita, born 1966 in Tokyo, graduated in 1988 from Nihon University, majoring in arts, he received a Masters from Paris Ecole National d'Art in 1992, having received a scholarship from the French Government.

He explores throught his art the phenomenon of the conversion of light by living things. His recent work Light, only light expresses humanity's impossible desire to possess light in the unrealised sculpture a luminous brain which draws inspiration from the visual concepts of traditional garden. He is working with the National Agriculture Research Institute (France) and the Information Unit for Life Sciences at the University of Nagoya (Japan), and the Center for Plant Sciences at the University of Leeds (UK).