Dissipative Figures – 1000 Birds, Black in White
The contours of life’s existence are not the surface boundary of the body, but something ambiguous that includes the environment that is continuous with it.
As long as people live, they dissipate energy and affect the environment, such as the flow of air.
In this artwork, the existence of the birds are depicted through the energy they dissipate into the world.
Being consists of the mind, the body, and the environment that is continuous with them.
Objects like stones and man-made creations so far have maintained a stable structure on their own. But life is different. Whereas a stone can continue to exist in a closed box, sealed off from the outside world, life would cease to exist.
Life is like a vortex created in the ocean. A vortex forms and exists in a flow of matter, and the boundaries of its existence are ambiguous.
Although a vortex is steady, it is constantly moving and swelling like a powerful life-form. The vortex cannot maintain a stable structure on its own; rather, it is created and sustained by water that continuously flows inwards and outwards.
The same is true of life. It consumes external matter and energy as food and discharges it, sustaining its ordered structure as the energy dissipates. In other words, life does not exist by itself. It is the environment that is continuous with it that maintains the structure of life.
Life is a miraculous phenomenon that emerges from a flow in an open world. Like an ocean vortex, it is an existence with ambiguous boundaries in an infinite continuity.
To be alive is to be inseparable from the world, constantly dissipating energy into it.
