Shuhei Matsuyama & Tetsuji OhnoHyperbolic Scape

Hyperbolic Scape is an exploration of the underlying spirituality of Japanese culture through the lens of digital technology.

Drawing inspiration from the expressive techniques of karesansui (dry landscape gardens), this work seeks to manifest a distinctly Japanese perception of time and space, as well as the aesthetic sensibility of mitate—the practice of ascribing multiple meanings to objects.

Karesansui is a traditional garden style that symbolizes natural landscapes using sand and stones in place of water, deeply intertwined with Zen philosophy. Established during the Muromachi period, this style employs raked sand to evoke the flow of water, stones to represent mountains and waterfalls, and shakkei (borrowed scenery) to expand the spatial experience. Within these distilled compositions, an infinite sense of time and scale emerges. At its core, this approach embodies fundamental Japanese aesthetic principles such as shukkei (miniature landscapes), mitate (reinterpretation), and shakkei (spatial borrowing).

In this work, digital landscaping is composed using 3D scan data from diverse locations across the world, along with satellite imagery.

By leveraging digital technology to transcend physical constraints, Hyperbolic Scape reimagines the possibilities of landscape design, dissolving the conventional boundaries of scale and temporality. The work merges terrain from different historical periods, introduces dynamic transformations, and expands beyond the static nature of traditional gardens.

The objects positioned within this space are not only geographically diverse but also vary in their historical origins, constructing a karesansui that exists beyond conventional frameworks of time and space.

The sound represents the fundamentals of Japanese idea. It is not based on absolute values like 0 and 1, but rather constructed to convey the ambiguity and abstraction that lie between them, using ambient floating sounds, gently evolving timbres, primitive sine waves,and traditional Japanese instruments. The composition is built on sounds that change over time, the goal is not to fill the space by sound number with comfort, to create a minimalism sense of a little instability, this sound aims to reflect on one's inner self.

By reconstructing karesansui—a form deeply rooted in Japanese cultural values—through contemporary digital methodologies, this work asks: Can a modern interpretation of Japan emerge from this synthesis?

Through Hyperbolic Scape, I invite the viewer to engage with their own perceptions and explore this question for themselves.