The practices of visualisation and optical technologies allow us to direct our sight, to augment our perception of the visual work, and to make the invisible tangible. This module offers students a range of experimental approaches to the production of the visual and sonic media.
Realtime Project - Inspiration (Namazu)
In Japanese mythology, the Namazu is a giant catfish who causes earthquakes, and was worshiped as a god of world rectification.
The origin of this story is the fact that these catfish can sense the small tremors which happen before an earthquake, and are known to be more active at such times. This sudden activity was observed in ancient times and believed the quakes to be the result of a giant catfish.
Evidence of the Namazu tradition still lives in in Japanese culture as Catfish are depicted on pictures of emergency earthquake preparedness activities in Japan, and the Earthquake Early Warning logo by the Japan Meteorological Agency utilises pictures of the catfish on devices capable of issuing an early warning.
But my favourite example of Namazu being used recently is in an episode of Pokémon featuring a catfish-type monster based on the namazu was banned when it was scheduled to air too soon after a quake.
