5 cm per second @www.zerochan.net
“5 cm per second” is the name of a Japanese animated feature film by Makoto Shinkai. It is also the speed at which a cherry leaf falls from its tree. It says it all. It evokes evanescence, time, movement, sensitivity, and awareness about nature.
In the context of globalization, technology has reduced distances but also added dimensions and new realities. It also brought a different perception of the notion of time. Because through the new tools of communication, changes are happening so fast, we tend to project ourselves into the future and forget about the present.
We are more and more pushed to live realities that are not in direct relation with all of our senses, there is always an interface, a screen, an obstacle that separates our body from this reality hence provoking a rupture between our mind and our body. Our mind is able to cross the interface, to inhabit the reality that is beyond the screen, while our body is stuck in a different reality. We are becoming fragmented pieces of a dislocated whole.
How can technology be used to anchor us in the present rather than lead us to get lost in other dimensions? How to bring awareness and re-position our body in the direct context, while establishing a relation with other contexts?
How to understand the multiplicity of the body rather than its fragmentation? – and by body I don’t only mean the physical body but also our implication, our presence.
And finally how to bring awareness about nature,earth and the different cultures? how to feel this network other than through the reality of the internet web, but through space?