I enjoy watching videos on Instagram that show people in rural China making lacquerware, umbrellas, ink, and other items entirely by hand. For example, the process of making lacquerware begins by scratching the bark of a lacquer tree to collect the sap. The videos summarize the entire process, but in reality, it must take an enormous amount of time to complete the entire series of tasks. Of course, I understand that these videos are not actual footage of people living in rural areas, but rather staged and edited content. However, its easy to imagine from these videos that people in the past must have put such effort and time into craftsmanship. While thinking, “Did people in the past find this tedious?” I also wondered, “Perhaps in todays era, where things are easily accessible, people find it tedious, but in an era where this was the only process available, they likely viewed every step as inevitable and never considered it tedious.

From July 3rd to 26th, Akira Fujimoto held a solo exhibition titled “Frozen Echoes.” “Frozen Echoes” is the title of the exhibition and also the title of one of the works on display. So, what exactly is a “frozen echo”?
 

《Frozen Echoes》 2025  silicon color on Polylactic Acid 23.0×35.0×73.5cm

Fujimoto views the current state of affairs, in which we are inundated with information on the internet and compelled to consume it on our mobile devices, as “Frozen Echoes.” We spend hours staring at our mobile devices, scrolling through endless streams of information with our thumbs, effectively “melting” away our time. Suddenly coming to our senses, we realize we dont even know why we were looking at that information, or whether it was meaningful at all. And we come to realize that we were simply wasting time, carried along by the flow beyond our own will.

 

《Replacement#59 -9:16-》 2025  silicon color and collage on canvas 194.0×109.0×6.0cm

 “Replacement#59 -9:16-” perfectly captures this situation. The paint splatters and layers create a scene of utter chaos. In fact, this two-dimensional work was not created by dripping or pouring paint onto the canvas. Instead, it was made by creating parts with special paint on a sheet, peeling them off, and carefully attaching them to the canvas. Each part weaves over or under other parts. (In conventional dripping techniques, paint accumulates in the order it is dropped, with earlier drops never appearing above later ones.) On the canvas, the timeline becomes ambiguous, and it is unclear what is being depicted; only the traces of action are intertwined. These traces of action are echoes, and the state where these echoes, which have not taken on a concrete form, are frozen and stagnant is what is referred to as “frozen echoes.” The title 9:16 refers to the screen ratio of a smartphone. It seems to me that the artist is asking, “Isnt this what we experience through our mobile devices on a daily basis?” However, Fujimoto is not trying to be sarcastic or critical of our daily lives. He is simply attempting to capture his own situation and that of his surroundings and translate it into art.

In the consciousness of those who engage in manual craftsmanship, it is not difficult to imagine that they are more likely to feel a sense of fulfillment in their own existence as time passes than modern people, who switch information one thumb at a time. Nevertheless, humans will never return to the past. Even if they realize the contradiction of being moved by watching old-fashioned craftsmanship videos while wasting time.

With the advent of AI, humans are increasingly forced to rely on computers. Quietly, but steadily, human life is becoming impossible without AI. In the movie The Matrix, most humans are being cultivated as power sources for computers due to a computer rebellion, and those humans who are used as power sources live in a world inside their brains. In that world, a carefree life is promised, and they never know the harsh reality. Even now, when we step away from our mobile devices, we may realize weve wasted time, but unconsciously, we may be choosing to disconnect from the real world and spend happy moments in our consciousness. As I contemplate Fujimoto work, I cant help but wonder if were already stepping into such a future.

I occasionally make and drink cold-brewed green tea. Green tea slowly extracted with water rather than hot water has a pleasant bitterness and sweetness, making it delicious. When I pour cold-brewed green tea into a thin glass** with rock ice, the light texture that doesnt overwhelm the glass, the sound of transparent rock ice hitting the glass, and the green color and umami of the tea pleasantly stimulate my senses, making me feel relieved from the daily heatwave. Its a different kind of satisfaction from drinking bottled tea. Will there come a day when we can enjoy tea with AI that has evolved further, engaging all five senses? Or will such joy remain nothing more than a dream presented by artificial intelligence?

*Wachowski, Lana & Wachowski, Lilly (directors). The Matrix. Warner Bros., 1999. Film.

**Ushihari Glass: An extremely thin handmade glass product manufactured and sold by Matsutoku Glass Co., Ltd., and a registered trademark of the company.

text：Song Wei