OUR CONCEPT
“One flower, one world” is an interactive projection mapping installation expressing our view centered on the transience and imperfection of the life cycle of flowers to other creatures. Each world represents three different life stages of the flowers as they bloom, decay, and germinate, sending the message of “nothing lasts, nothing is perfect and nothing is finished.”
WHY FLOWERS?
“一花一世界，一叶一菩提。” ------《华严经》
“One flower, one world; one leaf and one bodhi.”
------ “Avatamsaka Sutra”
“一生二，二生三，三生万物。” ------《道德经》
“One begot two, two begot three, and three begot the ten thousand things.”
------ “Tao Te Ching”
We drew our concept mostly from Buddhism’s concept of “ one flower, one world, one leaf, one Buddha.” When Buddha held up a flower, when Jesus took a child in his arms, they were expressing the kingdom of God equals the Bodhisattva's mind in the same way, and that moment is eternal in the palm of their hand to see the world in one.
What we expected to draw and to use this as a guidance to iterate: if you can read a flower, you can understand the world. Withering is the prelude of blossom rather than the end. Just because you didn’t see it all, that doesn’t mean broken life is not beautiful and the beauty of fading and decaying never exists.
The impetus
Due to the rapid changing in society, what we see and what we know is constantly being told by someone else and the truth is not that important anymore. You are so used to being told what is beauty and what is ugly, what is normal and what is strange that you are losing the opportunities to know whether it is true or not and whether to agree on other points of view without thinking on your own or viewing from other perspectives?
Taking flowers as an example, when it blooms, everyone beautifies the blooming of life and compliments on the perfection of its beautiful shape in this short period of time. However, the bloom won’t last long and when it starts to fade and decay, it can no longer be considered beautiful, it is just dead flowers that will turn into dust eventually. Is that the truth?
Taking flowers as an example of one whole universe, we are all equally important particles to form one flower now. As the whole world is realized from a single flower perspective, those seemingly insignificant movements and particles form and exert impact on all of us, waiting for a fleeting flicker in our mind to change our viewpoints. Likewise, we are expecting more than a word: beautiful, but to understand what is beauty/perfection in experiencing the life cycle of flowers. When we start to become a part of the flower, will you feel the same way you feel as an observer? Will you start to feel the transience in life, will you be aware of what is beautiful when understanding what fades and what is left? Thus, Grace and I want to invite you to interact with our immersive installation “One flower, one world” and rethink the process of our three progressive worlds.
