Art Museum of Nature and Human Non-Homogeneity

The Art Museum of Nature and Human Non-Homogeneity is a grand title for a small but wonderfully immersive and interactive art space that explores and celebrates man’s universal interrelationship with the sun and moon, the seas, and forests. Within the museum’s unprepossessing modernist exterior are three distinctly different sensory environments where nature, humanity, art and music intersect to create intimate and captivating performances.

The museum draws on the prevailing light and weather conditions immediately around the museum, as well as on visual records of the Kunisaki Peninsula’s natural world. These external stimuli are filtered through mechanical and computer artifice to provide an environment which further reacts to human passive and pro-active intervention. The bright and airy Sun and Moon Room incorporates 288 portholes in its roof. As these open and shut in response to the participant’s, that is the viewer’s, movements natural light beams down in hypnotising patterns. The Sea Room is set in pitch black darkness where a curtain of fine beads of water stream from above. A computer responding to tide levels of the surrounding seas controls a projector illuminating the stream to create flowing patterns of water droplets, which viewers further stimulate with their own physical interaction. The cylindrical Forest Room, inspired by John Horton Conway’s Game of Life, surrounds viewers in protean-like morphing animations that are generated in real-time by algorithms using the wind speed and its direction blowing outside the museum. Here, the participant-viewer’s movements alter the timing and projection of sound.

The Art Museum of Nature and Human Non-Homogeneity is the brainchild of Anno Lab, an artist’s collective based in Fukuoka. They have created a joyous and fascinating experience, a delightful addition to the growing collection art found on the Nagasakibana peninsula, making it a very enjoyable destination for adults and children alike.