The experience of disassembling a mechanical watch for the first time was full of surprises.
Each of the sophisticated parts was beautiful, and the way they were intricately assembled and moved together conveyed to us not only an essence of life that transcended mechanics, but also a sense of purity, as if the physical laws that govern time itself had taken shape.
When we were struck by the marvel that these watches were brought to life by human hands, a desire arose within us to relive the accumulated wisdom of our predecessors. We sought to reconstruct a historical watch mechanism with our own hands, uncovering the significance of its form, the intricacies of its miniature nature, and the precise cadence of its timekeeping. The traces of engineers' trials and errors, perceptible through the process of creating the watch, became apparent for the first time.
The artwork springs to life as a Seiko mechanical watch's hands align at zero seconds. As if the piece is retracing its own history, the movement chains to neighboring mechanisms, each marking its distinct rhythm. The torch of mechanical watch technology is passed down from the past through the present and into the boundless future.

Delving into mechanical watches, we came across the “Watch Timing Machine.” This device fine-tunes a watch's pace by measuring its sound—a concept akin to assessing our well-being through our heartbeat. It heightened our impression of mechanical watches as living organisms.
We also contemplated the concept of time itself, precisely conveyed by watches. As our discussions deepened, we pondered the possibility of exploring the concept of time through water as a medium. This idea motivated us to create something that marks time: droplets of water formed from moment to moment, which assemble and accumulate over time.
“Drops of Time” encapsulates time within water droplets, driven by the sound of an accurate mechanical watch that serves as its heart. We invite our audience to observe the behavior of the water droplets and briefly immerse themselves in the experience of time.

Within a mechanical watch lies a component that keeps a constant rhythm.
This component serves as the heart, ensuring accurate time measurement and display. Yet, in isolation, it does not directly tell the time; it merely oscillates.
Observing this, we came to recognize that the human-crafted dial is just one method of expressing time, while time itself persists in its ceaseless flow and progression regardless of it.
n this artwork, we endeavored to encapsulate the universal nature of time by embedding components of a mechanical watch within a stone.
The component, persistently in motion much like a human heart, serves as a reminder that a shared undercurrent of time courses through both human existence and the steadfast stone.
We, with lifespans reaching at most 100 years, and stones, which have undergone transformations over the course of the 4.6 billion years since the birth of the earth, mark the same time. A day for a person equals a day for a stone; all entities evolve and exist day by day, united by the passage of time.

How did people originally become aware of "time?"
The changing phases of the moon. The meandering flow of water. The shifting play of a shadow. The gradual growth of plants and blossoms.
They must have discerned the passage of time from natural phenomena.
Sundials harnessing the power of sunlight. Water clocks regulated by the steady flow of water.
And mechanical watches that use the springiness of metal.
The evolution of watches is a history of condensing the "power of nature," so to speak, and this history is reflected in all parts of the watch mechanism, such as the shape and materials of the gears.
However, in our modern era, where accurate time is a mere glance away on our screens, the concept of "time" has transformed into uniform data, and we are less aware of its rich context.
This artwork is an attempt to release the "power of nature" encapsulated within machines by overlaying motifs gifted by nature onto the movement of watch mechanisms.
The rhythmic beat of the seconds hand, a distinctive feature of mechanical watches, is extended throughout the space, as it intertwines with the motifs connected to the wires, evoking the nature hidden behind the mechanisms.
Through the scenes created by these small machines, which continue to move devotedly, we hope you will recall the memories of each distinct moment in "time."