30m 3s : Portraits of Absence —
2025–2026
Archival pigment print mounted on aluminum dibond
Dimensions Variable Edition 1 of 5 + 1AP

人が忘れないものは、なんだろう。

エビングハウスの「忘却曲線」によれば、人間は何かを経験したわずか30分の間に、その記憶の約半分を急速に失っていくという。
また、人間が過去の「エピソード記憶」を脳内から検索し、それを鮮明なイメージとして再構成する（想起する）までには、およそ3秒の時間を要する。

この作品では、人間が記憶を失っていく時間に対抗するように、
完全な闇へと沈みゆく「天文薄明」のなかで、30分間の長時間露光を行っている。
そしてその最中、脳が過去を呼び起こす精密な生物学的タイムラグ（想起）を模した、3秒間だけの光を照射する。

一切劣化せず完璧に記憶する人工知能（AI）とは異なり、忘却と想起の脆い摩擦のなかにこそ、
人間らしさが存在するのではないだろうか？

人が忘れていくもの、忘れたくないものは、なんだろう。

これは単なる過疎地の記録ではない。絶対的な「不在」を通じて、
人間そのものの『記憶』を可視化するポートレートである。


What is it that humans never forget?
According to Ebbinghaus's "forgetting curve," humans lose nearly half of their memory within a mere thirty minutes. Conversely, it takes approximately three seconds for the brain to retrieve an "episodic memory" and reconstruct it into a vivid image (retrieval).
In this work, to counter the rate of memory decay, a thirty-minute long exposure is conducted during the "astronomical twilight" as the world dissolves into absolute darkness. Amidst this process, light is flashed for a precise duration of three seconds, mimicking the exact cognitive time lag required for the brain to evoke past memories.
Unlike Artificial Intelligence, which retains everything flawlessly without decay, perhaps human nature itself exists within this fragile friction between forgetting and retrieval?
What is it that we lose to time, and what is it that we desperately long to hold onto?
Defying a mere documentation of a depopulated landscape, this frame visualizes our own ultimate future—where human presence is gone, yet the raw portrait of humanity’s "memory" remains through its absolute absence.

Captured during the astronomical twilight—the fleeting window where the remnants of human life dissolve into absolute darkness. This work utilizes a 30-minute long exposure to counter the biological rate of human memory loss (the forgetting curve). Amidst this temporal drift, a light is flashed for a precise duration of three seconds, strictly mimicking the exact cognitive time lag required for the human brain to recall and reconstruct past memories (retrieval).
Unlike Artificial Intelligence, which retains everything flawlessly without decay, perhaps human nature itself exists within this fragile friction between forgetting and retrieval?
What is it that we lose to time, and what is it that we desperately long to hold onto?
Defying a mere documentation of a depopulated landscape, this frame visualizes our own ultimate future—where human presence is gone, yet the raw portrait of humanity’s "memory" remains through its absolute absence.