Three months had passed since Takayama’s visit to Yamagata Casio. Standing in her studio, where natural light filtered in through the skylight, we found a work in progress. Its rugged form, at once sculptural and organic, was somehow reminiscent of a natural object existing since time immemorial.

“The characteristic ‘toughness’ of G-SHOCK might often point to strength and durability, but I’ve re-interpreted it as relating to ‘wildness’ here. The Frogman watch measures the time elapsed underwater, withstands water pressure, and adapts to your movement in the water. You can feel that consideration, that attention to detail, in every aspect of the design. To me, that felt indicative of a sense of time as it might be experienced by humans living in a wild state. I wanted to create a piece capturing that sense of ‘wildness,’ superimposed with expressions of the relationships with various things that exist around us, a sense of time spent underwater, in the sea, and time as it exists in myriad other forms.”

“I did the carving with the image of a natural landscape in mind,” she says of the base with its rugged textural look and feel.

“I had this idea of trying to capture the look and feel of rocky outcroppings I’ve come across in my travels and the sense of time inherent in nature. I also thought about using something like stone or driftwood at first, but after seeing the materials created with nano-processing technology at Yamagata Casio, I was inspired to try my hand at making the material itself. With the layered veneer, I superimposed the image of geological strata carved by ocean waves along a rocky shore. It was a challenge to see how far I could let go of my own perspective and create the form as if I myself had become the ocean waves.”

Around the completed pedestal are circular discs with the same specs used for the watch, made of materials including wood and the sapphire crystal used for MR-G timepieces.

“When I first picked up the sapphire crystal, I was so struck by its clarity, its level of transparency, the way it lets the light through. I know it also functions as a lens, which inspired me to incorporate characteristics like that into my piece. I had this sense that I was making art together with the watch this time, like there’s this watch, there’s this lens technology, and we’re all engaging in the work together. It wasn’t so much that I was adding my own touch unilaterally — more like I was tuning in to what these objects had to say and letting them guide my hands.”

Takayama used some sapphire crystal discs just as they were, making use of their natural properties. Others she colored with her own techniques, evoking natural landscapes encountered in her travels.

A further visit to Takayama’s studio reveals her finished piece. The pedestal seems to indicate a form of time associated with ‘the wild,’ while numerous circular discs seem to lead the viewer toward different places. In resonance with each other, the various elements incorporated in the work evoke diverse senses of time as it may exist in various modes and forms.

As the artist had explained while working on the piece, “Even though time might seem to flow in a uniform, fixed manner, I think we can all relate to the fact that different environments or situations can affect the way we perceive it. One example might be taking a walk along the seashore, where you’re taking in the landscape of the beach and gazing out at the waves. Before you know it, you’ve walked miles and miles, and on the way back, the walk seems so much longer than you remembered. Experiences like that can give you a sense of the different ways we perceive and relate to time.

“When I’m creating a piece and engaging in a dialogue with paint or other materials — interacting physically with things that have different inherent properties — time flows differently than it usually does. When I finally rest my hands for a moment and check my watch, I’ll sometimes be amazed at how much time has elapsed, or conversely, how little the hands on the watch have actually advanced. It feels as if I’m existing in a mode of time based on a temporal nature associated with the very materials at my fingertips, rather than my own sense of time.

“I feel that G-SHOCK watches point toward unique flows of time that reflect our many different modes of life.”

Takayama has applied coloration to the surface of the carved stand, giving it a more natural, organic look and feel. She speaks of a certain awareness of time she had while engaged in the production process here as well.

“The paint soaked in too deeply at first, so I had to plane away some of the thickness in those portions and reapply the coloration. Plywood is originally made of multiple types of wood laminated together, so the rate at which coloration permeates it varies depending on the softness or hardness of the wood. Carving it down still left some of the color that had permeated deep into the layers of softer wood, yielding a range of color that couldn’t have been created by coloring a single layer alone. Parts of the process like this that didn’t go according to the original plan preserved a sense of time with continuity that’s neither revisited nor lost. The result is a new piece that exceeded my own expectations. I kept going forward and backward, back and forth in creating it, but it ended up with an appearance that seemed to emerge on its own from the processes I used.

“I feel that in our age, as our lives become ever more efficient, shortening time itself has come to be seen as valuable. This reality, where time is measured and emphasized on an individual basis, carries the risk of weakening our awareness of reality and our connections with the world around us. Even so, I wonder if, in this context, sharing the time inherent in the many things that surround us — things that exist in complex ways beyond just our own human perspectives — might have the power to hold and soften that sense of disconnection and loneliness, and help us stay grounded in a more vivid sense of reality.”

In the center of Takayama’s piece, the FROGMAN witnesses the passing of time. The numerous sapphire crystal discs cut to the same scale as the watch’s dial and the carved stand with its distinctive form express their own senses of time. Together, they create a wave or perception that seems to slowly, gradually envelop the human world itself.

“The discs of sapphire crystal affixed crosswise express the interconnections between diverse modes of time. What color might the actual world appear to be if we focus our awareness on the modes of time existing around us, or what might we find there within them?” (Natsuki Takayama)