TOMOYA  ISHIBASHI

In this work, I made a microscope out of trash and natural objects I found in a river, and tried to look into the water of that river. Through this self-referential act of observation, this work considers human desires and ingenuity in relation to the microscopic world, as well as the concept of “environment” today, which is a mixture of nature and human-made things.
 

From the summer to the fall of 2024, I collected trash and natural objects around the Arakawa River, which flows through my birthplace. The Arakawa River flows through Tokyo and Saitama Prefecture, and is an extremely important river both economically and culturally. It is also an artificial river whose course has been changed on a large scale several times by human hands over the past 400 years.
 

I made three microscopes in three different styles, tracing the history of the microscope. 1. Waterdrop lens: A simple lens that uses the magnifying effect of a water drop. 2. Compound microscope: A style that has two lenses, an objective lens and an eyepiece lens, and became the basis for modern microscopes. It was developed by Robert Hooke of England in the 17th century. I made a compound microscope using two acrylic lenses I found in a river, but it was a failure. 3. Leeuwenhoek microscope. A simple microscope made up of a single glass lens of a few millimeters. Developed by Antonie van Leeuwenhoek of the Netherlands in the 17th century, it was the first microscope to report the existence of “microorganisms”. I tried to make this microscope from glass trash I found in a river.
 

The exhibition consisted of these three self-made microscopes, the images obtained through each microscope, and a video that summarized the process of trial and error. This work deconstructs the microscopic world that we are usually exposed to through textbooks, television, and the internet, and makes us rediscover the desire, passion, technology, and ingenuity that lie in “looking at the microscopic world”.