Select a numbered card with built-in RFID tag, affix it to your person, and enter the “Arithmetik Garden.” Passing through the gates (with the calculating formulas shown) starts the “Gardens ’”calculations of your number. When their sum becomes exactly 73, you are finished, and can leave the “garden.” “Arithmetik Garden” was created to substitute a concrete idea of calculation for our usual abstract one. Becoming numbers ourselves allows us to experience calculating and being calculated via the position of our own bodies in this space.

We can not foresee the route to reach 73 at the beginning. Even though it is possible to choose a number that can reach 73 in four steps, in most cases, user analysis shows, we will probably pass through the gates more than five times to reach our tally. State transition diagrams, with some of the shortest paths illustrated, are common tools for referencing system behavior when, for example, determining optimal system architecture. Of course you don’t have to think that the shortest calculation is the optimal result when in the “Arithmetik Garden.” There is only one goal number, and that is the number 73. Yet the time and thought we invest in stopping and considering each calculation formula, or considering the maps on which our routes between the gates are printed, these all contribute to reaching 73. You could say that themselves are other substitutions for 73.

Funded: Hayao Nakayama Foundation for Science & Technology and Culture
Support: Dai Nippon Printing Co., Ltd., Takaya Corporation, Total Interior Sugahara Co., Ltd.
Production staff: ISHIKAWA Masaya (graphic design), YASUMOTO Masasuke (software development), FUJITA Yoshikazu (device development)