Born in Nagoya, Japan in 1936, Shusaku Arakawa has lived and worked in New York since 1961. Having met Madeline Gins in 1962, Arakawa started on a series of works in various media titled "The Mechanism of Meaning," which reflect on human sensory skills, and particularly how matters achieve their meaning. The series included two-dimensional objects consisting of letters and numbers geometrically composed. Shusaku Arakawa has received international acclaim since exhibiting at Documenta in 1968. His work has been widely introduced in Japan, and includes a solo exhibition at Seibu Museum of Art, Tokyo, in 1988. His works are in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art, Walker Art Center, Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art. In 1994, a permanent installation was placed at the Nagi Museum of Contemporary Art, Okayama; the installation was created to be perceived by all five senses.