The name of the work refers, according to the artist, to the neologism of "theory of lag", highlighting the gap between current experience and the perception of time as a series of discrete events.
[4] With his early works, such as Tardiology, Nomura began to turn away from the object per se to the passage of time, the foundations of matter and the rhythms of the universe.
[5] Rather than presenting a fully realized object in advance, Nomura consciously pursued a process of change, with the installation of the work being only "the starting point" of a structure that "gravity, wind, rain and time" will gradually break down.
[2] Following the example of several Japanese artist collectives, such as The Play, or the mail-art group Psychophysiology Research Institute,[6] his process-oriented practice mobilizes documentation (photographic and videographic capture, texts), in an enlarged conception of the artwork.
Indeed, while the piece appears at first glance to be a gimmick of the conceptual art forms in vogue in the 1960s and 1970s, of which Nomura was aware,[8] it differs radically in its emphasis on the physical phenomenon of fusion, of the evaporation of matter, and its role as an artist witnessing and archiving this process.
This recognition of photographic recording as an integral part of the artistic process is concomitant with the growing, though still fragile in 1970, institutionalization of contemporary art (gendai bijutsu) in Japan.
Indeed, in series such as "moon" score (1975–) and Earth Rotation (1978–79), Nomura uses, in addition to cameras, sophisticated telescopes and computers to record the passage of time, and the movements of stars and planets.
These images were published as a series, in the form of 120 hardcover tomes, one per month, containing 21 frames in each page, and entitled Ten-Year Photobook or the Brownian Motion of Eyesight.
This piece could be exhibited in different formats as well, notably as a film projection, showing then four frames per second, under the title The Brownian Motion of Eyesight.
In 1980, Nomura began making daytime exposures (Analemma series) that followed the sun across the sky; in doing so, he observed the phenomenon of the contrast between concave and convex lines over the course of a year.
This exploration of Nomura towards the sun, the stars and the cosmos, is decisive for understanding the movement of his artistic approach, which links the specific with the infinite, putting perception at the center of his experiments with space, time and matter:[2] “I’m interested in the forces of nature.