enmeshed with theoretical ideas grounded in phenomenology, physics, metaphysics, semiotics, and epistemology. In terms of meaning, these works were endowed with complex messages that interrogated the precise nature of art’s function and how art is meant to be perceived. Hard or Soft No. 3 (1969) is a painting in which numbers, letters, arrows, and lines are sparsely positioned from one another among large expanses of white negative space, and the following text frames the bottom tier of the work: “These arrows indicate almost nothing/Re-arrange the numbers anyway you like.” Paintings like Hard or Soft No. 3 were meant to stimulate critical thinking among viewers to discern how language can be constructed from basic visual elements (line, shape, color, form, etc.). During The Mechanism of Meaning exhibition at the Guggenheim in 1997, art critic Roberta Smith described Arakawa's paintings and prints as "a bridge between Dada and Fluxus and the soon-to-be-Conceptual Art" and added that they operate as "philosophical or linguistic puzzles" that are open to countless interpretations and visual readings. Moreover, art historians, critics, and curators note that the diagrammatic, blueprint-like appearances of Arakawa's paintings and prints foreshadow his and Gins's later architectural projects. The versatility of Arakawa’s printmaking abilities is evident in the range of printing techniques he pursued: silkscreen, lithography, embossing, etching, and aquatint. Film (1960s - 1970s) Arakawa's partnership with Gins led to their creation of films in the late-1960s and early-1970s that further expounded upon the philosophical ideas Arakawa explored in his paintings and prints. Although it comprised a short segment of his career, his involvement in experimental filmmaking was another avenue through which he could question and alter viewers' understanding of perception, evident in his philosophically-laden Why Not: A Serenade of Eschatological Ecology (1969). For Example (1971) features a young homeless boy who wanders the streets of New York City in a drunken stupor while a male narrator recites a text. The film's documentary-style camerawork was intended to visualize and articulate the theories espoused in Arakawa and Gins's long-term architectural project The Mechanism of Meaning, which specifically aims to "deconstruct meaning and construct non-meaning". The Mechanism of Meaning (1960s – 1980s) Beginning in 1963, he collaborated with fellow artist, architect, and poet Madeline Gins on the research project The Mechanism of Meaning, which was completed by 1973. This research project and its subsequent architectural projects - both built and unbuilt ones - formed the basis