A Friend of Alfred

So I went almost 10 exhibitions while I was staying in Tokyo from Feb 9 to 21. Here I picked 4 events which embrace keywords like media art, emerging technology and progressing projects.

1. Japan Media Art Festival 2008
2. Exhibition: "Silent Dialogue”
3. Exhibition: “STILL/ALIVE”
4. Visitting IAMAS(Institute of Advanced Media Arts and Sciences )

1. Japan Media Arts Festival 2008

Japan Media Arts Festival is a "Contest" to praise creative media art works utilizing the latest expression technology. Also it is a "Festival"to support creative activity and broadly present various art works, promoting the development of media arts by providing the opportunities of appreciation, such as Exhibitions and Sanctioned Events.

"nijuman no borei (200000 phantoms)"
Artist：Jean-Gabriel PERIOT (France)

A documentary photography related to the A-bomb of Hiroshima with a calm monolog in the background, pictures with the Atomic Bomb Dome in Hiroshima in their center are collaged and unrolled.
* click thumbnail for movie link

"Se Mi Sei Vicino (If you are close to me)"
Artist: Sonia CILLARI (the Netherlands)

An interactive work where CG images on the screen and sound will change when an audience member touches or goes near the performer. As if we were watching the performer’s body sensations.

* click thumbnail for movie link

1.b Co-exhibition: 13th Computer Graphics Contest for Students
This annual student contest exhibits emerging student artists' artwork in digital art, animation, interactive installation, web art and game etc... Every year, the submissions from all over the world are shown here.
*there is no direction in English....to see movie, click the thumbnail and click a long small square located below the image on the official site.

"ASOBI TELEVI"
You can change channels and even control the contents!!
For example, if you forward the channel where a guy is eating lunch, he will eat it at the deadly speed, and of course, if you rewind it............

"ene-geometrix.02"

"Wakuraba"

"torikage"

1. c Co-exhibition: Leading Edge Technology Showcase 08 - For the artistic expressions of the future -

Theme: More Communication!

Many emerging technologies are presented here.

Visual Light Communication(VCL) : Transferring data through visual light by changing its frequency level and by blinking. the first image is simulating a conversation between each light, playing a role as a family member. e.g. If you point light source A(Father) to the table, light A talks something like "Where's my dinner?" Then if you take both light A and light B (Mother) together to the table, they go like "B: Dinner's ready honey" "A: ah finally, I'm starving...I wonder where kids are"...so on
Software that controls through tones of voice
A robot reacting our body language
A bouncing ball changing its color by shock...?

2. Exhibition: "Silent Dialogue” @ICC(NTT InterCommunication Center)

Exhibition of Biotech

This focuses on the communication between human and something that doesn't speak such as animals, plants and earth.

There were lots of works like:

A finch as a teacher...? A learning program trying to mimic the voice of common finches in the same cage.
An experimental project that attempts to EDUCATE plants to walk by producing them walking movement and visions.
Drawing pictures by bending plants located.

and so on.....

3. Exhibition: STILL/ALIVE @Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography

Tokyo Metropolitan Museum(a.k.a. Toshabi) is one of my favorite museums in Tokyo even though this was the first time to visit here lol. It always has awesome exhibitions related to media. I didn't know what was on at that time. But, luckily, one of my friends who is in photography handed me a ticket and say "just go there." I wasn't sure what day was that day...(the crazy urban life gave a me a kind of side effect that blurs my memory very nicely.) The day I visited was the last day of the show!! so the ticket was really still alive..... Anyways, STILL/ALIVE is the sixth in the annual series of exhibitions of work by contemporary photographers in Japan. There were photos, documentary film and moving picture. STILL/ALIVE implies immobility and motion, and, in terms of time, synchronic and diachronic: still and video photography, the artists examine the life in stillness and time, stimulated by their constant interaction with the everyday world of reality.

"People living today must keep up with an ever-accelerating pace of life, yet recognize that speed is not all. Our values are shifting towards recognizing the merits of the “slow life,” towards appreciating a more leisurely approach. We also now have more options for how to live and ways to spend our time than ever before. The option of the innocent faith in progress that once prevailed is, however, denied to us. As individuals, children and adults both experience an inchoate despair, a pall devoid of hope hanging over the future."

With the development of digital media and communication tools, Time and place rapidly become editable and highly vague today, and even our actions(or even ourselves) get reflexive. At this exhibition, memories of times past, intimations of the future, and time now gain their forms and are questioned. I felt that the time we spent/shared with others becomes the true values of interaction.

4. Visitting IAMAS: Studio1 (Interactive Media) (Institute of Advanced Media Arts and Sciences and International Academy of Media Arts and Sciences)

view from Ogaki station

I took a day trip to Ogaki city in Gifu prefecture from Tokyo by bullet trains to visit a grad school(or academy?) called IAMAS. It was very quiet mountain city and in the fresh mountain air, my cells forming my body just shouted "This is where I should belong to!!" I came to life.
Anyways, there are 4 studios in graduate program, and I met a professor, an alumnus and an administrator in Studio1 which focus is on Interactive media.
Currently, they are doing projects such as:

Art Information Archieves Project
Ubiquitous and Contents Research Project
Locative Media Project

I was personally interested in Augmented (Mixed) Reality(rather than Virtual Reality) and mobile computing so I asked some questions about Locative Media Project, which points out the relationship between "place" and our "physical body" in the expanded network. This is spotting and remapping the landscape of local ancient tombs by using devices like GPS..., visualizing them from coordinates gained through GPS. I think a kind of handy display will be used. I'll keep on tracking those thing too.

The alumnus I met was the artist of "Wakuraba" (image is above) and I got to see the prototype and some parts of it! cool

I hope the catalogs of those exhibitions will arrive soon (I shipped them by SURFACE!!) ahh I was broke :(

I almost bought this! (@Japan Media Art Festival)