Collaboration to promote media art in Japan
The Japanese media group KTV and Ars Electronica announce close cooperation
Linz / Osaka, 1.9.2006 (Ars Electronica / KTC). Since 1979, Ars Electronica has been setting the standard in the arena where art, technology and society meet. Today, thanks to their special focus and years of steady development, the Ars Electronica Festival, the Prix Ars Electronica, the Museum of the Future and the Ars Electronica Futurelab together provide a platform, which is unique in our world. In the years to 2009, the Arc Electronica Center located in Linz, Austria will undergo a substantial expansion.
Established in 1958, Kansai Telecasting Corporation has been known as Osaka-based KTV and a commercial network station of Fuji Network System (FNS). Osaka is the hub industrial city of West Japan. The Osaka-based KTV is second only to Fuji-TV in Tokyo in program production capability. KTV provides programs to 8.7 million households or 22 million population in its service area and can further reach Japan's entire 127 million population when its programs are syndicated to the network.
The objective of the collaboration between KTV and Ars Electronica, which was announced today, is to make media art known to a broader public within Japan and to foster the development of an infrastructure for the artistic creative work involving digital media technologies.
The two partners will bring different strengths to this collaboration. Ars Electronica, for its part, will contribute mainly its artistic know-how and its global media art network, while KTV will focus its outstanding competences in the media field on promotion and on the communication of this new art form in Japan.
In addition to advertising and communication via the television, Kansai TV also views the collaboration with Ars Electronica as a contribution to the development of a Center for Cyber Arts, which is to be built in the centre of Osaka in 2011.
There are also plans for an annual media art festival to be held in collaboration with Ars Electronica from the winter of 2007 onwards.
"The medium of television has been in existence for some 50 years and it has evolved through the interaction between artists, technicians and society, i.e. the public. In Japan, there are numerous top artists and technicians – including in the area of media art.
The collaboration between our company Kansai TV and the trailblazer in media art Ars Electronica will enrich the artistic exchange between Austria and Japan, not only in the existing areas, but also, I hope, in a new, blossoming culture," said the Senior Executive Managing Director of KTV, Hiroshi Yamamoto.
"We at Ars Electronica are very eager to bring the incredibly creative and pioneering work of media artists to a broader public. Japan is highly innovative and creative in the area of technology and it has numerous first-class media artists, a fact that has been evident at our festival for several years now. We are very pleased about our collaboration, which will no doubt provide a substantial boost to media art in Japan and which should also enable a much better interaction with artists from Japan," said Gerfried Stocker during the press conference on the occasion of the opening of the Ars Electronica 2006 in Linz today.
In 2005, Ars Electronica was present in Asia for the first time, taking part in a large exhibition at the National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts. In addition to numerous other international exhibition projects, in New York, Madrid, Berlin and Seoul amongst others, the collaboration announced today represents a further milestone for the media art centre.
With queries, please contact:
Ars Electronica Center, Press
0043.664.8126156
0043.732.7272-32
robert.bauernhansl@aec.at
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