Introduction
by Machiko Kusahara, Waseda University / Art-Sci Center, UCLA

Device Art is a new form of art. It bridges art, design, technology, science and entertainment by using both the latest and everyday technologies, and by introducing elements in Japanese traditional culture. Device Art visualizes and helps understanding what it means to live in a world full of new technology. It also pushes the border of art, as avant-garde movements such as Bauhaus did.

Appreciation of refined right materials and tools is a long tradition in Japan. As in tea ceremony, they mean more than something that temporary serve for certain purposes. In Device Art content is no longer separable from device. Artworks display the essence of technology through the use of new materials and devices, while they are often playful.

Appreciation of playfulness is deeply embedded in Japanese culture, often accompanied by mitate, a long and popular tradition of using metaphors, associations, and double meanings in a playful manner. It plays a magic to turn an ordinary or even trivial object into something extraordinary and unexpected, as in case of rocks and pebbles in Japanese gardens. Examples are seen in the exhibition. Mitate also allows an artist to set a serious theme behind a playful surface. Playfulness contributes in bringing art outside museums and galleries. Some of the works by these artists have been commercialized as gadgets. Art should be enjoyed in everyday life, according to Japanese tradition.

Fusion of art and technology is a strong trend in Japan. The exhibiting artists have led the movement since early 1990s. The Device Art project was launched in 2004 by a group of artists, engineers and researchers. The group is led by Hiroo Iwata with collaborators Hideyuki Ando, Masahiko Inami, Machiko Kusahara, Ryota Kuwakubo, Sachiko Kodama, Novmichi Tosa, Kazuhiko Hachiya, Taro Maeda, and Hiroaki Yano.

The project is funded by Core Research for Evolutional Science and Technology (CREST) of Japan Science and Technology Agency.

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Noriyuki Tanaka

How do people form a conscious awareness of other people? What prompts them to decide whether they like or dislike a person? This work takes as its motif what is perhaps the most important determinant of these perceptions, feelings and emotions: the face (or portrait). At the same time the work addresses themes such as the connection between personality and appearance, the problem of memory and identity arising from self-transformation and the desire for bodily manipulation, the collective psychology that leads to the creation of celebrity, the self and the other—or the differentiation and assimilation of history and culture, the issue of ethnicity and community, perceptions of humans resulting from religion or views encompassing their relationships with nature, the relationship between the mythical (as in fantasy stories) and the real, the tension between the recognition of manners and social systems and the expression of the individual, the categories of age and gender and the imagination and so on… Keeping these concerns in mind, I established and gave expression to 100 different characterizations of Erika, as though filling in each of the grid squares in a multi-dimensional matrix.

For example, we have reached a point where a person is able to have two separate identities—one in the real world and the other in virtual space. Maybe by changing your external façade, your way of speaking and gestures, your brain and mind might just adjust to those things, leading to the “overwriting” of your very identity. In “100 ERIKAS” I have created 100 such potential identities.

The model used was the actress Erika Sawajiri, who at the time was an eponymous presence in Japanese media and had a very well recognized identity.

Credits:
Constructer Photo Collaborator: Erika Sawajiri
Production support: TAKAKI_KUMADA, Indigolight, Tetsuro Nagase, Yasuhiro Watanabe, Shinichi Miter, Toshio Takeda, ShinYa, ABE, Shinji Konishi, COCO, MICHIRU, ASAKO, Yuichi Matsui, Jin Ebashi, Satoshi Wada, Shu Nagasawa, Oi-chan, MONDO, Rachel D’ Amour, ENVY, Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications Japan, Inc., Aoi Advertising Promotion Inc.

Artist Talks

Sat 5.9. – Sun 6.9. 18:00 – 19:00
Meetin point Foyer (Level 0)
100 Erikas – Noriyuki Tanaka (JP) (Foyer)
Device Art – curated by Machiko Kusahara (JP)* (Level +1)

Ars Electronica Center
Level +1

Yoichiro Kawaguchi is working with the reciprocal interaction of art and science. What he finds particularly interesting is establishing connections between computer graphics and forms that develop in nature, the way shapes, colours and surfaces freely unfold and independently evolve.

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Ars Electronica Center
Level -3

Hylozoic Grove, 2008

Source: rubra

Canadian architect and artist Philip Beesley calls his sculpture “geotextile mesh,” that combines nature and technology within an electrokinetic intelligent machine. The installation contains a dense net of proximity sensors, microcontrollers and actuators. When visitors come close, “Hylozoic Grove” responds with waves of motion stirring the air and spreading over the whole structure.

What makes the encounter with “Hylozoic Grove” so striking is the symbiosis of organic forms of behavior with technological materials as well as the dialog that arises between the installation and the visitors—do you watch or are you being watched?

Credits:
Rob Gorbet (Engineering Director), Hayley Isaacs, Christian Joakim, Jonah Humphrey, Kirsten Robinson, Jon Cummings (Core Team), with Yoshikatsu Wachi, Manuel Kretzer, William Elsworthy, Eric Bury, David Blackmore, Lawrence Chan