Under the coordination of Hiroshi Ishiguro from the Osaka University, four artists from Japan exhibit three different styles of embodiments. These projects are supported by IPA Exploratory IT Human Resources Project (The MITOH Program). IPA stands for Information-technology Promotion Agency, Japan. The fourth work „Flesh for Fantasy“ from Tatsuya  Saito is part of Funky Pixels.

Coordinator: Hiroshi Ishiguro, Osaka University
These projects are supported by IPA Exploratory IT Human Resources Project (The MITOH Program). IPA stands for Information-technology Promotion Agency, Japan.

Akiko Hino (JP)
2.9. – 7.9.

“Dancing Information” is a media art that shows its participants what they and their friends are interested in on a common context. It works as a mirror that provides opportunities to discover hints for extending ones interest.

When a participant inputs his/her Twitter ID, photos uploaded by the participant are fetched from the Web and collaged in the shape of human. Then it starts dancing. Keywords surrounding the photos in the original web pages are aggregated and a topic of the moment is decided. If there are friends who are interested in the topic, one of them is chosen and his/her human shaped collage appears. Friends are found based on social relationships on Twitter. Photos that consist of a human shaped collage are selected based on the topic of the moment.

Throughout the experience of watching ones human shaped collage of photos, a participant expected to rediscover what he/she thought in the past. Furthermore, he/she may find something new from friends. Since information shown to the participant is selected based on his/her personal context, it is more likely to be triggers to broaden ones interest. “Dancing Information” is an approach to realize this in a joyful way.

Akiko Hino (Kyoto University), Yoichiro Hino and Norihiro Otsuki proceed this project. Akiko, as a chief creator, built the concept of “Dancing Information” and wrote the code of the visualization part. Yoichiro implemented the server side program and Norihiro worked as an adviser for the design part.

Stand before the screen and flap your arms like a bird, and the silhouette projected on the screen flies up into the air. In this installation, what the participant feels is transferred to the small silhouette on the screen, resulting in a strange feeling of floating.

To fly on our own has been an eternal dream for humans. An action impossible in reality becomes a possibility within this limited space delineated by the tall and narrow screen in the installation. This work is sustained by self-awareness, that fundamental consciousness possessed by humans. The piece works based on the sensation that the small you in the image has turned into you. It is almost as though you have become the silhouette on the screen. In fact, we experience this kind of sensation of shamanistic possession in everyday life – for example, when you control a character in a computer game and feel like you have turned into that character, or when you feel like the curser on the screen has turned into our your fingertip.

Contemporary art has long become a world of hollow concepts and symbols that is separated from expression of consciousness itself. This work brings fundamental questions into relief, like what it means to be you, what can become yourself, and what new self human beings will obtain in the future. The artists want to return to the physical sensations of our own bodies, and from there embark on a thrilling challenge to find a new way of being for ourselves.

Tatsuya Saito, Tokyo University of the Arts

Minoru Fujimoto (JP)
2. 9. – 5. 9. 14:00, 17:00

Lighting Choreographer is a system to expand the expressive capability of human body by lighting. It makes light effects on the user’s body synchronized with motion and sound, focusing on the viewing point that the produced effects recursively influence the choreographer.

Although there are many approaches to computer enhanced performances where audio and/or visuals are operated based on motion information of a performer, they are too simple to control the details at his/her will in the sense of expansion of body expression. Furthermore, they do not provide a way of body expressions to exceed the limit of the physical motions, such as moving their arms at a very high speed. Thus, Minoru Fujimoto came up with the idea to expand the body expressions by interactively changing the color and the size of body parts and combining kinematics and visual effects of lights by controlling LEDs with considering characteristics of the human body.

A performer represents various kinds of the feel of material, e.g. heaviness, lightness, sharpness, pop, violence, and soft, by dancing. By adding light illumination, performers obtains three factors for body representation; motion, sounds and lights. The projects aim is to redefine the relations between the body, sounds and lights, and to enhance human expressions.

Project partners are the Yukari Uto (Tokyo University of the Arts), Noriko Seki (Kobe University) and Satoko Ishina (Kobe University)

Hiroshi Ishiguro (JP)
Osaka University and ATR
2. 9. – 7. 9

Hiroshi Ishiguro exhibited a “geminoid” during the Ars Electronica Festival 2009 as a featured artist. The geminoid is a tele-operated android modeled after his creator. Once the operator talks with visitors by using the geminoid, both the operator and visitors can adapt to the android body. The operator recognizes the android body as his own body and the visitors recognize it as the operator.

His newest project is a geminoid named “telenoid”. The unique appearance may be eery when we first see it. However, once we communicate with others by using the telenoid, we can adapt to it. If a friend speaks from the telenoid, we can imagine the friend’s face on the telenoid’s face. If we embrace it, we have the feeling, that we embrace the friend.

This work has been supported by Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS), Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research, Scientific Research-S, Representation of human presence by using tele-operated androids.