International Symposium for Media Art

Art & Technology:

Changing Times, Contemporary Trends, Future Platforms
Report [PDF ver.]

Minoru Hatanaka (Chief Curator, NTT InterCommunication Center [ICC])
Yvonne Spielmann (New Media Researcher)
Daito Manabe (Artist / Rhizomatiks)
Andreas Siagian (Artist, Engineer / Lifepatch)
Jeffrey Shaw (Artist / Director, Centre for Applied Computing and Interactive Media [ACIM], City University of Hong Kong)
Kazunao Abe (Deputy Director, Yamaguchi Center for Arts and Media [YCAM])

Organized by Arts Council Tokyo (Tokyo Metropolitan Foundation for History and Culture), The Japan Foundation Asia CenterPreface: About the Symposium

In July 2016, Arts Council Tokyo and the Japan Foundation Asia Center co-hosted the international symposium “Art and Technology: Changing Times, Contemporary Trends, Future
Platforms.” Arts Council Tokyo is an organization that has a central role in cultural activities
launched by the Tokyo Metropolitan Government, and the Japan Foundation Asia Center is an
institution that runs cultural and art exchange programs with the rest of Asia. Though they haveplanned and launched various projects across different artistic genres to invigorate the arts andto promote international exchanges, this symposium was the first event they had jointly hosted
that was geared toward media art.
In recent years, countries and regions in Asia have not only achieved economic growth but also
demonstrated dynamic changes in the arts and cultural activities they offer. Media art has
emerged from those changes as a contemporary form of artistic expression combined with technology. It has found a wide range of use in the art scene, and has also acted as a catalyst for the
emergence of creative sectors and social change. This symposium was organized as the first step
toward the creation of new platforms for media art in Tokyo and the rest of Asia. It served as anopportunity to acknowledge and share contemporary issues in the contexts of local history, culture, and society, as well as in cultural policies, and also introduced many different media art
projects launched across Asia. The event attracted much attention in the run-up to its opening.
It received about 300 visitors on opening day, and what transpired at the symposium was livestreamed for large audiences around the world.
The panelists presented and discussed their views based on their experience and insight. Theircomments on what defines media art and what its future should look like in Tokyo were truly
thought-provoking. As the Tokyo 2020 Olympic and Paralympic Games approach, Tokyo has
been attracting more attention from around the world. The symposium successfully identified
where media art in the city can start from to shape and establish its presence in society, and to
define its role in cultural administration as well as cultural and art exchange projects.
Finally, in organizing this symposium, we were privileged to receive special help from NTT
InterCommunication Center [ICC], which generously offered the venue and their expertise intangible and intangible aspects of the event, and incredible support from many other people.
We wish to express our sincere gratitude for all their help.

Arts Council Tokyo (Tokyo Metropolitan Foundation for History and Culture)
The Japan Foundation Asia CenterFebruary 2017［01］

International Symposium for Media Art

Art & Technology:

Changing Times, Contemporary Trends, Future Platforms
Today, media art is often showcased at cultural facilities, educational institutions, and festivals around theworld. It emerged from various forms of artistic expression created as pioneering experiments in combining art and technology from the 1970s. Artworks that depend on contemporary technologies have developed
alongside the social phenomena of economic growth, technological innovation, and globalization. They
not only inspire us to continue creating something new, but also enable us to develop a critical eye on society and try out new art forms.
This report serves as a record of the symposium “Art & Technology: Changing Times, Contemporary
Trends, Future Platforms.” The symposium presented how media art as a form of artistic expression hadchanged over time and what contemporary hands-on projects had been launched. Furthermore, the international guest speakers with different backgrounds examined the relationship between art and technology
in different lights to suggest what a new platform for art and culture should be like to connect the present
with the future, society with art, and individuals with the public.
Time and Date: Saturday, July 9 2016, 13:00–18:00
Venue: NTT InterCommunication Center [ICC]
Organized byArts Council Tokyo (Tokyo Metropolitan Foundation for History and Culture), The Japan Foundation Asia Center
Specially Supported by NTT InterCommunication Center [ICC]

C o n t e n t s

Preface: About the Symposium ……… 0 1[Session 1 | Lectures]Media Art: Historical Shifts in Japan and Hybridity of Asia
The Transition of Art and Technology in Japan Minoru Hatanaka ……… 0 4
Shifting the Divide: Artistic Positions of Media Convergence and Cultural Diversity
Yvonne Spielmann ……… 0 9[Session 2 | Presentations]

Case Studies in the Interface between Socio-Technology and Art
Rhizomatiks: 10 Years of Activity Daito Manabe ……… 1 6Professional Amateurs Andreas Siagian ……… 1 8
The Art to Come (and Where It Came from) Jeffrey Shaw ……… 2 1[Session 3 | Discussion]

Tokyo’s Range of Possibilities as a Platform for Media Art
Jeffrey Shaw × Andreas Siagian × Daito Manabe × Minoru Hatanaka | Kazunao Abe ……… 2 5[Contribution]

An Asian Positioning on Media Art Masaki Fujihata ……… 3 3
Symposium Organizers’ Profile ……… 3 6

Session 1 |LecturesMedia Art:

Historical Shifts in Japan and Hybridity of Asia
This chapter provides an overview of how media art in Japan has changed
since the Japan World Exposition (EXPO ’70), in tandem with social change over the decades.
It also presents international trends in media art, especially in Southeast Asia.

Lecturers’ Profiles
Minoru Hatanaka (Chief Curator, NTT InterCommunication Center [ICC])
Born in 1968 and graduated from Tama Art University. Minoru Hatanaka joined NTT Inter­
Communication Center [ICC] in 1996, prior to the facility’s opening. He has curated exhibitions at
ICC, including group shows such as Sound Art—Sound as Media (2000), Silent Dialogue (2007),[Internet Art Future]—Reality in Post Internet Era (2012), and solo shows featuring the work of Dumb
Type, Maywa Denki, Laurie Anderson, Kazuhiko Hachiya, Rhizomatiks, Arata Isozaki, Otomo
Yoshihide, John Wood and Paul Harrison. He co-curated Roppongi Crossing: New Visions inContemporary Japanese Art 2004 (2004, Mori Art Museum) and curated a Japanese artist showcase at
Sónar Music Festival (2006, Barcelona).
http://www.ntticc.or.jp

Yvonne Spielmann (New Media Researcher)
Professor Yvonne Spielmann is a leading scholar of technology, media, and art, and has taught inEurope, America, and Southeast Asia. Her publications include Hybrid Culture (2010, Suhrkamp
Press/2012, MIT Press), which examines the essential hybridity in Japan’s media culture, andContemporary Indonesian Art (2015, Logos Publishers/2016, NUS Press), which discusses the closeinterrelationships between politics and aesthetics in contemporary Indonesian art in the context ofSoutheast Asia. A Japanese translation of her landmark Video: The Reflexive Medium (2008, MIT
Press) was published in 2011. From 2012 to 2015 she was Dean of Faculty of Fine Arts at Lasalle
College of the Arts in Singapore. In 2016 she was a Visiting Research Fellow at NTU Center forContemporary Arts Singapore.
http://yvonne-spielmann.com

Lecture (Excerpt)

The Transition of Art and Technology in Japan
Minoru Hatanaka Chief Curator, NTT InterCommunication Center [ICC]

When speaking of “art and technology” in Japan, its history has shown the rise of two unique eras.
The first is the technology art movement, which originated in the 1950s to 60s, and reached its
peak in 1970. The other is media art, which is the movement spanning from around 1990 to thepresent. Since the word “media art” did not exist in the 1960s, if we refer to the 60s movement astechnology art, I would like to differentiate the period in the 1990s and afterwards as the media art
movement, which also includes activities undertaken by NTT InterCommunication Center [ICC].

# Technology art emerged simultaneously in various parts of the world
Technology art in Japan was spearheaded by the group Jikken Kobo (Experimental Workshop) in
the 1950s. Comprised of members rooted in music, art, literature, and theater, among others, thegroup incorporated numerous new technologies into their artistic expressions. The technology
art movement that came to the forefront during the rapid economic growth period of the 1950s to
the 60s, came to a culmination at the Japan World Exposition (EXPO ’70) held in Osaka, in 1970.
Around the same time, overseas, the art and technology movement also existed as a contemporary trend. Group Zero of Germany was formed in 1958, followed by Gruppo T of Italy in
1959, and Groupe de Recherche d’Art Visuel (GRAV) in Paris in 1960. A group called E.A.T.
(Experiments in Art and Technology), founded in 1966, actively advocated the collaboration ofart and technology. Its key figures included Billy Klüver and Robert Rauschenberg, both former
engineers at Bell Laboratories.
Also in 1969, Jeffrey Shaw, who is a guest at this symposium, formed the Eventstructure
Research Group in the Netherlands. I think their work can be classified as a type of environmental art; for example, they installed a balloon-like sculpture inflated with air as a play area to be
used as a public space, and they also applied those sculptures to stage productions of concerts,
as well as experimented with staging using lasers. I think their approaches are directly linked towhat artists like Rhizomatiks, also our guest today, are currently engaged in.
Going back to Japan during the same period, in parallel with environmental art, there wasa similar rise in technology art with various related exhibitions. These works were characterized
by the use of new materials such as aluminum and plastic, and exhibited in such ways as tomake the viewer aware of the environment. One example was the International Psy-Tech Art
Exhibition “ELECTROMAGICA ’69,” which took place in April 1969, as a major international eventat the newly erected Sony Building in the Ginza district. Katsuhiro Yamaguchi, the central artistof the group Jikken Kobo, organized the event with the cooperation of several companies, andattempted to create an environment using the building itself as a display device. It can be said
that this was a form of environmental art using light, movement, and sound, using an entire
building. As we walk along the streets of Ginza today, you can see that the facades of fashion
brand buildings are turned into displays, indicating how innovative his project was.
Also at the EXPO ’70 in Osaka, a number of pavilions screened “expanded cinema.” This is
a form of cinema that uses multiple screens simultaneously, similar to how video installation isdisplayed today.
Subsequently, video art came to the scene in the latter half of the 1970s, followed by computer graphics in the 1980s. With these movements as a backdrop, The International Exposition,
Art & Technology: Changing Times, Contemporary Trends, Future Platforms［04］

Tsukuba, was held in 1985, where the landmark attraction was the Jumbo Tron, a huge screen
display developed by Sony.

# Art is inspired by new technology
Media art, on the other hand, became known as a genre from thelate 1980s onwards. Against the
backdrop of the age in which video
and computer graphics grew popular and personal computers (PCs)
became widely available, media
art has developed up to the present, alongside the progression ofthese technologies and media, as
well as the development of advanced technologies.
Furthermore, as PCs became
widespread and computer performance advanced at a rapid pace, an
art form where the viewer becomespart of the work, so-called interactive art, entered the scene in the 1990s. With the introductionof the Internet, this art form became more common in the 2000s, and has led to the current
post-Internet era of the 2010s. I believe that digital fabrication such as 3D printing, is the epitome of the novel technology that is linked to the current art and technology trend.
The relationship between art and technology can be affected by a wide range of factors;
for example, when a new technology creates a new form of society, or when new materials areproduced from industrial technology, they can both inspire new types of artistic expressions.
Futurism, an avant-garde artistic movement in the early 20th century, as well as the pop art
movement in the 1950s and 60s, are both prime examples of art forms born in response to therise of a technology-oriented society.
A Futurism piece entitled Intonarumori, created by Italian painter and composer Luigi
Russolo in 1913, originated from an idea that a society in which living environments become
increasingly filled with noise, may also alter humans’ sense of aesthetics.
Let’s also look at pop art, popularized by the collages of British artist Richard Hamilton
and works by American artist Andy Warhol. They can also be regarded as works reflecting themodern society of the time. Hamilton’s piece, titled Just what is it that makes today’s homes so
different, so appealing? is most likely driven by the awareness of how people’s livings were changing at the time. Warhol, on the other hand, engaged in the appropriation of advertisements andmass media, a characteristic of American pop art. He is also noted for his quote “I want to be amachine,” evident in his mass-production of silk screens of photographs that appear as from acatalog, and calling his studio “The Factory.”
To summarize what I have talked about up to this point, I believe that there are three ways
for art to accept technology.
The first is art that is inspired by new technology. This is when new media is directly usedin the artwork itself. The second is art that is inspired by a society created by technology. This isprobably not limited to any form of expression media. Rather, it is an artistic expression in response to an increasingly technology-oriented environment. The last is art inspired byproduction techniques and materials, resulting from technological advances. Movements like
digital fabrication are connected to this trend.

Art & Technology: Changing Times, Contemporary Trends, Future Platforms［05］

# Art “creation” and technology
At the beginning of my presentation, I mentionedthat the environmental art and technology art
movements in Japan reached their peak in1970 at EXPO ’70. So, what was this EXPO like?
This event was Japan’s biggest national project since the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, and a numberof corporations, researchers, architects, and artists were involved in the construction, as wellas the visuals and sound effect creation of thepavilions. For Japan, this was a major event
symbolizing one of its pivotal moments in
Fig. 1 Exhibition space for E.A.T. – The Story of Experiments inmodern history. Some major pavilions known
Art and Technology (organized by NTT InterCommunication
Center [ICC] in 2003). It featured a photo of the Pepsi
to have been designed by artists included thePavilion (in the back) at the Japan World Exposition in
Festival Plaza (Kenzo Tange, Taro Okamoto,1970 (EXPO ’70) and a reproduction of Floats by Robert
Breer (1970/2003). Photo: Kozo Takayama Courtesy: NTT
Kisho Kurokawa, Arata Isozaki), Pepsi Pavilion
InterCommunication Center [ICC](E.A.T., Fujiko Nakaya), Pavilion Textiles (Toshio
Matsumoto), Steel Pavilion (Keiji Usami, Toru
Takemitsu, Yuji Takahasi, Iannis Xenakis) and
Mitsui Group Pavilion (Katsuhiro Yamaguchi).
Take a look at this photograph from theexhibition by E.A.T. titled E.A.T. – The Story ofExperiments in Art and Technology held at the ICC
in 2003 (Fig. 1). You can see in the back of the Pepsi
Pavilion produced by E.A.T. Their artistic expression traversed genres including art, music, andvideo, and was dubbed as “intermedia.”
Here is another photograph from theFig. 2 Andy Warhol, Silver Clouds, 1966. Installation view
same exhibition for your reference. This is Andyof E.A.T. – The Story of Experiments in Art and Technology(2003, NTT InterCommunication Center [ICC]) Photo: Kozo
Warhol’s 1966 work called Silver Clouds (Fig. 2).
Takayama Courtesy: NTT InterCommunication Center [ICC]
Warhol had only the idea of a mirror-like object
floating in air and reflecting the surrounding environment. It was E.A.T. engineers who brought
his idea to life by applying polyethylene film, chiefly used by the U.S. Army at the time.
We can get a glimpse of the tone of the modern art scene at the time from a 1969 essay by
art critic Atsushi Miyakawa, titled “Forfeiture of the hand—Machine as a symbol and thoughts
on manual crafts.” Miyakawa perceived the years up to the 1950s as the age of the machine, whilethe 1960s and onwards was transitioning to the age of electronics technology, and viewed theadvent of electronics as something that would “produce a new dimension on the subject of ‘artand technology’.” He also commented, “as the concept of ‘creation’ in art was contemporaneouswith usefulness, productivity and the advancement of ‘machines,’ closing up on “seeing” is also
contemporaneous with the transformation of technology itself.” Here we can sense the concern
people of this period had about technology taking over manual crafts, as if the tradition of artists creating their works by hand, a concept that had been sustaining art, was endangered. It canbe said that the idea of humans becoming unnecessary has emerged, which may be similar toissues like singularity in the current age. However, Miyakawa interpreted this positively, seeing
it as a transition of “hand” to “eye,” “creation” to “seeing.”
However, behind the EXPO ’70, which was in essence a culmination of technology art, the10th Tokyo Biennale: Between Man and Matter was held in the same year. This exhibition is known
for its minimalistic displays, as if the material as it is simply tossed onto the gallery floor. While
this may seem like a diversion from our topic about technology, it is noteworthy to mention the
Art & Technology: Changing Times, Contemporary Trends, Future Platforms［06］emergence of the Mono-ha movement in the Japanese art scene in the late 1960s. Mono-ha,translated as the “school of things,” is not a typical group. Citing from the catalog of the Mono-ha
Reconsidering exhibition held at the National Museum of Art, Osaka in 2005, this was a movement of “artists who formed their works by combining or independently using ‘things’ such as
rocks, trees, paper, cotton, iron sheets, and paraffin,” who then “took the mundane ‘things’
themselves and presented them in extraordinary circumstances, in order to strip them of theirpre-existing perceptions, and unlocking a new world.”
The reason why I’m mentioning this is because I have a feeling that it is connected to theviews of Atsushi Miyakawa. Technology art, which came to its peak in a sense in 1970, slowed
down along with the end of rapid economic growth. What came to the forefront instead was
Mono-ha, a non-technological, naturalistic movement. In fact, Lee Ufan, the theoretical leaderof Mono-ha, argued for the “rejection of creation” in his publication. The idea by artists to“create by not creating” I think implies their opposition toward a society where technology replaces humans.
In contrast, during the height of Japan’s student movement in the late 1960s, a related
sector called Bikyoto, or Artists Joint-Struggle Council, also emerged. From this sector, an artist
named Kosai Hori created a work using videos and tape recorders to revisit the issue of “whycreate?” in the age following technology art and Mono-ha. Around the same time in 1972, thegroup Video Hiroba was formed by members including Katsuhiro Yamaguchi, Fujiko Nakaya,
Nobuhiro Kawanaka, and Hakudo Kobayashi. They also explored expressing ideas using video,
a property inherent in media.
A while later, 1970s-born video art began to flower in the mid-1980s. Artist and critic
Tetsuo Kogawa said in 1987 that the alternative use of technology, for instance the early video art
works, “partly restored power to the domain of the hand”; in other words, art and technology,
which have been detached in modern history, have been reunited with the emergence of electronics technology.

# Media art continuously gets upgraded
Following the rise of video art and the resulting
re-emergence of technology art, and as the term
media art gradually became acknowledged, ICC
was founded. The activities of ICC started with abasic concept in 1990, followed by the 1991 exhibition The Museum Inside the Telephone Network,where visitors could enjoy artworks, texts, andmessages by artists, writers, and critics, throughtelephones and fax machines. On the eve of theage of the Internet, this innovative exhibition
introduced a new way of sharing artwork throughFig. 3 Agnes Hegedüs + Jeffrey Shaw + Bernd Lintermann +the use of NTT’s own telephone network, and its
Leslie Stuck, conFIGURING the CAVE, 1997. ICC Collection
Photo: Takashi Ohtaka Courtesy: NTT InterCommunication
communications infrastructure. Later, ICC offiCenter [ICC]
cially opened its doors in April 1997.
ICC can be said to have opened during thesecond peak of art and technology. The mid1990s was an era in which media art was drawing attention as a new art wave, including overseas
movements. Accordingly, the opportunities and creativity of computer science were beginningto be applied in the realm of media art, as various media artworks both inside and outside Japan
were introduced. These include interactive art, work based on artificial reality studies using
virtual reality, and work incorporating biological systems studied using artificial life (Fig. 3).
In fact, one of the reasons Billy Klüver founded E.A.T., was in the hopes of utilizing technology in creative fields such as art, and to see new technology emerge with art as the objective.
Art & Technology: Changing Times, Contemporary Trends, Future Platforms［07］

The background for this idea was that advanced
scientific technologies were not something close
to us. Rather, they were the subject of national
level projects like military and space exploration.
In the present day, however, through initiatives
such as open sourcing, it seems to have become
possible to handle technologies like programming as handiwork, and to turn them into
artwork. In other words, the use of technology
itself is now in the realm of handiwork in current
media art, and the media art genre is no longer
Fig. 4 Seiko Mikami, Eye-Tracking Informatics, 2011
Photo: Keizo Kioku Courtesy: NTT InterCommunication
distinguishable from other art forms, just for its
Center [ICC]use of machines and electronics.
Here is a media artwork by Seiko Mikami
titled Eye-Tracking Informatics (Fig. 4). It is basedon her 1996 work Molecular Informatics, and has been continually updated until 2004 and presented all over the world. Moreover, the work was recreated in 2011 as an update using open
source at the Yamaguchi Center for Arts and Media [YCAM], and was also exhibited at the ICC.
This is a good example of how it has become possible for an artwork to be updated by a third
party, as the actual artist does not necessarily have to take direct action.
Up to this point, I have discussed how Japan’s art and technology movement has progressed in parallel with the emergence of new technologies, and constantly responded with thebirth of new movements. The current form of media art differs from its predecessors, from technology art of the 1960s to video art of the late 1970s, and even from different forms of media art
born in the 1990s and onwards. The rise of post-Internet art is an example, and movements like
digital fabrication have expanded to various domains outside of media art, coupled with the
spread of 3D printers and laser cutters, and linked to the popularization of these technologies.
At the same time, various technologies that were previously not in the category of art, such as
those expanded in the entertainment field, biotechnology, and space exploration, are waiting tocome in contact with future art.
As the circumstances show, it seems that the current era leading up to 2020 is quite similar to what was going on in 1970. I therefore believe that, along with conducting activities tomake technologies accessible to the public, we should reconsider the future of art and technology, including how technology art declined in the 1970s.

Art & Technology: Changing Times, Contemporary Trends, Future Platforms［08］Lecture (Excerpt)

Shifting the Divide: Artistic Positions ofMedia Convergence and Cultural Diversity
Yvonne Spielmann New Media Researcher

More recently, I have been working in Singapore and researching the Southeast Asian context,
but some of my previous research is related to media art in Japan. Today, I would like to addresssome of the issues in art and technology without going back to its history. I am interested in
discussing my observations not so much on the advent and progression of technology, but moreon what is currently happening with the multitude of technology available to us and how the
younger artists in the Southeast Asian region are adapting to such environments.

# Critical interventions into networked cultures
As a starting point it will be useful to identify the present-day environment that determines
current practices and aesthetics as they intersect in media-cultural applications of current
media technologies.
The overarching characteristics of the present-day global society are permanent
flow, constant change, interconnectedness, and endless mergers. They, for the most part,are associated with the fluidity and constant changeability of media borders, remediation andreappropriation of cultural and artistic processes and production, and the increase of “traveling” concepts across cultural contexts of the East and West. In this situation, I propose to take acloser look at conceptual frameworks that have fostered thinking in complexity and promoted ahigh level of connectivity. The focus lies on artistic practices that not only make use of digitaltechnologies and access cultural forms on the global scale, but also take a critical stance andpursue creative interventions into the networked processes of the present.
When we want to determine how artists can take a critical position amidst these interwoven fields, it will be worthwhile to observe points of interference where their aesthetic
positioning suspends expectations and shifts perception. In this sense, creative practices become experimental and critical. The premise for such artistic responses is their necessity toreflect on the state of art of the present: a present where everything is expected to be traced,
connected, surveilled, controlled, communicated, and diffused worldwide.
A shift of perspective from media convergence to cultural diversity in the arts manifests
itself in approaches of inventive intervention. This means, existing devices and practices, including their functions, are deliberately misused, remodeled, and changed, in order to make usaware of the ways in which we have learnt to understand, accept, and also “communicatively”
adapt to mediated environments and cultural settings in many areas of everyday life. In a sphereof expanded hybridity, this current strand of development in media culture seems to newly
challenge the location of culture itself.
To understand these artistic interventions in social and cultural relationships that are
constantly confronted by present-day “networked societies”—to borrow Manuel Castells’
term—and to see them in the broader understanding of art within global politics, we need tothink about media and cultural connotations as networks themselves. By situating artisticcreative practices in networked environments, we can investigate the socio-cultural structuresthat prefigure and shape such environments in which novel technical applications, references
to tradition, and other cultural contexts are embedded.
Clearly, artistic-creative practices do not emerge in neutral spaces. Rather, they are
Art & Technology: Changing Times, Contemporary Trends, Future Platforms［09］configured according to an existing order, with specific parameters of social acceptance andcontrol, and develop at specific times and locations. This does not liberate us from the economic, cultural, and political peculiarities and interrelationships among the times and scrutinyof spaces in which such practices emerge. By analyzing artistic responses to such situations of
the present, we can investigate how far developments of art and technology contribute to theidea of connectedness. Thinking about connectedness and complexity in networks is an important instrument in raising discussions about the contextual attributes that constituteconceptual frameworks of inter-medial convergence and cultural diversity.

# Conceptual frameworks: intermedia and cultural hybridity
Interestingly, the idea of connectedness and networks, I think, has
its cultural roots not so much inWestern, but rather Eastern philosophy. Byung-Chul Han discusses,
networking in Asian thinking does
not, in philosophical terms, relyon subject-object relations, dualisms, and interrelationships thatare of Western origin. From this,we can think that creative practices in the Asia-Pacific spheremanifest a seminal understandingof interconnectedness that characterizes a cultural specificity andis highlighted in the use of media
technology. I quote Han, “The Far East thinks in networks....The Far East has an almost naturalconnection to technical networking” (Han, 2005). And, in view of this, artistic responses toglobal networks of convergence and fusion need to be regarded according to what role culturalcomponents and specific rootedness play in achieving new patterns in the framework of complexity and connectivity.
Local relationships are precious as cultural contexts matter in terms of their roots. By thesame token, they need to be understood as traveling concepts—I am referring to James Clifford’s
observation here—so that their routes are of equal importance. As such, the spatial relations oflocations are important factors in understanding connectedness in non-Western artistic practices. How they are used, in turn, to reshape and reconfigure social and artistic practices isequally critical.
Furthermore, to better understand this kind of cultural hybridity, I paraphrase Terry
Smith's critique of the inflation of contemporaneity, where he asserts that, in contrast to global
art, which is predominantly underpinned by Western concepts, contemporary art should begenuinely understood as “global contemporary art” because its very notion expresses diversity,
not uniformity. And, I hereby follow, among others, Indonesia's leading art critic Jim Supangkat
saying, “This diversity is what has distinguished global contemporary art from world art.” Thisimplies that contemporary art in Asia conceptualizes temporality in different time frames thanWestern art and appreciates asynchronicity as well as synchronicity as its specific features.
The aim is to achieve and promote a more dynamic, transmedial, and transcultural perspective for further research into globally connected art and technology thinking. Its essential
relevance and value lies in establishing an appropriate contextual understanding of the mutualinteractions, the cross-relations, adaptions, and interconnectedness between Western andnon-Western concerns in the Asia-Pacific. So I wish to raise such awareness and set forth thedirection for further scholarly research about the roots and routes—again, James Clifford’s
Art & Technology: Changing Times, Contemporary Trends, Future Platforms［10］concept from Routes: Travel and Translation in the Late Twentieth Century (1997)—of contemporary art across the region. And for this, I find it necessary to develop a new theoretical framework
for the discussion of contemporary art in Asia, Asia-Pacific, and also Southeast Asia, because theart production in this region is developing fast and has entered the global debate and art market.
Digesting all kinds of media and technological developments, it remediates computer games,
manga, anime, and animation, produces new artifacts of youth culture, and addresses cultural
diversity and identity, nation building and post-colonialism. In so doing, it revisits ethnic, political, and colonial conflicts, and is changing the perception of contemporary art on a global scale.
I propose some artistic interventions that exemplify and illustrate Southeast Asian contemporary art’s accelerated dynamics, beginning with preceding concepts of intermedia andmedia conversions from the Western perspective that have reached art globally in digital culture, and moving onto specific works by Southeast Asian artists.

# Intermedial encounters between film, video, and computer
The first example, ALIAS YEDERBECK REDUX(2011/2016) by Frank Geßner from Germany, isa cinematic installation of a panorama projection that interlocks elements of expanded cinema
and of animation film in a spatially immersive
presentation (Fig. 1). It evokes a new genre thatdemands fresh terms and descriptions. The author, initiator, artist, and protagonist multiplies
Fig. 1 Frank Geßner, ALIAS YEDERBECK REDUX, 2011/2016
himself in the work in several dimensions andfunctions, as he explained in his 2014 presentation “Expanded Animation Cinema” at the ZKM.
This is an exemplary case of intermedia conversion. It consists of twelve screens or panoramas,
each composed of twenty-one displays of three by seven, arranged clockwise in a precise temporal progression. Unlike a painted or computer-animated, virtual 360-degree spatial construction,
here no coherence of visual-narrative is achieved; it is discontinuity that stands afore.
Each screen, or block, projects twenty-one portraits, each based on a central figure, or
alias, who acts as the marker for the virtual forms of the multiple selves in digital culture. Then
we have the cinematic images present various experimental studies in cinematographic representation. For example, the panel picture, seriality, horizontal-vertical layering, condensationof time-and-space in a moving picture, animated sculpture, and the tableau vivant, and thetransition from analog to digital compositing. Finally, the artistic-creative research engages inan aesthetic discourse on the interactive potential of the simulated space within the panorama
painting and of the temporal succession within the projection of film. In the condensed pictorial space, with accelerated and decelerated depictions of motion, this form of interaction anddialogue brings the nature of painting, photography, and film come into play with one another,and conjures them anew in the digital mode of animation. It refreshes the discourse on thedigital mode of animation, resulting in highly hybridized forms of crisscrossed connections
between the real/virtual, fictional/simulated, and other kinds of animated image fields and narrative spaces which can all be cited, re-mixed, and re-arranged in completely different ways.
Geßner creates this conceptual site by shifting the cinematographic principle from thelinear to non-linear narrative development. That is what creates the expanded animation: while
given a different starting point on the linear, horizontal time-axis, each screen of the dodecahedral panorama unfolds simultaneously. This synchronization of the linear repetition—amultiplication of repetition—makes the cinematographic animation an endless duplication, an“expansion,” thus generating the expanded animation cinema and reflecting on the site or spherebeyond its own media-specificity and limitations.

Art & Technology: Changing Times, Contemporary Trends, Future Platforms［11］# Network thinking of diversity and difference
I would like to now give two examples of Vietnamese video art for thinking about networks as a
new cultural form. To begin, a brief historical overview.
The examples of video art that I am going to touch upon are characterized by Vietnam’s
communist governmental system and the historico-cultural division between the North andSouth that culminated in the Vietnam War. Video art developed after the country’s politicalopening since the 1990s and emerged significantly more at the end of 2000. However, Nguyen
Nhu Huy, a video artist and curator-initiator of the private art space Zero Station in Ho Chi Minh
City, explains that it is still difficult to obtain licenses from the authorities to show video works,
and that there is no market for video art. According to him, young artists can hardly show theirworks, much less sell them. Foreign influences and initiatives thus play an important role forcontemporary art in Vietnam. This is partly a result of strict censorship, which, as in Indonesia
and Myanmar, affects above all literature and performance art, and it is also partly a consequence of inadequate or nonexistent training and infrastructure in Vietnam.
Historically speaking, the effects of Vietnam’s North-South divide are reflected exemplarily, among many genres, in video art. And it must also be noted that there is a “local” Vietnameseand “international” Vietnamese divide that also parallels this. That is to say, artists who havestudied in the United States and returned to Ho Chi Minh City are considered, inside Vietnam,“international” Vietnamese artists who, for the most part, have better technical and aesthetic
preconditions than the under-funded collectives and the “local” artists who were born andtrained in Hanoi. Artists in Hanoi, generally speaking, battle against the interventions of censorship and also lack of resources, and start with a disadvantage in the availability of technology
and market in comparison to the “international” artists based in the South.
Although these differences have become less apparent in the course of the 1986 revisionof the politico-economic reform (Doi Moi), they still affect the present conditions in art; censorship is still maintained. And although private enterprise is permitted and encouraged, the lackof infrastructure allows only a narrow window for artists to succeed. Vietnamese art did notexperience an upturn until the 1990s, first in the “traditional arts” such as painting and lacquer
work, followed by performances and video installations, which mold the present-day landscapeof Vietnamese art. In Ho Chi Minh City, Sàn Art shows video art from Vietnam and Southeast
Asia, while Zero Station regards itself as a site for workshops, discussions, and presentations.
With almost non-existent means, critical and scholarly explorations of the developments invideo and media art are pursued.
I am interested in the Japanese-Vietnamese
video artist Jun Nguyen-Hatsushiba, who wasborn in Japan and educated in the United States.
He is one of the most internationally successful
artists and has exhibited at the biennials in
Venice and Gwangju. His installation Memorial
Project Nha Trang, Vietnam: Toward the Complex –For the Courageous, the Curious and the Cowards(2001) addresses the divisions that have pervaded throughout the history of Vietnam (Fig. 2).
Local fishermen pull heavy rickshaws underwaFig. 2 Jun Nguyen-Hatsushiba, Memorial Project Nha Trang,
Vietnam: Towards the Complex – For the Courageous, the Curious
ter over the seabed. This recalls the Vietnamese
and the Cowards, 2001 © Jun Nguyen-Hatsushiba Courtesy:
refugees who tried to leave the country and died
Mizuma Art Gallery, Tokyo/the artist Commissioned by
Yokohama Triennale 2001
during the attempt in 1975 after the North overran Saigon and renamed it Ho Chi Minh City.
Despite the country’s unification and growinginterest by the international art scene since the

Art & Technology: Changing Times, Contemporary Trends, Future Platforms［12］1990s, in the context of contemporary art, theNorth-South divide still remains in the country’s
and its people’s subconscious.
The other example are the twin artist-duo
Le Brothers who are from Hue, a town on theborder which once divided North and South
Vietnam. Their artistic practice is very performative, taking up historical events from the times of
the Khmer Empire, the French colonization, andFig. 3 Le Brothers, Into the Sea, 2011/2013 © Le Brothers
2011–2017 - Culture Of Peace Ambassadors to Vietnam for
the Vietnam War and referring to various relithe Worldwide Peace Marker Project collective Collection
gious practices. It is worth mentioning that,of the artists
Buddhist rituals were in particular forbidden in
South Vietnam. Through such topics, they challenge their own tradition and history, culture,and present-day political ideologies. The three-channel video installation Into the Sea (2011/2013)shows the two brothers in a boat on the river where the two halves of the country meet (Fig. 3).
While imitating Buddhist meditations, performing ritual acts, or fighting each other, the twins
are tied together with a red ribbon; an umbilical cord that ties North and South Vietnam. Thissymbolism recalls Buddhist burial rituals, the red flag of the communist regime, and the countless victims who were lost in the Vietnam War.

# Global contemporary Indonesian art and design
Another example are the Indieguerillas, the duobased in Yogyakarta, Indonesia. In Yogyakarta,
there are not so much video art practices as moreof transdisciplinary, trans-genre practices, particularly among younger artists. Indieguerillas
stand somewhere in between art and design andprovide an impetus for Yogyakarta’s contemporary art scene. They belong to the digital-native
generation who are familiar with various media
and the Internet, but are also familiar with theFig. 4 Indieguerillas, Golden Nation, 2015 © Indieguerillas
Courtesy: Mizuma Art Gallery, Tokyo
Indonesian alternative scene that first began
developing in the 2000s. With backgrounds ininterior design and visual communications,
their productivity extends to all kinds of media, ranging from painting, installation, andprint, incorporating the pop culture, alternative music, and design scenes of a time when the
Indies culture in Indonesia was booming in the market, first in Jakarta and then in Bandung.
Magazines and objects made by the Indieguerillas are sold in stores where Indie music finds
its clientele. Here, we see a new, young culture emerging and developing its own means of
production and distribution.
In their works and practices, the Indieguerillas take up the theme of the governmentcitizen relationship, oftentimes pushing the boundaries of governmental critique. While incorporating current popular trends from Japan or Korea, the Indieguerillas continue to use oldcharacters from wayang kulit (Indonesian shadow puppetry) that are familiar to everyone, insisting that one must know one’s own culture, one’s roots. So the wayang kulit figures, whichpermeate the world of the Indieguerillas together with popular culture icons such as Superman,
advertising emblems, robots, and science-fiction figures, are a constant component of their aesthetic conception of making traditional forms fit the present.
The triptych Golden Nation (2015) is an acrylic painting framed in brass, in which theIndieguerillas turn their gaze to the role of social media in Indonesia (Fig. 4). The work displays
Art & Technology: Changing Times, Contemporary Trends, Future Platforms［13］

“brand-name wares” as if in gift boxes. With the triptych’s golden frame, the artists point to anational development where social media has become a platform on which to exhibit personalmaterialism rather than to communicate with others. They subversively enwrap their critiqueagainst the state of the nation in golden boxes. Their critical stance against consumerism is also
recognizable from their works, be it painting, sculptures, or installations, all of which are saturated with wayang kulit characters and their black humor.
To conclude, I would like to reiterate the importance and necessity of re-evaluating andre-analyzing the specific environments from which media art is born today. Investigating how
artists negotiate with, adapt to, and occasionally challenge the media-saturated, networked
landscape provides us with the opportunity to expand our scope of research to far greater depths.
Southeast Asian or Asia-Pacific artists contribute to and, at the same time, critique “global art”
precisely due to their site-specificity, their located-ness, their roots. But it is also their strong
connection and flexible adaptation to the states of art and the nation or region that define theirpractices and criticality.

Art & Technology: Changing Times, Contemporary Trends, Future Platforms［14］Session 2 |Presentations

Case Studies in the Interface
between Socio-Technology and Art
The guest speakers at the symposium were international artists
who experiment with various forms of expression using contemporary digital technologies.
They each presented their views on the dual themes of “art and technology”
and how they apply those views to their artistic practice.

Speakers’ Profiles
Daito Manabe (Artist / Rhizomatiks)
Born in 1976, Daito Manabe graduated from Tokyo University of Science and the International
Academy of Media Arts and Sciences [IAMAS]. He uses programming and interaction design to cre­ate ways of discovering the inherent appeal of programming, computers, phenomena, and bodies.
He is the technical supervisor for the music group Perfume’s live performances and has directedmusic videos for Nosaj Thing, FaltyDL, and Squarepusher, as well as collaborating on projects with awide range of other musicians and artists, including Ryuichi Sakamoto. He founded Rhizomatiks in2006 and since 2015 he has co-directed Rhizomatiks Research with Motoi Ishibashi to create proj­
ects with a stronger emphasis on research and development.
http://www.daito.ws

Andreas Siagian (Artist, Engineer / Lifepatch)
Based in Yogyakarta, Andreas Siagian is an artist with a background in civil engineering. His interest
in interdisciplinary practice began when he was in college, where he studied programming lan­
guages to create a software for highway geometric design calculation and planning. His activity
includes installations, workshops, and festivals with a focus on the creative community, alternativeeducation, DIY/DIWO culture, and interdisciplinary collaboration. Lifepatch is a citizen initiative
formed in 2012 with a group of experts in other fields. It aspires to develop local resources and skills
through technology and education. In 2014, Lifepatch won the Digital Communities Honorary
Mention at Prix Ars Electronica.
https://andreassiagian.wordpress.com

Jeffrey Shaw  (Artist / Director, Centre for Applied Computing and Interactive Media [ACIM], City University of Hong Kong)
Born 1944 in Melbourne, Jeffrey Shaw has been experimenting with new media since the late 1960s.
He started creating interactive projects in the 1980s and remains a leading figure in the field of
media art. His frequent collaborations with engineers and programmers have produced many works
that suggest new meanings and perspectives on technology. He was founding Director of theInstitute for Visual Media at the ZKM | Center for Art and Media in Karlsruhe, Germany, from 1991 to
2002. After six years as the Dean of the renowned School of Creative Media at City University ofHong Kong [CityU], he is currently CityU Endowed Chair Professor of Media Art and director of theCentre for Applied Computing and Interactive Media [ACIM]. In 2015 he was awarded the Ars
Electronica Golden Nica for Visionary Pioneer of Media Art.
http://www.jeffreyshawcompendium.com

Presentation (Extract)

Rhizomatiks: 10 Years of Activity
Daito Manabe Artist / Rhizomatiks

Media artist, Daito Manabe, who founded Rhizomatiks
in 2006, employs media art techniques for various
works such as collaborating with advertisements andcommercial facilities, as well as exhibiting his works
at museums. Rhizomatiks has steadily expanded its
fields over the years, and currently has three divisions: architecture, design, and research. As directorof the Research Division, Mr. Manabe engages in almost all aspects of its activities, from computer
programming and graphic creation, to project planning and production.

Higher level of engineering
supports production
Since Rhizomatiks celebrates its 10th anniversary
this year, I would like to look back on our 10 yearsof activity.
Rhizomatiks originally started with three members, focusing mostly on Web and UI design. In
2008, a video work we uploaded on YouTube garnered much attention, and in 2010, we won wide
acclaim for a television commercial for Nike, as wellas the supervision and production of videos for theconcert of popular female techno pop group
Perfume. Perfume concert stage productions attracta great deal of attention for every concert tour, for
the use of cutting-edge visual equipment and computer technologies.
As we took on more advertisement and entertainment-related projects, and also made several
television appearances, Rhizomatiks’ visibility grew,
and the types of projects we are engaging in havechanged over the last few years. Especially in thepast year or so, we have had fewer visual or Web
production works. Our main projects have moved
on to those involving actual spaces, such as stage
production, projection mapping, and installation.
For example, we were in charge of the planning andstaging of the final event before the close of the
National Stadium.
Rhizomatiks itself is also gradually growing insize. We now have a number of engineers withhigher-level expert knowledge, and we are geared
up to support other bases like analysis technology
and machine learning, whereas before I would havedone everything from engineering to graphic

Art & Technology: Changing Times, Contemporary Trends, Future Platforms

creation. We currently have 30 staff members, andour annual sales, which were 6 million yen 10 years
ago, have grown to 1.0 billion yen. Our largest clientin 2016 is Google.

Technological advancements
accompanying innovative ideas
Rhizomatiks has been continuously active aroundthe world, including exhibiting installation art at domestic venues such as the Yamaguchi Center for Arts
and Media [YCAM] and NTT InterCommunication
Center [ICC], as well as participating in various media
art-related festivals overseas.

While the work exhibited at ICC in 2006 was a simple piece that involved interactively changing LED
patterns set on a staircase, in the following years,
our works became more and more complex in design, along with the advancement of technology.
There have been many instances of commission
work where the interactive art technology tested inart projects has been requested to be applied atcommercial facilities.
There have also been numerous projects where
we supported artists as engineers, notably thesound installation work filmachine jointly created bya musician, Keiichiro Shibuya, and a complex systems scientist, Takashi Ikegami, also displayed in2006 at YCAM (Fig. 1). All of these experiences haveformed what Rhizomatiks is today.
In addition, we are continuously taking on independent projects that are not commissioned bycorporations or other organizations. These projects
aim to realize Rhizomatiks’ own unique ideas.

［16］

The difference between commission works andindependent projects is whether there is some formof constraint, and the former do not always allow us
to do what we wish. Therefore, in order to proactively embody a novel idea, we must continue towork on independent projects, even if it means investing large amounts of funds.
Take, for example, our collaboration with
Elevenplay. The dance piece features a space consisting of several dancers and numerous objects,
with audience members wearing head-mounted
displays and riding automatically controlled mobile chairs through the space (Fig. 2). The company
allocated its R&D budgets to the development of
this piece, which was presented to the public in
2015 as an independent performance. This dance
piece, titled border, demonstrates our accumulated
expertise in virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) combined with Elevenplay’s performanceand choreographer Mikiko’s bodily expressions. It
successfully developed into an unprecedented
performance that currently enjoys invitations fromcompanies based in such overseas locations as the
Silicon Valley and Montreal.

Fig. 1 Keiichiro Shibuya + Takashi Ikegami, filmachine, 2006
Photo: Ryuichi Maruo (YCAM) Courtesy: Yamaguchi Center for
Arts and Media [YCAM]

During the past few years, Mr. Manabe has been
actively working on a dance piece project using
drone technology.

I am thinking of how we can pair drones with AR,
synthesizing wirelessly sent images with computer
graphics (CG), to create artwork. The technologicalissues have been resolved, but the challenge is how
we can provide the audience with the image oftraveling back and forth between real and virtual
spaces. We are continuing discussions among
Rhizomatiks’ staff to make this piece come to life.
As technologies, devices, and applications
evolve daily, if the first party to announce an idea isthe winner, then the one that has the latest machine
would be advantageous. Therefore, innovative ideas
are very important, and we are searching for thebest venue to unveil the piece, and continue theprocess of trial and error to culminate in bringing
the ideas to life as artwork.

Art & Technology: Changing Times, Contemporary Trends, Future Platforms

Fig. 2 Dance piece border (2016), a collaboration between
Elevenplay and Rhizomatiks Reserch Photo: Atsushi Tanabe
Courtesy: Yamaguchi Center for Arts and Media [YCAM]［17］

Presentation (Extract)

Professional Amateurs
Andreas Siagian
Artist, Engineer / Lifepatch

Andreas Siagian is an artist-engineer based in
Yogyakarta, Indonesia. He is co-founder of an art andscience collective called Lifepatch. In Indonesia, acollective is a popular form of an initiative launchedby artists, and has the country’s political backgroundto thank for its development.

The emerge of the art collectives andcreative communities
Indonesia is the world’s largest island country, withmore than 13,000 islands. It was a Dutch colony fora long time from the 1600s. In 1945, nationalist
leader Sukarno declared independence and became
the president; in 1949, after an armed struggle,
Indonesia won independence from the Netherlands.
Then a coup d’etat in 1965 set the stage for the New
Order under Suharto. In 1998, students across thenation, dissatisfied with Suharto’s dictatorship,
occupied the parliament building and organizedmassive demonstrations on the streets, finallybringing down the Suharto government, which had
ruled the Indonesian archipelago for over 30 years.
This means that 1998 marked the beginning ofa new era in Indonesia. Suharto had banned any organized activities and interactions among different
organizations, and consequently artists and experts
in different fields began to form art collectives ascommunities right after he resigned. Therefore, 1998
stands out in Indonesia’s art history as a highly political year.
Among the famous collectives launched in the
post-Suharto years is Taring Padi. The group centered its activities on festivals in Yogyakarta, and its
art projects that aimed to change the status quo inIndonesia were notable. There are many other different collectives that focus on specific areas ofactivity. They all came into being thanks to the demise of Suharto’s dictatorship, and have continued
to develop by organizing numerous art events, festivals, and workshops designed to support art projects
in Indonesia, since the national government won’t
develop any infrastructure for the arts.

Art & Technology: Changing Times, Contemporary Trends, Future Platforms

Collectives enabledcollaborative projects
Siagian’s practice is largely influenced from his involvement in the emerging art collective and creative
communities.

As for my career as an artist-engineer, my interest ininterdisciplinary started during my college years
from 1998–2005. I always wanted to combine mycivil engineering formal education background withinformation technology, and so I started to learn
programming language as an autodidact. After
graduating, I already had experience in developing
civil engineering software for highway geometricaldesign and calculation. From there on I obtainedinteresting software through different networks andI was introduced to creative programming. These
factors nudged me into media art.
As an introduction to interdisciplinary collective work and professional amateur practice, let me
introduce you to the piece titled Intelligent Bacteria:
Saccharomyces cerevisiae (IB: SC) as an example. The
team known as the House of Natural Fiber (HONF)
presented this piece, but the main people who workin this piece are Nur Akbar Arofatullah (Akbar), Agus
Tri Budiarto (Timbil), and Julian Abraham (Togar).
The three of them led the project to collaborate withmicrobiologists, scientists, and artists to create it.
They had drawn inspiration from the methanol poisoning that claimed many lives in Indonesia at thetime. Since the country’s liquor tax was incredibly
high, people took to mixing hazardous alcohol withother substances, which lead to lethal methanol
poisoning cases in society.

［18］This drove scientist Akbar to suggest that people should make liquor themselves. Together with
Timbil and Togar, they experiment with local tropicalfruits to make safe-to-drink wine that can safely be
produced in a kitchen. They distributed their findings from the experiments by conducting many
open workshops, which random audience attended
after seeing the publication through social media(Fig. 1). They eventually demonstrated the fermentation process, and also presented an electronic
installation that used a microphone and amplifier.
The installation was a simple instrument to sonify
the fermentation process and turn it into an electro-acoustic sounds. It won the Transmediale Awardat the art festival held in Berlin, Germany in 2011.
In 2012, Timbil, Akbar, Adhari Donora, Budi

Prakosa, Agung Firmanto, and I, founded a collective called Lifepatch – citizen initiative in art, scienceand technology in Yogyakarta, and in the following
years, we embarked fully on our projects whileboosting our membership (Fig. 2). Today, Lifepatch
consists of 11 members who include programmers,
designers, and scientists other than artists, and wework in a space with a small laboratory. Our activities center on DIY workshops in which we focus on
the distribution of interdisciplinary collaborationand self-developing amateur practices.
Besides offering workshops, Lifepatch has presented artworks, such as an example in 2013, when
we presented an electronic device to present an installation titled Moist Sense (Fig. 3). The idea wascreating a simple interactive installation using affordable materials and accessible technology. Using
an affordable CMOS chip that cost only 20 centsapiece to make, Moist Sense combines a potted plantwith several electronic circuits so that it “sings”
when it has more water.

Long-term individual andinstitutional collaboration process

Fig. 1 Fruit Fermentation Workshop in Survive Garage, Yogyakarta,
2012 Photo: Agung Firmanto

Fig. 2 Lifepatch member in 2015, from Left to Right: Sita Magfira,
Nur Akbar Arofatullah (Akbar), Arifin Wicaksono (Becak), Budi
Prakosa (Iyok), Andreas Siagian (Ucok), Agus Tri Budiarto(Timbil), Ferial Afiff (Al), Agung Firmanto (Geger), Wawies Wisnu
Wisdantio, Adhari Donora (Ade), Mohammad Fadhol (Dholy)Fig. 3 Lifepattch’s Moist Sense (2013) in Media/Art Kitchen, Bangkok
Art and Cultural Centre, 2014 Photo: Jo Lene Ong

Art & Technology: Changing Times, Contemporary Trends, Future Platforms

We were privileged to do intensive collaboration
with scientist Marc Dusseiller from Switzerland, cofounder of the global Hackteria network – open
source biological art. Lifepatch has been part of the
global network of Hackteria and Marc has been
coming to Indonesia regularly to extend our collaboration. As a result, in 2014, Hackteria and Lifepatch
co-organized HackteriaLab 2014 – Yogyakarta.
We also did other collaborations apart from
that. Together with Budi Prakosa we did solid collaborative open source project based on Babygnusbuino,an ATtiny85 micro-controller development boardthat is compatible with Arduino IDE. While Arduino
normally costs around $20, Babygnusbuino offers
almost the same functions with fewer features andcan be made by hand for roughly around $1, so it
is significantly more affordable for Indonesians.
Furthermore, the project is open-source, whichmeans the blueprint can be copied and modified,
and we have offered workshops to teach participants how to make and use it.
We then initiated a long collaborative projectusing the ATtiny85 chip called 8-bit Mixtape. The
idea was to develop a playful pocketsize synthesizer
based on the ATtiny85 chip to generate and modulate algorithmic symphony from 1 line of code. The
user can create music on the spot just by manipulating the pots and switches on it (Figs. 4, 5). The projectproduced many variants in the process, which we
also use it as a way to distribute knowledge on DIY
electronics through workshops activities. This project has been ongoing since 2013 and we keep on
developing it and invite others to join the project.

［19］

Experimenting
as a way of communication
In 2013, I did collaboration with two Australian artists: Michael Candy and Pia van Gelder. We createdan installation titled MOS (Mountain Operated
Synthesizer) that made Mount Merapi, an active volcano in Indonesia, into a musical instrument (Fig. 6).
The mountain is always shrouded in fog, and theinstallation was designed to convert the humidity,
temperature, and wind captured with its sensors
into sound. The idea of the installation is to respondto the constantly changing weather in the mountains and make it audible. We also did this piece bylooking also at the local myth surrounding Mount
Merapi, in which the local considered it as a deity,
which protects the city of Yogyakarta. So our project
was also to make an instrument for to be played by
Merapi himself. Unfortunately, Mount Merapi
erupted one month after we installed the piece, so
I’m guessing the collaborative work is most probably destroyed.
The collaboration of the piece called MOS wasdone through the Instrument Builders Project,which was curated and initiated by Kristi Monfries
and Joel Stern. The project itself was a project between artists, musicians, and instrument builders
from Australia and Indonesia to engage in collaboration in order to build sound instruments/installation
during a 3-week residency production program. The
project was excuted thrice, twice in Indonesia andonce in Australia.
I participated in 2 out of 3 of the projects andthe final result was exhibited in the National Galleryof Victoria, Melbourne in 2015. The Project acted asa catalyst for the creation of many other different
artworks, all of which were collaborations between
artists and experts. This shows how vital collaboration is for creativity. I think this project is one of themost influential projects in my personal practices, as
it created the environments for collaboration to produce and realize ideas in such an intense time. It
also values the process of interaction in the projectand encourages experimentation to realize ideas
even though its failure factor is relatively high.

Art & Technology: Changing Times, Contemporary Trends, Future Platforms

Fig. 4 8-bit Mixtape – Classic edition, is maintaining the originalidea of the project Photo: Andreas Siagian

Fig. 5 8-bit Mixtape 0.9, a workshop modul used by Lifepatch
Photo: Andreas Siagian

Fig. 6 Pia van Gelder, Michael Candy and Andreas Siagian, MOS(Mountain Operated Synthesizer), 2013. Part of The Instrument
Builders Project Photo: Pia van Gelder［20］

Presentation (Extract)

The Art to Come (and Where It Came From)
Jeffrey Shaw
Artist / Director, Centre for Applied Computing and Interactive Media [ACIM], City University of Hong Kong

Jeffrey Shaw, who started his career as an artist in
the late 1960s, led the technology art scene at thetime, and has since been at the forefront of media
art. Mr. Shaw’s presentation centered on some of hisbest known creations from a period of over 50 years.

In the late 1960s, spectators became
principle actors in art
Previously, the viewer was merely a spectator of art,
whether it was a painting, a photograph, or thecinema. However, in the late 1960s, a revolution
occurred. Artists shifted from making things to creating situations, resulting in works where the viewer
can inhabit immersive spaces of representation.
One example is MOVIEMOVIE, presented at a film
festival in 1968, in which a projection screen was
inflated to project images from various angles (Fig. 1).

The viewers were invited to jump into the inflated
screen and be embodied in the cinematic space.
From this period on, the spectator became the principle actor in art.
Then in the late 1980s, technologies including
virtual reality (VR) and digital imagery became partof art, and this art form came to be collectively
known as ‘media art.’ The Legible City, a work presented at the 1989 World Design Exposition held in
Nagoya, is a prime example of media art at the time
(Fig. 2). As the viewer pedals a stationary bicycle set infront of a screen, the image on the screen changes,
creating the impression of cycling in a virtual environment. Hence, it was a work that is transformedby the actions of the viewer.

Important key
for the future of media art
Fig. 1 Jeffrey Shaw, MOVIEMOVIE, 1967

Fig. 2 Jeffrey Shaw, The Legible City, 1989

Art & Technology: Changing Times, Contemporary Trends, Future Platforms

Furthermore, Mr. Shaw mentioned several key factors concerning future media art modalities.

The first is the panoramic gaze, where the viewer
can step into a 360-degree surrounding screen andenjoy what is now a Google Earth-like experience ina panoramic projection environment, or one wherethe viewer can move freely within a monitor to appreciate the environment, like a virtual art museum,for instance. On a related note, 3D is also an important factor. In PLACE - Hampi (2006), produced at theWorld Heritage Site of Hampi, India, stereo panoramic photo cameras were used to create a fusion
work between photography and virtual reality (Fig. 3).
Moreover, a quantity of media art incorporates interactivity as a modality, where the viewer performs［21］the artwork, and with the introduction and advancement of computers, this has become more andmore complex and elaborate.
Another important notion is that the viewer isthe camera. In a cinema, the viewer is usually
obliged to sit and see what is shown. However, witha 360-degree panoramic image, the viewer controls
the point of view. There has been an actual installation where the viewer sits in a rotating chairsurrounded by a screen and chooses what area tofocus on, depending on where the chair is moved. In
this case, the viewer becomes the director and editor of the image provided by the artist.
Another modality that is bound to be important, and has already been tested in various ways, isthe conjunction of the real and virtual. The Golden
Calf from 1994 was an initial attempt at introducing
augmented reality (AR). When the viewer points atablet at an empty pedestal, the monitor reveals a
3D golden calf (Fig. 4). These technologies can nowadays be applied to mechanisms like reproducing anenvironment such as a cave using wire frames, sothat when you point a tablet at an empty wall, thefull-scale cave painting from the cave appears on
the monitor.
Another important modality is the notionof distributed and recombinatory narrative. In
T_Visionarium II (2006), the viewer can edit in one’s
own way from a database of 30,000 video clips existing in a 3D space. The metadata attached to each
video allows the viewer to create certain groupingsof these video clips, or search using arbitrary tags
like love, anger, joy, running, sitting, male, and female, and cluster the images to construct theviewer’s own combinatorial narrative (Fig. 5). On theother hand, the notion of generative and self-organizing is also an important modality, where thebehavior of a computer system is completely
self-regulating, and acts within those parameters,
but will never repeat itself.

Fig. 3 Jeffrey Shaw, PLACE - Hampi, 2006

Fig. 4 Jeffrey Shaw, Golden Calf, 1994

Fig. 5 Jeffrey Shaw, T_Visionarium II, 2006

Art and technology is a conjunction
and a disjunction
In recent years, Mr. Shaw’s activities have been focusing on re-enacting and re-embodying cultural
heritage from the viewpoint of what technology can
do for the past, rather than for the future.

In the Dunhuang cave project, the cave’s interior
was photographed by laser scanning and processedin 3D and other effects to reproduce it in a different
setting. The viewer could simulate looking aroundthe cave while shining a torch, and in addition, amechanism to turn music on, and a gimmick fromwhich 3D dancers appear were applied inside thecave. This was not just a reproduction; it was there-embodying of a culture through technology.
There is also another effort to visualize the

Art & Technology: Changing Times, Contemporary Trends, Future Platforms

movements of Intangible Cultural Heritages, andwe have archived the movements of such peopleas Hong Kong’s kung fu masters, Indian dancers,
and Japan’s kyogen actors using motion capture
technology.
In a more modern approach, there is an image
work that filmed a dancer, Saburo Teshigawara, fromsix different points of view with 3D cameras (Fig. 6). By
walking around a device with corresponding screens
set for the different camera’s viewpoints, you can
see Teshigawara’s performance on a one-to-one
scale, as if he is dancing right in front of your eyes.
At the conclusion of his presentation, Mr. Shawsummed up the relationship between art and technology in the following way.

［22］

Technology is always future-oriented to escape theimperfections of the present. This represents the
feeling that even when a technology that is somewhat better than the present one comes forth, thepresent is inadequate. But on the other hand, art
lives in the present and espouses life’s imperfections.
The fusion of art and technology is a conjunction anda disjunction at the same time, and artists working
with technology must embrace them both. The only
thing that counts and where art comes into play iswhat is happening from what we do now.
Fig. 6 Installation image from Double District (2009) collaborated
with a dancer, Saburo Teshigawara

Art & Technology: Changing Times, Contemporary Trends, Future Platforms［23］Session 3 |Discussion

Tokyo’s Range of Possibilities
as a Platform for Media Art
What can media art do for society? The guest artists and curators discussed
potential roles media art can play in Tokyo in looking toward the Olympics
and what directions it can take to continue developing after the huge international event has ended.

Panelists

Jeffrey Shaw × Andreas Siagian × Daito Manabe × Minoru Hatanaka
Moderator

Kazunao Abe

Moderator’s Profile
Kazunao Abe (Deputy Director, Yamaguchi Center for Arts and Media [YCAM])
Born in 1960, Kazunao Abe graduated from Tokyo University of the Arts with a major in aesthetics
and visual art theory. From 1990 to 2001, he was co-curator of Canon ARTLAB, a cultural develop­
ment platform established by Canon Inc. He then joined the team preparing to launch Yamaguchi
Center for Arts and Media [YCAM] and since the center opened in 2003, he has overseen all of its
activities as Artistic Director, (since 2012 Deputy Director). Major exhibitions include Rafael LozanoHemmer’s Amodal Suspension (2003), Ryuichi Sakamoto and Shiro Takatani’s LIFE – fluid, invisible,
inaudible... (2007), Otomo Yoshihide/Ensembles (2008), Seiko Mikami’s Desire of Codes (2010), andinternational group show Art and Collective Intelligence (2013).
http://www.ycam.jp

Cultural strategies should be artist driven—Now, we will move on to a discussion session by today’s panel of guests. The following questions are part of the background. What media art should Metropolitan Tokyo activate so that the art
will work well in the Tokyo Metropolitan Festival and other events held in advance of the Tokyo 2020
Olympics, or in the promotion of art scenes and the development of systems for those scenes? How
can platforms for media art be established in Tokyo and across Asia? From the viewpoint of you as
creators of artwork and messages to the public, we wish to receive your suggestions on what is needed
as we look toward the future.
Let’s start with Mr. Andreas Siagian. Mr. Siagian, you are based in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, andalso interact with various other regions. Do you have any specific suggestions, such as what you hopefor Tokyo to act on?
Andreas Siagian (Hereinafter AS): All art and thepractice of artists are strongly connected to social
conditions. Therefore, I can’t comment on the current status of Tokyo, but I can tell you what isdifferent about Tokyo and Indonesia.
In our country, as soon as we try to incorporate an interdisciplinary approach in art creation,
we tend to struggle. Even if you are looking for education in media art, there is no such school with astructured curriculum. You can say it is still in cultivation, but the problem is that there is veryminimum structure to support it. Perhaps one reAndreas Siagian ( pp. 15, 18–20)
sponse to this situation is the art collective, whereartists manage their own working spaces. Because they have to build everything from scratch,that allows the artists themselves to participate in society. Through the struggles of organizing
and managing themselves, they have now grown to be able to also function as a training ground.
Events like HackteriaLab (Fig. 1) held in2014 by our organization, Lifepatch and Hackteria
in Switzerland, also O.K. VIDEO, a Media Art festival organized by Ruangrupa in Jakarta since
2000, are both examples of such programs thathave been launched by artists.
Japan is a big contrast to our country.
While we are still struggling, in Japan there are
already systems like the Institute of Advanced
Media Arts and Sciences (IAMAS), fusing art andscience over many years, and putting media art
Fig. 1 Temporary laboratory situation in “HackteriaLab
2014 – Yogyakarta,” an event organized by Lifepatch andin practice. The underlying social background,
Hackteria Photo: Adhari Donora Courtesy: Lifepatch
I think, determines the differences in practice
between Indonesia and Japan.
▶

—Each city has its own background and economic status. Moreover, geographical differences likebeing located continentally, as opposed to being surrounded by ocean, can create different flows ofpeople and goods. Such conditions can lead to differences in the way of communication as well. While
there is no perfect utopia for everyone, how can we overcome these differences between regions?
I believe that, in addition to Tokyo and Indonesia, Singapore and Hong Kong also carry some form of
Art & Technology: Changing Times, Contemporary Trends, Future Platforms［25］

imperfections, while they have distinctive features that may represent a form of utopianism.
Countries and regions in Asia may take different stances and present different imperfections.
Given this fact, I wonder if truly meaningful interaction would be possible between them. Mr. Jeffrey
Shaw, what do you think?
Jeffrey Shaw (Hereinafter JS): The starting point of
discussion is, who wants what, and why? Now, if
the starting point is to serve the interests of media
artists, then you can simply ask the media artists
what they want, and then they will tell you. If you
want to serve the interest of Japanese media artists,
you can ask Japanese media artists, and if you wantto ask the international community, you can ask it.
If you want to focus on Asia, then ask other Asianartists what it is that they want.
The key is to give them the opportunity without defining what they want in advance. Therefore,
Jeffrey Shaw ( pp. 15, 21–23)
one strategy is to make sure things are artist driven.
However, I suspect this question comes from Japan’s philanthropic attitude in its cultural strategies, which is a political issue unique to Japan. This issue is connected to future political agendas
and cannot be overlooked.
If you want to promote the creative industry as a political agenda, the answer is clear. You
can promote the media culture of Japan. If you want to make connections with other Asian
countries, then hold exhibitions of Japanese media art in these countries. It can also go theother way around, which would bring media artists and their exhibitions from these countries
to Japan.
So, you need to have a whole range of strategies and models. Japan already has numerous
models, including museums, workshops, and artists in residence. In the first place, you need toactually define what your real objective is, to better understand it, and then once you have aclear sense of where your objective is, then you need to collect the best possible advices toachieve that objective.
As far as connectivity is concerned, there are many effective mechanisms. If you want tohave creative connectivity in Asia, you can join research projects with cultural institutions anduniversities across Asia, as well as with the artists themselves.
▶

Artists’ involvement with the public—If Tokyo is to launch something in the future, what should it choose? The project shouldn’t besomething that tries to benefit everyone; rather, it should be something specialized and must actually
be launched. I believe that, if Tokyo is to create its own media and cultural scenes, approaches andoutputs that cater to conventional arts and museums may not work well, especially if they are meant
to provide something that looks toward the future. In that case, what should the future look like, what
processes and systems should we develop to realize that vision, and what else should we propose?
Mr. Manabe, as an artist based in Tokyo, do you have any preferences on how you wish for things
to be? For example, Rhizomatiks is now able to self-produce works within its organization and deliver
Art & Technology: Changing Times, Contemporary Trends, Future Platforms［26］them. Something may be missing there, however. Do you have any suggestions about opportunities orplatforms for projects of a more public nature or for works that can be presented at public facilities?
Daito Manabe (Hereinafter DM): We have conducted workshops before in other Asian countries,
including Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore, but
most of them ended up being one-off projects. But
for us, creating an artwork is usually made possible only through a long period of research anddevelopment. So, I think there would be many opportunities if these projects become something
like joint research.
However, in the current state, this would beeasier if the partnership was with a corporation,
but for example, when it comes to partnering with Daito Manabe (overseas artists or universities, there needs to besomeone in between to coordinate. If there is an
opportunity like that available, I would be very interested.

pp. 15, 16–17)▶

—In that case, how much time and on what scale are needed for it to be workable? Media art inparticular requires time just to develop a concept, because it needs to be backed up by technology. You
have works that finally came into shape after years of incubation. Both Mr. Hatanaka and I as curators
have experienced something similar many times. This indicates that something like a system designed
to help develop works in progress is the key. I believe Mr. Shaw’s works also became increasingly
convincing in different contexts as they continued to develop under the same base concept. We would
love to hear your suggestions for alternative ideas or platforms from an artist’s perspective. These
ideas or platforms should not be modeled after one-off festivals that offer only fleeting excitement.
DM: In 2015, a new cultural complex called the Asia Culture Center (ACC) was established in
Gwangju, South Korea. It is quite a sizable facility, and puts a lot of focus on media art as well asother types of art. At ACC, the curator said that they looked to the YCAM (Yamaguchi Center for
Arts and Media) as a model in various aspects. For ACC’s opening, Rhizomatiks participated with
an opening exhibition that lasted about half a year, and also conducted projects involving workshops and lectures on the technology used in the exhibit. In total, we spent about one year incollaboration with ACC. I feel that with a similar time frame available, it would be possible tocreate a new project.
—So, to bear in mind some publicness, there needs to be a way to allocate a certain amount oftime to do research while being continuously involved.
JS: From the perspective of the supporter, it is probably difficult to invest in the artist’s research.
However, I am thinking that research itself can be made much simpler. Researchers tend to
make research very complex and may take four or five years to fulfill its trajectory. If you have a
research trajectory that is going to take a team of 20 people five years, even because cooperationand projects as its outcome under artists’ motivation are all worthy, what will happen? If you ask
yourself who is going to pay for that, you know it may not be a very realistic approach.
Generally, artists will adapt to the circumstances in which they operate, and they cancome up with realistic approaches. For instance if an artist works with YCAM, they will understand the circumstances and adapt their project to what YCAM requires. The same goes forworking with universities; it is possible to conduct ambitious research by taking advantage ofthe circumstances.
Another important axis is the ability of artists to access the public. An artist makes
Art & Technology: Changing Times, Contemporary Trends, Future Platforms［27］something, but also needs a platform that allows their work to be brought to the public. The
public in turn is allowed to view and enjoy the fruit of this labor. To realize this, it is necessary
to discuss and reflect on the issue from various viewpoints. If the aim is to improve publicness,there needs to be many frameworks in place, including drawing from interdisciplinary frameworks. Instead of relying just on experience, there should also be intelligent discussions.

For the coexistence of festivity and sustainability

JS: Additionally, engaging with the community will also be important for artists. This should not
be something that is temporary; it is about valuing continuity, becoming socially integrated andbeing socially meaningful. This may need to involve an educational aspect and to have ways toencourage the involvement of students. In my point of view, there are many different objectives
for art, and there are various roles and methods that artists can offer. Therefore, you need todetermine the method that is consistent with the objective.
If Tokyo says that “we want a long-term vision to create a platform that will last for the
next 50 years, and make it an important platform for media artists from all over the world,” once
you have that vision in place, then you can start to talk about how to realize that.
—Publicness and the public sphere are definitely key concepts. How far can the real public spaces
in each city coexist with virtual public spaces? And how much openness should be there?
Mr. Hatanaka, what are your thoughts in response to Mr. Jeffrey Shaw’s comments?
Minoru Hatanaka (Hereinafter MH): Along with therest of Japan, Tokyo is currently gearing up for a huge
party: the Tokyo Olympics. We could simply refer tomedia art as a representation of modern Japanese culture, and there is a public sentiment that the reference
would work. However, we already experienced theparty called the Japan World Exposition (EXPO ’70)
in the 1970s, and saw the rise and fall of technology
art and media art at that time. Thanks to that lesson, we can envision how technology will be put
into use after a party of that magnitude, for example. As times like this repeats themselves, I think Minoru Hatanaka ( pp. 03, 04–08)
we need to look for effective measures as we movetoward the next big party. This is the notion I included in my presentation today.
In fact, in the second section today, I was very interested to see how the artists’ conversation would mesh together. However, I didn’t feel any sort of gap at all when listening to the threeartists’ talks, which suggests that there is an underlying common value among them.
I actually felt the same thing when I visited Indonesia in March. I met with Mr. Siagian inIndonesia and visited their community as well. While we were talking, I found out that people intheir community have read the great book from the 1970s titled Design for the Real World: Human
Ecology and Social Change (New York, Pantheon Books) by Victor Papanek, and that they sharevalues presented in the book. It was as if what is written in the book was put into actual practice.
Maybe you can call it “technology for the real world.” The way such media and technology are▶

Art & Technology: Changing Times, Contemporary Trends, Future Platforms［28］

used is probably very important for these people.
Given that YCAM just launched a BioLab (Fig. 2),
I have the feeling that activities similar to thoselaunched by Lifepatch, Mr. Siagian’s collective,
have already begun.
On the other hand, as we are in anticipation of the Olympics, which is, in a sense, a huge
entertainment event, there is an aspect thatsome sector of media art is headed toward supporting that festivity.
—But isn’t the concept of parties and festivity
originally something indigenous? In that case,wouldn’t it be possible to link Tokyo with festivities
rooted in local communities?

Fig. 2 A glimpse of “BioLab” (2016) held at Yamaguchi Center
for Arts and Media [YCAM] Photo: Naoyuki Obayashi(101DESIGN) Courtesy: Yamaguchi Center for Arts andMedia [YCAM]

MH: But I don’t think it’s easy to find something indigenous in modern day Tokyo. That’s why
the party will have to be a virtual one. A virtual party has no substantial nature of a real historicalevent, and it can be histrionic and overly ambitious. The challenge is how to work on those aspects, and how much of a sustainable proposal we can make for such a virtual event. In thislight, what Mr. Shaw told us resonated with me. I also believe that how sustainably we continue
our cultural projects and programs is crucial when we look five to ten years ahead. I think it
would be ideal for opportunities like the Olympics to set the stage for virtual festivities ambitiously designed to coexist with a project that is more practical and rooted in the community.
—A proposal or call for an event designed toward the survival of art, rather than a one-off brilliant festival like fireworks, would probably work better. I mean, hosting an event and offering services
through art would create a festival designed to demonstrate our values to the world, and this type offestival may make it easier to connect to the rest of Asia and the world. Mr. Siagian, do you have an
opinion on this?
AS: When an artist gets to know a local culture, before you know it, the production has alreadybegun. In media art, a function called “lab,” I think, is useful for creating such a festival. For instance, at Medialab-Prado in Spain, a media artist would propose a project and open up
possibilities for collaborators to join the project in an open lab. Because of the open platform
environment, it would naturally create involvement with local people. Similar programs areheld at various places, but for us in Indonesia, the important thing is to first adapt these models
from around the world to our own culture and region.
One example of this is a project on a micro­
computer called Babygnusbuino that we arecollaborating on with the community Hackteria(Fig. 3). It involves a system with simpler functions than the microcomputer called Arduino,
which is used globally, but it can be produced
easily and more cheaply. This has been a joint
project since 2013, but initially, a scientist, Marc
Dusseiller, from Hackteria would just come andspend one month every year with us. As we got toknow each other, we started discussions like why
Fig. 3 Babygnusbuino – Tropical, Lifepatch edition
Photo: Andreas Siagian
we use the system, and why we are sticking withthis simple system that cost one dollar to makerather than the 20-dollar Arduino. It was a sort of
Art & Technology: Changing Times, Contemporary Trends, Future Platforms［29］

a collision of different cultures. For them, buying the Arduino for $20 is still affordable. But forIndonesian people, that’s not the case. That’s very expensive. So, we continued thorough discussions, and as I said in my earlier presentation, we decided to put this project out as open source.
I think it is important that we continuously have this kind of physical meeting so that we
can accumulate our differences and small improvements, which keeps the project going, andleads to achievements ahead. We need a social model and culture that allows this type of research and experimenting.

Financing media art—Now, let’s take some questions from our audience.
Questioner 1: This question is for Mr. Manabe.
Media art is something that is hard to know when
it is complete, and also takes a fair amount of timeto produce. Once you decide to launch a plan,money is probably your No. 1 issue. What kind ofdifficulties did you face during the early phase of
Rhizomatiks?
Also, to Mr. Siagian, I would like to know if
there are forms of support like scholarships or investments that you wish Indonesia as a country
could have, or if there are currently any at this point.
Kazunao Abe

DM: It’s true that there are more ways now to raise
funds than before, such as by crowd funding. For
example, when I was working on my thesis project at IAMAS more than a decade ago, I only had
about 100,000 yen to spend. Nonetheless, I think I was trying to work within the limitations tocome up with a solution that was realistic for me.
Also, afterwards, I was working at the institute for some time, but couldn’t find a way tobalance work with production. That’s why I came up with the idea to start our own business andmanage our own funds. Although I’m a hands-on type, and want to get physically involved in
production, I was lucky because the other two start-up members were producer types, and weregood at collecting funds. I find that when media artists launch a business together, they often
end up with people that have similar sets of skills, for example all members are hands-on types,
and there is no producer, or they clash because their specialties are too similar. In that sense, I
still consider the diversity of our organization when hiring new staff.
AS: In Indonesia, we do not have any kind of support from the government to begin with. That’s
why we have so many art collectives, because it is impossible to do everything yourself. A lot ofartists formed strategies to make collectives since 1998, but a majority of them disappeared
within maybe four years. Learning from these numerous success and failure models, we have tocome up with our own method. We try to apply past methods, and through the trial and error ofmodifying them accordingly to our contexts; we share with others what we discover.
Between the communities, we have this kind of “gasoline” where we exchange the
Art & Technology: Changing Times, Contemporary Trends, Future Platforms［30］

experiences of surviving or organizing something. For example at Lifepatch, we do cross funding, and also take projects outside, so if we have leftover materials they can be taken to the artlab. We also conduct workshops on organization management. We are learning how to survive
as we progress.
Our workshops are generally free, and we do not make any profit. If we charged five dollars, nobody would come. Four dollars? Maybe some will. Because technology is still an exclusive
to them, these workshops are very important for us to create an audience for media art, and tolet people understand what we are doing.

What can artists do for social issues?

Questioner 2: Recently in Japan, there are trends such as artists in residence and revitalizationof local communities through design. I would like to ask Mr. Manabe if you have any ideas onwhat can be improved. Also, Mr. Siagian and Mr. Shaw, if you know of any such programs thatutilized media art to revitalize specific regions, please tell us.
DM: For me, it all depends on what is requested. If the request is to simply “create an artwork,” I
can do whatever I feel like. But if the client is expecting something to happen as a result of thatwork or project, for example if there is an aim to bring in more tourists, that is very different
than simply taking part as an artist. If there is a specific issue to be addressed, I would have to doresearch on it and write out a prescription like a town doctor, which is, in effect, to be a consultant. But media art is often misunderstood to be something like that, and sometimes I do end up
taking on both roles.
—I think media art has both a site-specific aspect and a site-surpassing aspect realized by networking. When the client and the artist both approach each other without that notion in mind, I feel
it is hard to achieve the desired site-specificness and publicness.
Mr. Shaw, how about you?
JS: One particular experience I can talk about is a project on intangible cultural heritage.
Traditionally, museums have an academic approach to things, and professionals try to handle
intangible cultural heritage at their will, but I think there are many weaknesses hidden there.
I would like to stress that this is my experience from my own practice. There is a very interesting intersection between art practice and intangible cultural heritage, in the sense that theartist can bring opportunity to re-embody, reinterpret, and reconstitute the past into the present as a meaningful contemporary experience. Of course, in the process of doing that, the artist
must engage in an exchange with local communities, because what brings these heritages to life
are the needs of the local communities.
For instance, the current project we are doing has to do with kung fu. This is not the famous kung fu that we all know from the movies; it is Hakka kung fu, which is a very local traditionof kung fu with local masters with their own dialect, and has very much to do with the developing and understanding of an idea-syncretic local practice of martial arts.
—The YCAM also hosted an exhibition in 2014 titled Open Call Laboratory – An Exploration into
Social Anthropology in Asia (Fig. 4). The term “exploration” in this title connotes a concept similar to that
Art & Technology: Changing Times, Contemporary Trends, Future Platforms［31］

of the “dive” presented in Earth Diver (Kodansha) by
Shinichi Nakazawa. In this book, the word “dive”
signifies what connects the past and future. The actions taken using the media have the opportunity toreconstitute or re-visualize images that have been
completely buried in the past. This means that intangible items like cultural folk tales and traditions
passed down as experiences only can be preserved
as legacies in a format other than linguistics. I think
this is something media and technology should consciously work on from now on.
Mr. Siagian, what about you?

Fig. 4 A scene from the exhibition Open Call Laboratory –An Exploration into Social Anthropology in Asia (2014,
Yamaguchi Center for Arts and Media [YCAM]) Photo:
Ryuichi Maruo (YCAM) Courtesy: Yamaguchi Center for
Arts and Media [YCAM]

AS: I will also speak from my experience, where
we did this project with a village that is located in the riverbank area of a big city called Surabaya.
This is an illegal village, so to say, because the people are immigrants from other small cities andbuild their house and stay there on the riverbank. As there is a government regulation that says
you have to be 50 meters away from the riverbank, the people built cardboard and concrete houses
along that line. Of course the government knows it is there, but since its illegal, the government
didn't give adequate infrastructure like in other villages. It is very challenging for an artist or art
collective to solve such a social problem.
We spent one month with the villagers and found out they didn't have electricity andwater. Regarding electricity, they actually solved the problem themselves because they found a
power source from somewhere and hooked it up to their houses. But the second problem wasreally challenging. It was water. They live just beside the river, and what was most ironic was,there was the municipality waterworks bureau right beside them. Clean water is right besidethem, but they cannot get access. So a friend of mine said, “OK, we lack knowledge on this topic,
so let’s contact a friend who is a scientist.” We were taught how to filter water from the river andtried out many filtration methods. And finally, we were able to set up a filtration system.
However, the people didn’t know how to maintain it. If it breaks down, nobody would be able torepair it. This was a project from the government, but you can see how inadequate it was.
So, we come back to the starting point again, that the only ones that can solve the problem in a place are the locals. It isn’t us, because we are just facilitators. The only things we could
do were to teach them techniques, how to obtain materials and give them multi-day workshops
until they can utilize the necessary methods themselves. Finally, they were able to obtain a very
simple filtration system and drink water safely. However, I think the reason why we achieved
this was because we had a connection with the local community. There was a mutual acquaintance that facilitated on our behalf with the village.
If we were called to a village in Japan, we may not be able to solve anything. I gained avaluable insight from this experience, which is that we the artists do not solve the problem. We
can only be facilitators to introduce techniques that the people can use for themselves.
—Media art has been in its first step, where we worked on something inside white cubes at museums. Now, I feel that we have reached the second step, where we ask how we can interact and what
we can do with raw realities, including ecosystems and real life in society. We can say that Tokyo isamong the world’s largest consumption cities. I believe that, while we admit and accept this fact, wemust create an elaborate blueprint for new actions and how to take these actions in order for Tokyo to
become a media art hub. We are glad that we were able to receive various inspiring suggestions today,
instead of pushing toward a single conclusion.
Thank you very much for your time today.
* This document consists of edited excerpts from the discussion at the symposium “Art & Technology.”
Art & Technology: Changing Times, Contemporary Trends, Future Platforms［32］

Contribution

An Asian Positioning on Media Art
Masaki Fujihata

Media artist

Social awareness and art practiceDuring the 1990s, when media art began to receive recognition, Japan attracted attention alongside the likes of Germany and Austria. This was thanks in large part to the
opening of the NTT InterCommunication Center [ICC] by Nippon Telegraph andTelephone Corporation (NTT) to commemorate the 100th anniversary of telephony inJapan, though it is no exaggeration to say that at the time only Japan stood out asahead of the pack in Asia. It is thus important that this symposium on art and technology took place at ICC, bringing together participants from around Asia to produce ameaningful discussion about how this field will develop from now. In the 1990s, there
was a tendency for media art to be seen as anticipating the cutting edge of technology.
But today, when media technology has completely permeated our everyday lives, artistic expression that uses such media has taken on a historical scope and become closely
entwined with present-day social issues.
Thinking about media art in this condition today is synonymous with thinking
about the position of contemporary art in society. It then becomes necessary to think
about it from the question of what type of role Japan has taken in the world sincemodern times until now. Particularly in the postwar era, Japan’s level of social well­being accelerated to a whole new level by rapidly acquiring and employing technology
from the United States. The reason for this economic advance is said to be Japanese
dexterity. And yet it was not simply due to dexterity per se, but surely was made possible by experiences underlain by Japan’s long history as well as its profound social
culture. A society with a complex cultural background already has an abundance ofcomparable experiences and examples to draw on for understanding other cultures.
This richness of culture has brought about rapid technological advances in Japan fromthe beginning of the Meiji (1868–1912) until the postwar periods. In the recent development of media art in Japan, I think there is this high comprehension of and receptivity
to technology.

Diversity through art enriches the world
Throughout many discussions held in the 1990s, particularly in Western Europe, media
art was said to have emerged out of the intersection between science, technology, andart, and its very significance was in the crystallization of these discrete fields as works
of art. Until now, this kind of discussion has been understood as expedient for revitalizing academic fields that had become extremely atomized. Considering that,
historically speaking, the categorization of science, technology, and art as separate
disciplines was part of the process of forming modern society, I believe media art issomething that represents the potential for (re)integrating them, something that functions as a means of transcending the very modernity in which they were made. For
example, revisiting the diverse range of instruments made for scientific experiments
around the eighteenth century with a contemporary eye, we can see traces of Man’s
complex thinking behind their creation. While functioning as effective tools to realize
the goals of experiments, these instruments seem to also exist as works of art,or “media art” pieces. And by virtue of this dual dimension—of functioning as an
Art & Technology: Changing Times, Contemporary Trends, Future Platforms［33］

instrument while also revealing the activity of a person—we could surely almost callthese media art. That these instruments are now housed and stored in museums testifies to the fact that we value them above and beyond mere scientific applications.
This way of thinking has accumulated within a history that unfortunately centers
on Western Europe, though it is worth considering that if our understanding of theterms “science,” “technology,” and “art” had differed from their original meanings,
things may not have necessarily developed in the same manner. What I have misgivings about is that the terms “science” (kagaku) and “technology” (gijutsu) in Japan areoften used interchangeably and, moreover, there is a lack of understanding of “art”
and thus, by extension, a particularly poor understanding of the relationship between
society and art. Intrinsic to science is the quest for truth, while at the heart of technology lies the materialization of potential. A scientific quest is an incredibly personal andincredibly solitary activity. But technology, once it has been invented and completed,is transferable to others and even the specific steps toward its invention are frequently
shared. The general understanding of art in Japan would seem to be an extension ofthis kind of understanding of technology. It is a way of thinking in which the level ofcraftsmanship-like perfection is seen as synonymous with its value as a work of art.
Making something beautifully or well always occupies the privileged position in ourvalue judgments. Indeed, the concept of art has played an important role in the birth ofmodern society. For the monarchy and nobility who needed to invent an authority that
could take over the power of the Church, a mimetic representation of the world througha scientific view of the universe, such as the invention of the clock, proved effective as
an alternative that could give them a new position independent from God. However, an
important contemporary concept of art is that it is a manifestation of an individual’s
inner creativity and unique worldview. When our perception of the world navigates intoa single value, art creates diversity in opposition to this, which then enriches the world.
In this context, art and science both occupy the same solitude of not being understoodby the public, of deviating from common sense. It is precisely this solitude that is thereason for my own existence and necessity for expressing myself.

Art’s critical misuse of technology
As I said, in Japan there is a history of attempting to understand art based on the understanding of technology. Art education started as a superficial importation and imitationof Western European art—a phenomenon that is not limited to Japan but takes place allover Asia. In other words, people who are “good at painting” are actually good at
copying “good paintings.” Manuals or some model examples are requested even inclassrooms for teaching media art. No one can learn art; art is not an object of study.
However, within such a framework of understanding about art, we now need to think
about how to situate or think about art that uses latest technology as its medium.
Incidentally, “technology” exists for me as an object or material for contemplation. The majority of technology is invented without a clear goal and only a few
successful examples are manufactured into products that then circulate in society.
Thus, technology has unknown possibilities in virtual, almost all of which are left undiscovered. In order to unearth these, I believe that it becomes important to deal withtechnology with a critical eye. Or it is necessary even to misuse technology. I believe
this has the ability to restore the original relationship between technology and humanity; it is the ability of art. We might call this kind of misuse, bricolage. Indeed, this kindof idiocy is needed to oppose technology that has become so incredibly industrialized
and domesticated by capitalism.
This is basically my personal opinion and scheme of things, the way I see things,
which is ahead of its time. The world, it seems, remains stuck at a stage where everyone is still obsessed with consuming cutting-edge technology and enjoying it as
Art & Technology: Changing Times, Contemporary Trends, Future Platforms［34］entertainment. This is particularly the case for countries that came into contact withtechnology without seeing the actual process of its invention: for them, technology mustseem almost god-like, as if it has suddenly descended from the heavens. Here, technology is still outside the hands of men, and instead is something that exists in the realm of
the divine. Surely this is how technology is understood today in some Asian countries.

Liberating technology from capital
Japan currently occupies a fragile position in regard to other Asian nations. For example,
promoting media art as an art form that handles technology critically provides a valuable opportunity to think about art itself and, in the sense of enhancing equal
opportunities to interact with technology, assumes promoting democratic ideas in the
global context. However, on the other side of this democratic spread, influenced by thewave of globalization, is the strong possibility of it being regarded as compliance with
Western Eurocentrism and, as such, there must also be those who argue that it is notnecessarily Japan’s role to engage in such endeavors. Moreover, while there are many
examples of Japanese media art that receive acclaim, they do not necessarily belong inthis particular context. When we consider that much of the praise is an extension of theassumption that artworks must be made beautifully through the skillful use of technology, it possibly becomes necessary to reinterpret this as a kind of “Japanese uniqueness.”
And yet, I do not think there is meaning in situating media art as, say, an extension of
the craftsmanship that has continued since the Edo period (1603–1868), and, from theperspective of foreign nations, such a view would surely be understood merely as foolishly extolling the ethnic superiority of Japan, which cannot be accepted abroad.
It is worthy to note that within the rapid development and changes in information technology over the past twenty years, the actual manufacturing of electronic
devices is done here in Asia. Why don’t Swiss clockmakers build smartphones, for example? Surely there would be nothing strange about them making a handmade
smartphone that would be sold for an excessive price. And yet, the components inside
the phone will always, undoubtedly, end up being made in China. Why? Well, a factory
to assemble parts too small to be made by human hands would not be cheap to set up
in Switzerland, nor would you be able to compete with the speed of change in information technology. Indeed, in areas where this type of industry exists, people are now
being completely mechanized in order to maintain and keep up with the change: humans are becoming part of factory machinery. Historically, this could be seen during
the Industrial Revolution in Western Europe, but it is happening once again today in
Asia. Technology is completely under the control of capital. And, if we think about thecauses behind this, we might consider that Japan’s role is to promote works of art that
portray humans as living beings rather than machines, and the mission of media art isto liberate technology from capital.

Masaki Fujihata (Media artist)
Masaki Fujihata is one of the pioneers of new media art in Japan. Beginning his career working in computer
graphics in the early 1980s, he used stereolithography to materialize 3D models into sculptures before
shifting to interactive artworks during the 1990s. In 1996, he became the first Japanese recipient of theGolden Nica at Ars Electronica with Global Interior #2 (1996). His highly acclaimed Field-Works series is acollection of works beginning with Impressing Velocity (1992–1994) and continuing until Voices of Aliveness(2012) that connects real and virtual spaces by adding GPS data to video, demonstrating new possibilities
in recording and memory. Prior to becoming professor emeritus, he served as director of the Graduate
School of Film and New Media at Tokyo University of the Arts from 2005 to 2015.

Art & Technology: Changing Times, Contemporary Trends, Future Platforms［35］Symposium Organizers’ Profiles
Arts Council Tokyo
Arts Council Tokyo develops a variety of programs to encourage the creation and dissemination ofarts and culture and to promote Tokyo as an international city of artistic and cultural attractions. In
order to improve the infrastructure and environment for new artistic and cultural creation, Arts
Council Tokyo plays a key role in Tokyo’s cultural policies by implementing programs that explore
Tokyo’s originality and diversity, promoting international cultural exchange, and providing opportu­
nities for promising young people who engage in a variety of artistic and cultural pursuits.
https://www.artscouncil-tokyo.jp/en/

The Japan Foundation Asia Center
The Japan Foundation is Japan’s principal independent administrative institution dedicated to carry­ing out cultural exchange initiatives throughout the world.
The Asia Center, established in April 2014, is a division within the Foundation that conducts andsupports collaborative initiatives with its Asian—primarily ASEAN—counterparts. Through interact­
ing and working together in Japanese-language education, arts and culture, sports, and grassroots
and intellectual exchange, the Asia Center pursues to develop the sense of kinship and coexistence
as neighboring inhabitants of Asia.
http://jfac.jp/en/［36］International Symposium for Media Art

Art & Technology:
Changing Times, Contemporary Trends, Future Platforms
Report [PDF ver.]Published: March 10, 2017
Publisher

Arts Council Tokyo (Tokyo Metropolitan Foundation for History and Culture)
Kudan First Place 8F, 4-1-28 Kudankita, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo, JAPANe-mail: info@artscouncil-tokyo.jp

The Japan Foundation Asia Center
4-16-3 Yotsuya, Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo, JAPANe-mail: acinfo@jpf.go.jp
Editors

Satoko Ishitoya, Kei Onodera, Kaoru Chiba (Arts Council Tokyo)
Fumi Hirota (The Japan Foundation Asia Center)
Editing & Writing

Kenichi Abe
English Editing

Meiko Sano (The Japan Foundation Asia Center) (pp. 09–14, 33–35)
Translation

LinkTrans Simul, Inc. (pp. 01–08, 15–32, 36)
Translation Cooperation

Akinori Iwaya (pp. 09–14, 18–23, 25–32)
Proofreading

LinkTrans Simul, Inc.
Photo

Kenichi Aikawa
DesignIuko Matsukawa© Arts Council Tokyo / The Japan Foundation Asia CenterAll rights reserved.