Ikkan Art Gallery is pleased to announce its forthcoming exhibition The Experience Machine, showcasing New Media Art from the past thirteen years by nine international artists. The term ‘New Media Art’ covers a range of multimedia artistic works and practices – encompassing constantly evolving hybrid technological art forms such as video art, digital art, interactive installation and customized software art.

A major work in this exhibition is the interactive animation installation What a Loving, and Beautiful World, the product of collaboration between the famous Japanese calligrapher Sisyu and the “Ultra Technologist Group”, teamLab. Combining projections with motion sensors in a darkened room, kanji (Chinese characters) appear on the walls and fall slowly. When someone’s shadow touches the characters for ‘moon’, ‘rain’, ‘wind’, ‘fire’, ‘land’, ‘gold’, ‘tree’, ‘flower’ and ‘butterfly’ etc, they change their shape by reacting to the person’s shadow. If the kanji is the character for ‘butterfly’, it turns into the image of a butterfly, and the butterflies will snuggle up to the ‘flower’ character and so on.

This interactive project is not a completed piece without a participant, which allows the viewer/participant to feel a sense of ownership in the artwork. And, the experience is ephemeral - it’s a moment, and it’s unique to each participant, based upon what that person brings to it. Ultimately, any experience of an artwork is interactive, creating a dialogue between the viewer and the object. Yet, this interaction remains a mental event when experiencing traditional art forms: the physicality of the painting or sculpture does not change in front of our eyes. However, with regard to interactive works such as teamLab’s What a Loving, and Beautiful World, the complex possibilities of interactivity allow different ways of seeing and experiencing through participatory involvement and intervention.

This immersive and sensational work was awarded the Architecture, Art & Culture Award in Spring 2012 at the international contest ReVolution during Laval Virtual, Europe's largest virtual reality salon. Prior, an earlier version of the work was exhibited at ION Orchard, Singapore, in the Viva Japan Café as part of the Cool Japan festival. The exhibition at Ikkan Art Gallery will feature an upgraded version of the work occupying an entire room.

The artists exhibited:
Bea Camacho
John Gerrard
John F. Simon Jr.
Jim Campbell
Morimura Yasumasa
SISYU+teamLab
Vuk Ćosić
Ben Rubin
Miao Xiaochun