Exhibition Overview
To celebrate the thirtieth anniversary of Ars Electronica, the worldwide media art festival held annually in Linz, Austria, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo (MOT) will mount Cyber Arts Japan, a special media art exhibition, focusing particularly on art and technology in Japan.
The ties between Ars Electronica and Japan have been close since the festival’s founding in 1979, thanks to the many Japanese artists who have participated and won awards in the festival. They include Isao Tomita, Ryuichi Sakamoto and Toshio Iwai, and Maywa Denki, for example. Cyber Arts Japan will focus on the works from the festival to explore new possibilities for connecting art, science and technology, and society.
This exhibition, organized with the support of Ars Electronics Linz GmbH, presents, for the first time, a group of significant video documents and reference materials that narrate the thirty-year history of the festival. The exhibition’s several sections will include 25 projects and 50 works of art. In addition to work by prizewinners from the past and this year’s prizewinning works, a Device Art exhibition at the Ars Electronica Center will be synchronized with Cyber Arts Japan, and a networked deconstruction and reconstruction project , in tribute to the Museum of the Future, will link Linz and the Tokyo exhibition site in real time. Cyber Arts Japan will also present high-profile media art that finds its material in new hybrid domains such as giving visual expression to literary works, digital public
art, and space art.
Cyber Arts Japan will be held conjunction with the Japan Media Arts Festival, the Agency for Cultural Affairs event at the National Art Center, Tokyo. Plans also call for cooperating with related institutions in Japan such as the NTT Intercommunication Center [ICC]. The simultaneous MOT Collection exhibition will present work by Jikken Kobo (Experimental Workshop) as well as the Entrance Space Project, a large mural by “vagabond” artist Takehiko Inoue, as it examines trailblazers in media art and the present state of the media art domain. Bringing together a significant cluster of interactive, participatory works, events, and films, this exhibition will be a valuable opportunity to reconsider what the power of expression in Japan means and to explore where the next generation of media artists may take us. Exhibition Official Website: www.mot-art-museum.jp/exhibition/cyberarts
What Is Ars Electronica?
Ars Electronica, launched in the city of Linz, Austria, on the banks of the Danube, in 1979, has become the world’s largest electronic art festival. Celebrating its thirtieth anniversary in 2009, Ars Electronics has become an international setting for digital art and media culture, through its museum, the Ars Electronica Center, the annual Ars Electronica Festival, the Prix Ars Electronica, and Futurelab, its media art R&D lab. The Ars Electronica Festival is held each September on a specific theme, such as “Code,” “Simplicity,” or “New Cultural Economy.” During the five days of the festival, over 100,000 people gather in Linz for an amazing variety of over one hundred events, including the CyberArts exhibition of Prix Ars Electronica prizewinning works (in the categories shown below), the Ars Electronica Gala, Klangworke (Cloud of Sound), a vast musical event on the Danube, and Campus, a cooperative program between Ars Electronica and academic institutions. In conjunction with the selection of Linz as the 2009 European Capital of Culture, a new permanent facility, the Ars Electronica Center, opened in January of 2009. There Ars Electronica Futurelab carries out R&D in media art, while the center as a whole, a success model for how art and technology have changed society (a city), is the base from which many new talents are reaching the rest of the world. Ars Electronica Website: www.aec.at/about_about_en.php
The Eight Grand Prix Categories
Computer Animation/Film/VFX
Interactive Art
Digital Music
Hybrid Art
Digital Communities
U19—Freestyle computing
[the next idea] Grant
Media Art research Award
Events during the Festival
During the festival in September, the Gala (awards ceremony) is held at the Brucknerhaus, a festival and conference center named
after the musical genius Anton Bruckner. During that ceremony, the Golden Nicas (the grand prizes), Awards of Distinction,
Honorable Mentions, and other awards are presented. The winners of the Golden Nicas and Awards of Distinction give
presentations at the Prix Ars Electronica Forum during the festival. The OK Center for Experimental Art (the OK Center for
Contemporary Art, Upper Austria) hosts CyberArts, an exhibition of prizewinning work. The Ars Electronica Center displays
prizewinning work from U19—Freestyle Computing, the section for young people in Austria. The prizewinners in the Computer
Animation/Film/VFX category are screened in the special Electronica Theatre. The musicians who win awards in the Digital Music
category introduce their works in performances at club events and concerts. Participation by the Japanese institutions IAMAS (2004)
and the University of Tokyo (2008) has been warmly received in Campus, the academic exhibition.
Exhibition Highlights
What’s Media Art? This exhibition is designed to provide an opportunity to think about a subject now much discussed, media art/media arts. Media art is a form of art characterized by its participatory nature and by the use primarily of media that have appeared since the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, particularly computers and other electronic equipment. Media art in Japan was pioneered by avant-garde art groups in the 1950s and was quite active in the 1980s and 1990s. The encouragement of media art under the Fundamental Law for the Promotion of Culture and Arts (2001) and the introduction of the study of imaging media in Japans elementary and junior high school curricula in 2002 have provided further impetus. Since the Power of Expression, JAPAN exhibition of 2007 (commemorating the tenth Japan Media Arts Festival and the opening of the National Art Center, Tokyo), media art has been seen as a vital nexus connecting manga, animation, games, films, and other media. Interest is growing in supporting young artists in this field and in considering the form of media art
center to come.
Early Documentary Videos: The first special Ars Electronica exhibition in Japan Cyber Arts Japan, the first special exhibition of its kind in Japan, introduces the history of Ars Electronica, widely known as the largest media art festival in the world, with a focus on Japanese involvement in the festival. Here visitors will see a thirty-year record of awe-inspiring exercise of the imagination in works by Japanese artists unveiled to the world through Ars Electronica.
Introducing Historic Prizewinners
Cyber Arts Japan will present the prizewinning work and more recent work by prizewinners in all eight of the Prix Ars Electronica categories, except for u19, which is a domestic Austrian award, and the Media Art Research Award, which is for theoretical work. The work exhibited in the Computer Animation/Film/VFX, Interactive Art, Digital Music, Hybrid Art, Digital Communities, and The Next Idea categories will offer the opportunity to experience the many modes of expression and messages to society embedded in these works, which include delightful participatory works as well as works of tranquil beauty.
Installations Showcasing Japan’s Power of Expression
What is the power of expression, Japan? It is warmly appreciated by the Milano Salone in Europe and by ACM SIGGRAPH in the United States, was acclaimed for “packing spirit and skill into small objects.” Now the Device Art project in this exhibition (with the participation of Hiroo Iwata, Kazuhiko Hachiya, Maywa Denki, the Kuwa Collaboration, Sachi Kodama, and Masahiko Iwami), which will be synchronized with at the Ars Electronica Center museum will provide an additional opportunity, in conjunction with this year’s prizewinning works, to examine what forms that power of expression takes.
Proposing New Domains
The exhibition also proposes new possibilities for the next generation of media art to win international acclaim. The spotlight is on new hybrids, such as the cross fertilization of science and literature, and on fields unique to Japan, such as space art, developing under conditions of weightlessness(micro-gravity) or in space, fields now becoming part of our everyday life. It invites a reconsideration of the past, including experiments in public art using digital media, and explores new sources of inspiration.
Related Events
Cyber Arts Japan will be held in conjunction with the thirteenth Japan Media Arts Festival (February 3-14, the National Art Center, Tokyo) and the ICC Metaverse Project (until February 28, the NTT ICC). It will also include a lecture by Gerfried Stocker, artistic and managing director of the Ars Electronica Center and artistic co-director of the Ars Electronica Festival, a symposium on robots and device art with participating artists Kazuhiko Hachiya, Maywa Denki and more, and screenings of related films.
