Rebirth of Japan’s Media Arts Centre ICC

26 Jun 2006 Category: Events & Exhibitions, Internet, Japan

It’s been almost 10 years since the ICC (Inter Communication Centre) - the only media art centre in Japan and hence the venue for many historic exhibitions - opened inside Tokyo Opera City in Shinjuku, Tokyo. Recently however, the life of the ICC flickered like a candle in the wind, constantly wavering between re-opening and closing. Now, it is reborn again with a new concept introducing the ICC as an “open public space” for a wider range of people under the theme of “Art x Communication = Open”. PingMag went along to the opening, talked with artists and curators to take a look at a more “open” ICC and its history.

Written by Takashi Maekawa
Translated by Natsumi Yamane

The concept of the ICC began in the early 90s as a part of NTT’s 100th anniversary, when the term “media art” was still unknown to most people in Japan.

Now after its renovation, admission fees have been abolished from permanent exhibitions for “open” access to everyone.

The exhibition space is divided into 4 areas:
Network Zone
Art & Technology Zone
Research & Development Corner
Archive Zone
conveying ICC’s concept of “Openness” in detail. Let’s take a look at each of the zones.

Network Zone

In the Network Zone, as the name suggests, works using the Internet are on display and some of the exhibits are open for participation using networks at home.

At the entrance, a work by Takeshi Ishiguro called Sound Pole greets the visitors. In this work, electromagnetic waves run through the poles and the volume changes when visitors approach the poles. Also, you can watch visitors interacting with the Sound Pole through a so called Spnet from the ICC website.

The next work to catch the visitors’ attention is a round aerial structure called “Project Phonethica Installation Rondo”. This work was structured as an installation based on the Macintosh software called Phonetica.

For your information, Phonetica links all sorts of languages across the globe. For example, when you pronounce the word Saba (mackerel) in Japanese, Phonetica links it with ça va? in French, meaning “How are you?”. The software attempts to explore various aspects of the world through such accidental coincidence in pronunciation.

When asked about the difference between the installation version and the software, Takumi Endo - the creator of Phonetica - answered, “I wanted to make something that can only be achieved by using interspace. I thought I shouldn’t just project the software.” The Phonetica project, which is at the core of this work, is still in progress and an online system to allow internet posts for similar sounding words is now under development.

Although for this Phonetica project, the software was actually designed for display and use on a computer, it is also an important theme for media artists in general to explore the use of their created software in the form of an installation using physical interspace.

Research & Development Corner

This area introduces “new tools” for new interfaces and artists, and that means the zone holds a great potential to give birth to new artistic works and products.

The “Air Jet Interface” exhibited here is a unique device to give tactile sensation to 3D space computer graphics using air jet, as you can see from the name of the work. The viewer wears a pair of 3D goggles and uses a transparent ladle-like tool to control the 3D space CG.

The other exhibit GAINER is an I/O module under development as an open source as well as an environment to create both user interface and installation. Its Version 1.0 was released on 14 June 2006. Distribution of the hardware is also in progress. If you are interested, check the GAINER website for more information.

In the Research and Development Area a different work called “Monalisa: shadow of your sound” by Norihisa Nagano and Kazuhiro Jo is on display as a media art-oriented research work. “Monalisa: shadow of your sound” reads the pixel information of graphics and converts that into sound. This work too is an installation version based on an expansion of a software called Monalisa-Audio Unit.

The installation version of “Monalisa” captures graphics in a room and produces sound based on the graphics as well as attempting to record the produced sound and restructuring the graphics based on the recorded sound. One of the developers, Norihisa Nagano says “I want to inspire creators by expanding the concept of converting graphics into sound.”

Art & Technology Zone

The Art & Technology Zone follows the concept of various exhibitions held at ICC in the past, displaying a mix of most recent works and older exhibits from the times the ICC was first opened.

Exhibits include many familiar works for media art fans, such as Toshio Iwai’s “Marshmallow Scope” and “Another Time, Another Space” – on which Marshmallow Scope was based – and “loopScape” by Ryota Kuwakubo.

Also, you can see “FragMental Storm 02”, one of the representative works of exonemo, who was awarded Golden Nica for his work “The Road Movie” in the Net Vision category of this year’s ARS Electronica competition.

“FragMental Storm 02” searches the web for data and graphics for keywords entered by users, and it fragments and shakes up the search results on the display. You can not only experience this work at the ICC, but it is also available for download at exonemo’s website.

The work “Unreflective Mirror” by Masaki Fujihata holds human “visual recognition” as its theme. Visitors wear a pair of glasses placed in front of the work and look into a mirror, to find only a pair of floating glasses. Visitors will find a totally different impression to the scenery they come across normally, although it might be due to an error in simulation accuracy and calculation. Visitors reaffirm their own visual mechanics by emulating the mirror’s functions through virtual reality.

“A-volve” - a project by Christa Sommerer and Laurent Mignonneau is based on is artificial life. Christa Sommerer said about the ICC that “The early ICC days and the development of the whole media art scene is connected”.

For those who are not so familiar withi media art, the ICC placed small signs all over the Art & Technology Zone. These signs help visitors to understand each work, even if it is their first time to encounter media art.

Archive Zone

In this fourth zone visitors can look up records of exhibitions and symposiums previously held at the ICC, past displays in their library and research about the history of media art. Since the renovation, these facilities have also become accessible to everyone.

One of the displays in the archive zone is HIVE - an open digital archive of past ICC exhibitions and symposiums. The name “HIVE” was taken from the last 4 characters of the word “Archive”. “HIVE” used to be accessible only from inside ICC facilities, but from the 8th of June 2006, some of its contents was made available even on the internet.

Using “HIVE”, people can access contents such as an interview with Laurence Lessig, the leader of the Creative Commons projects. It’s also worth taking note that HIVE’s contents are licensed under Creative Commons.

In the renewed ICC, one corner is dedicated to research on human interfaces, sound, and hardware beside artistic endeavors, to encourage a more open communication between professionals of various fields. What is the advantage of exhibiting research works alongside artistic works?

Curator Yukiko Shikata says “We want to introduce a wide range of aspects in relation to the industry, researchers and the administration. By further developing works displayed at the ICC, we can receive outputs from numerous people, and by exhibiting the research results, we also aim to brush it up aesthetically.”

She also mentioned that: “There are various things to consider when holding an exhibition with technical artworks: quite a lot of people expect ICC exhibitions to showcase more beauty. They think of esthetics, design and elegance when they hear the word “exhibition”. That is why we now encourage researchers and media artists to take this more into consideration. In the meantime, technical inspirations from research and development to art are also being hoped for.”

Previously, valuable archives were available only on the ICC site, but are now accessible from all across the world using HIVE. Also, by setting up channel ICC - the new podcast of the ICC, the media centre is beginning to take a more “open” approach on the web.

PingMag wishes the ICC all the best for the future! It played an important role in Japan’s media art scene ever since it opened and their exhibitions and lectures always inspired countless national and international artists. Let’s hope for the ICC to widen its exchanges with other related art fields and actively expand into a truly “open” ICC for the future.

8 Comments

1. THIS IS FRIGGIN AWESOME. Where is the interesting art at America? Cripes.

   Posted by: augustus on June 27th, 2006 at 10:28 am

2. I was really excited to catch this exhibition whilst recently in Tokyo and must say it is indeed FRIGGIN AWESOME ! The talent of these artists is incredible, I spent a couple of hours on my first visit, and returned later in the week with my partner who had been working, and spent another couple of hours. This place should be listed with some kind of preservation order to stop it ever being closed…it does wonders for promoting the media art scene in tokyo.

   Posted by: CC on June 27th, 2006 at 2:40 pm

3. [...] “Monalisa: shadow of your sound,” by Norihisa Nagano and Kazuhiro Jo, is an installation that allows one to interactively “watch sounds and hear images.” It’s currently exhibited at the renovated ICC Museum in Tokyo (if you want to know more about the museum’s recent happenings, see the PingMag article “Rebirth of Japan’s Media Arts Centre ICC.” I (manekineko) recently went into Monalisa to hear the sound of my face. Then, I sang to it to modify my face. [...]

   Posted by: r-echos » Blog Archive » Monalisa: Watch Sounds, Hear Images on August 10th, 2006 at 5:59 am

4. [...] “Monalisa: shadow of your sound,” by Norihisa Nagano and Kazuhiro Jo, is an installation that allows one to interactively “watch sounds and hear images.” It’s currently exhibited at the renovated ICC Museum in Tokyo (if you want to know more about the museum’s recent happenings, see the PingMag article “Rebirth of Japan’s Media Arts Centre ICC.” I (manekineko) recently went into Monalisa to hear the sound of my face. Then, I sang to it to modify my face. [...]

   Posted by: art? tech? who cares » Monalisa: Watch Sounds, Hear Images on November 4th, 2006 at 2:50 pm

5. Thanks for covering our project, Phonethica. I’d like to let you know we just have released our first public beta version of Phonethica Desktop software. It’s freely available for Mac OS X.
   Please play with it and let us know what you think.
   http://www.phonethica.net/news/phonethica-desktop-first-beta-finally/

   Posted by: nao tokui on January 21st, 2007 at 1:54 am

6. thanks for your subject. it is very important

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