I am sat drinking green tea in the InterCommuncication Center in the Tokyo Opera City Tower. Except I won’t be there now as I upload this, as I am not able to get an internet connection. Despite the cafe being a wi-fi hotspot, I need a subscription to one of the main mobile phone service providers. So, this Open Space - described as ‘a community space that is free of charge and open througout the year’ – dedicated entirely to new media art and culture, has not afforded me the opportunity to write my blog in situ as I had hoped. As an incident of participant observation, I had thought I’d be able to experiment with the open office, to sit here and write online, to create my own digital works, to realise those creative heights we believe new media technologies offer.

Video and new media technology arts both intrigue and disappoint me. The ICC aims ‘to create an environment where one encounters and engages with the progressive experimental activities dervied from the dialogue between technology and art’. It is perhaps one of the best places to go to be inticed by such art. Typically there is a minimal, functional feel to the gallery. As I climbed to the main gallery space, each step on the stairs issued different, playful sounds. It brought a smile to my face and seemed a good start. However, I found myself moving quickly between the exhibits. Any initial appeal seems to last only nano-seconds with me. I ‘get it’ – how it works at least – and then I’m looking on to the next item. What I never seem to find is anything subtle, engulfing, slow, gentle, loving. Except perhaps some of the more static, visual pieces.

It strikes me there are three generic forms:

(1) Mechanical/Sculptural – 3-dimensional exhibits. They tend to use traditional sculptural materials, combined with electronics to make something, which perhaps moves or glows (either according to its own pattern, or related to the viewer’s actions).

(2) Visual – mainly 2-dimensional exhibits, though also often placed as an installation. These works tend to use electronics to re-engineer the formal picture space, making it glow and animate. Bill Viola’s work is perhaps the best example of this kind of work, which is made using fairly traditional video technology. However, it is also often the case that visual works are made through the use of new technologies, such as imaging softwares. As part of the Open Space exhibit at the ICC I saw some work by Keiko Kimoto which interested me (and a fabulous book entitled Imaginary Numbers).

(3) Interactive – environments within which the particpant can manipulate the work of art. Typically these pieces change according to body movements or simple touch sequences. Often there is a screen that the participant is watching, perhaps seeing themselves in the screen or at least some visual element that is identifiable as reacting to their presence.

Whilst the interactive forms would seem to suggest a more dynamic and interesting kind of work, I tend to find these the most disappointing. They might be fun and/or slightly disorientating, but generally they seem only a glorified pavlovian game – ‘look what happens when I do this’, ‘look I’ll do it again, see it does the same’! At best these works can at be stylish and aesthetically pleasing, but generally they are just gadgets waiting to be disgarded. The mechanical, sculptural items tend to be similar, though they can have a little more grace as an exhibit, since they work more within their own formal terms. For me, however, it is frequently the static, or slower visual pieces that I am attracted to.

However, concentrating on the pieces in themselves is perhaps the wrong thing to do. One of the strengths of new media arts is its history, the on-going attempts to bring such an art form to fruition. On entering the gallery there is a lovely timeline exhibit. Glass panels on the floor in the centre of the main gallery space (with the decades listed along the side) hold all sorts of items, books, tapes, gadgets etc, that have accrued – in the name of new media arts – since the early 20th Century. This intrigues me, and the same happens in the bookshop downstairs. All sorts of obscure and usually beautifully designed publications are on the shelves, along with DVDs and magazines. There is a whole intellectual, creative community behind these works and the aspirations they represent. But who are these people and how do you get to meet them!? I was drawn to two books. One, mentioned above, was Keiko Kimoto’s Imaginary Numbers (a beautiful book full simply of freely drawn lines on black and on white) and the other, Ryuichi Sakamoto and Shiro Takatani’s LIFE – Fluid, invisible, inaudible. Just the titles tell of the subtle sensitivies at stake, but also these books bring out for me the obvious importance of process and immersion. It is more about experimenting and enaging with new technologies, being with them, which is why it is perhaps so difficult to exhibit the works. Perhaps there need not be such a thing as new media art works, just new media art work…

As I made my way to the gallery, full of expectation, I made a few little film pieces with my phone. They are pitiful in the face of the works I then went on to view, but for me they are meaningful – they are, for me, full of the hopes I had ‘before’ seeing the exhibits, before anything was formalised, before I could write this…

Micro-Shorts Gallery

ICC #1

ICC #2

ICC #3

ICC #4

ICC #5