IAMAS and its History (with short comments on the works of IAMAS artists)
An outline of the history and the basic concept of IAMAS at the starting point and since its inception are given. In addition, there are some short comments on the works created by some of the students who have graduated from IAMAS, works that are now being displayed at Zagreb Device Art exhibition site.
IAMAS is an abbreviation that works equally well for two schools; one is the International Academy of Media Arts and Sciences, and the other is the Institute of Advanced Media Arts and Sciences within the same campus. But there was the only one school when it opened in 1996. It had two multimedia studio courses for 25 undergraduate students, and an art and medial lab course for 25 post-graduate students. Our ambition was to enable students in the latter course to gain a master’s degree; after efforts to upgrade the curriculum, the national government gave its consent, and the course turned into a graduate school in 2001. However, the same abbreviation was retained, because of the similar targets in our educational system.
Originally the school itself was established by the Gifu Prefecture government, based on the idea of the Governor Taku Kajiwara on taking office in 1989. It was one of his targets to activate the information industries, social and cultural, in this area.
In 1994, he asked me to organize a new school for training new types of media content creators in Gifu Prefecture, and I accepted his idea, and after preparation for two years with other teams of the newly organized committee, the school opened in 1996.
I myself had experience as a journalist from 1956 to 1990, mainly covering the new movements in the art, science and technology since the 60s, and especially the early media arts based on digital technology since around 70s, and had kept up with new trends in interactive art based on the interface technology throughout the 80s. Thus I expected that a new age of an interactive type of art and culture would come in the 21st century with the collaboration of artists, scientists, and engineers.
Accordingly, I ventured to suggest to Governor Kajiwara the idea of creating an innovative type of school where students could learn from the digital technology combined with artistic sensibility by collaboration among students and teaching staff of different disciplines and ages. We accept applications from high school graduates, degree holders and working adults who have already been employed and wish to explore new opportunities. The name of the school itself, the International Academy of Media Arts and Sciences, was coined to express the objective of the school. Then I realized that this type of interactive art was so well known within the local area in Japan at that time, so I proposed a promotional event be organised for the opening of the school one year before the starting.
This was the exhibition of Interactive Arts and a Symposium to which world famous artists around that time were invited. We were able to invite Jeffrey Shaw, Michal Naimark, Luc Courchesne, Christa Sommerer, Laurent Mignonneau, David Rokeby, Paul DeMarinis, Jim Campbell, and Toshi Iwai. This exhibition/symposium was very successful and finally we decided to continue such an Exhibition/Symposium as “the Interaction” on a biennial basis, which lasted until 2001.
Besides, we decided to make an artist-in-residence spot within IAMAS by inviting those world famous artists, for, purely educational purposes, to work together with the students. The invited artists were expected to create their own works by collaborating with the students they picked themselves during their stay. We expected that the students would have a great chance to learn about the motivations or ideas behind creativity through participating with the artists. Fortunately, these experiments, of the biennale and the artist-in-residence, worked highly effectively, ever since the beginning, to encourage IAMAS students to be more active in new media art creativity.
As for the artist-in-residence at IAMAS, so far 22 pairs of artists were invited since 1996. Artists such as Christa Sommerer, Laurent Mignonneau, Tamás Waliczky, Tamiko Thiel, Michal Naimark, Marie Sester, Luc Courchesne, Wolfgang Münch and Shiho Fukuhara created many new works. And numerous of these works have won prizes all over the world at festivals.
When our first artist-in-residence at IAMAS, Toshio Iwai, created new works while he was staying at IAMAS and submitted the work Music Plays Images x Image plays Music, on which he collaborated with musician Ryuichi Sakamoto, to the Ars Electronica, he received the Golden Nica Prize at the Interactive Art section of the Prix Ars Electronica 1997. IAMAS students helped with the creative, and even participated when his official performance was held in Linz.
Since that time, many IAMAS students and faculty members have responded to invitations from Prix Ars Elctronica and other contests in the world, and many students and faculty members have received several types of awards or honorary mention prizes.
Unfortunately, this precious artist-in-residence programme had to be stopped in 2009, because of the fiscal position of the local government of Gifu Prefecture. The biennale “the Interaction” was stopped in 2001, and has been continued as the Ogaki Biennial, or some other events showing the recent media arts works of IAMAS or invited artists invited from abroad.
If you are interested in further details of IAMAS and its artists-in-residence, the home page of the IAMAS, and the artist-in-residence programme could be useful:
In 2004, Ars Electronica Festival invited the IAMAS, for their Campus project, to show the works of students and faculty members at the Annex building of the University of Art and Design Linz, and through those opportunities IAMAS was been widely recognized in the world.
I myself retired from IAMAS in 2003 because of my rather exhausted condition after 7 years in this position, and on my age, and since then I have been working rather quietly mostly at my home. From April, 2003, Prof. Tadashi Yokoyama became the second president of IAMAS till 2009, and from this April, 2009, Prof. Atsuhito Sekiguchi has been the third president of IAMAS.
I have however continued to follow the work of IAMAS students through email and Websites, and attending the Graduation Exhibition at the end of the academic year. I am very satisfied by their energetic activity and their innovative type of work, which expands each year.
I recently received information about the Zagreb Device Art exhibition which will be opening in October. I knew the name of Device Art itself when the Device Art exhibition was held in Japan, featuring the work of Machiko Kusahara and Hiroo Iwata, and other Japanese members in 2006. But I did not know there had been Device Art activity in Croatia since 2004. This time, I knew some of the IAMAS students’ works were invited and would be shown at this Zagreb Device Art exhibition this year. Ms. Suncica Ostoic, one of the curators of this show, invited me to write some texts for the catalogue of this show just around ten days ago. I am grateful for her kind offer. I have never been in Zagreb, but now I realize that there had has been an active movement in art and science, including the media art in Zagreb.
Accordingly there are great chances for the countries to know each other better through such exchange of information among the media arts in Japan.
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In terms of the exhibited works by IAMAS graduates students, I would simply add some short comments about each work, material on which has already been submitted. I myself have seen some of them while I was working at IAMAS, but a few works are quite new and I have not seen them before. After establishing contact, I received an explanation and photos about their works, as follows.
1: Bounce Street by Mika Miyabara & Tatsuo Sugimoto
This was shown at the Ogaki Biennale in 2002, at the Campus Project of IAMAS in Ars Electronica in 2004, and at various other places.
2: 8 Viewpoints by Tomohiko Saito & Tomoyuki Shigeta
There are 8 transparent sheets in the vertical case, each of which has the switch to activate the panel to show images of street scenes. When the viewer touches one of the switches, the connected sheet becomes a translucent screen and shows one of the images of the street captured by the video cameras.
3: A Device for New Hiragana by Masaki Yamabe
Japanese Hiragana letters were originally created by modification of Chinese Kanji letters, in the simplified way with a long history. In a sense, the character of the Hiragana has some suggestion of the original image of the Kanji. Masaki created a new device for audiences, and when they drew a Hiragana character on the board, then it would automatically recognize the original Kanji character and show it on the screen. So viewer could be reminded of the hidden connection between the Hiragana and Kanji letter.
4: Ototenji by Mika Fukumori.
“Oto” means sound, and “tenji” means Braille in Japanese. Ototenji is a new system designed by Mika for sighted people to learn what Braille means with their sense of sight, hearing and touch. There are 6 holes within the panel of Ototenji, and when the audience tries to put the transparent blocks within those holes following the patterns of Braille, it makes the sound of the corresponding letter from the speaker. At the same time, the coloured light emits in the block and shows the relationship between the vowels and consonants.
5: Karakuri blocks by Natsu Kawakita & Nobuya Suzuki.
When audience tries to put two types of blocks on the panel, either by connecting them side by side or in their own layout in various orientations, the images on the blocks change according to the layout or the location of these blocks on the panel. So audiences can enjoy many variations of the images.
6: Textron by Yosuke Kawamura.
By controlling the sewing machine by foot, the audience can create the image of the woven types of patterns on the extended bigger screen at the same level as the sewing machine, and also, audiences can listen to some abstract type of sounds created in matching the patterns. Textron is the new name to connect up Text or Textile with electronic.
7: Sonicode by Yosuke Hayashi.
When a visitor types any text in the software within the computer, those texts changes into the sounds based on the specially allocated code he created.
8: Jamming Gear by So Kanno & Kenichiro Saigo.
There are 4 gears and one power-source gear on the table, and they can be connected by those gears touching side by The public can play with those gears by controlling the power gear which has the buttons on and off, the manner of rotation, and change of speed, and also 4 playing gears which have 4 types of sound, volume, etc. By controlling those gears, audience can play various types of music.
9: Watashi-chan by Tomoko Ueyama.
Several balloons and sensors detecting surrounding sounds are connected around the body of a performer. These balloons inflate or shrink according to the levels of the sounds. So anybody who uses this system can play with the movement of the balloons and sounds by walking or dancing around the area.
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