Japan's Inter Communication Centre or ICC
Tokyo Art Space Showcases New Media Art and Interactive Technology
Jan 24, 2009
The ICC is an innovative arts space focusing on new technologies. ICC, unlike the London space of the same name, is an anacronym for Inter Communication Centre. Opening in April 1997, it was seven years in the designing and was originally conceived to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the telephone service in Japan, which began in 1890. Acting as an archival space for some projects, it also has a regular gallery that regularly exhibits new and exciting works from a range of international artists.
Permanent Collection
The Permanent collection alone is an eclectic mix of work that uses interactive technology and materials in unusual ways. In Seiko Mikami’s 1997 piece “World, Membrane and the Dismembered Body” the external ‘noise’ was cut out in an anechoic room where the participants own body gives feedback and creates sound. Although the piece is not currently on display the room is still there and entering it gives you a sensation of complete silence, almost as if there is no air.
Media Arts Technology
Toshio Iwai’s contribution is a kind of working archive of media arts technology. Within glass vitrines, technologies are contrasted with computer graphics of the same function that are only viewable i.e. under half mirrors. In effect, we can see the translation of physical to temporal technologies in the form of softwares that use the underlying principles without the necessity for the external forms.
Open Space
The latest showcase Open Space 2008 includes a range of works that fuse mathematical models, such as “Arithmetick Garden” by Sato Masahiko and Takashi Kiriyama. Wearing an infared tag, participants move around the space trying to solve equations to make an answer that adds up to 73.
Incorporating the idea of physical positioning in space to connect the abstract calculations, this work utilizes the process of determination and the idea of tracing it physically.
Commisioned Work
Juggler by Gregory Barsamian, (part of the permanent collection) is a commissioned work. It harnesses the principles of a zoetrope in which an image will seem to move when lights are flashed off and on.
The “jugglers” are in various positions and are connected to a frame. As the lights flash they appear to be throwing various objects (bone, milk, dice), until finally returning to the original position. Closer to more traditional sculpture in the sense of its symbolic references – to both the hope and conflict of humanity's relationship to technology, the conflict and the hope this work shows the effects of light on our perceptions of movement.
Window Onto The Future
Many of these works do not appeal to those who are looking for conventional art or images of beauty. They work on scientific and mathematical principles – translating the language of algorithms or calculation into something that hovers between science and art. Artists such as Iwai and Mikami are asking questions about the effects of technology on what it means to be human in the 21st century. The answers or solutions that we come up with will affect every aspect of out lives. As a space to visit in Tokyo, the ICC offers a chance to glimpse through the window at the innovations of the future.
click here to read Bristish art critic Paul Black's article on London based Japanese artist Nobuko Tsuchiya.
