A new story by Vicente Gutierrez, wmmna's correspondent in Tokyo.

"I wanted to distance myself from the curse of time." - Ryuichi Sakamoto
"I wanted the imagery to project completely free of control." - Shiro Takatani
[quotes taken from ICC website]

The recent collaboration between composer Ryuichi Sakamoto (a founder of Yellow Magic Orchestra) and cinematographer Shiro Takatani (a founder of the dumbtype art collective) is their effort to escape the constraints of space and time, namely notions of sequence.

For Sakamoto, it´s composing without sticking to traditional time signatures or a single genre in a composition. For Takatani, it is allowing a computer-controlled system to select clips from the diverse body of video he produced for this installation. For both, avoiding linear forms of their respective fields is what they had worked towards by looking to generative art as an escape.

LIFE: fluid, invisible,inaudible... started as an opera by Ryuichi Sakamoto in 1999 as his effort at presenting an overview of music and society in the 20th century; for that work, Takatani was brought in to help out with the visuals. From then, the two later collaborated with a short series of experimental live shows, the first being Garden Series Vol.1: Experimental Live at Honen-in Zen Temple in Kyoto where they used laptops to conduct the music and images. Fast forward to 2007 and 'LIFE' was commissioned as a work by the Yamaguchi Center for Arts and Media (YCAM) and later exhibited from March 10 to May 28 2007 at YCAM. Now, the newest, slightly evolved version of 'LIFE' is on display at the ICC center in Tokyo.

'Life:' is a journey into the world Sakamoto and Takatani have created from a body of audio and visual work, and as the name suggests, it aims to be fluid, invisible and inaudible. Juxtaposing abstract sounds and distorted visuals with clearer, more sensible sounds and images throughout, two duo virtuously present the unknown, invisible and inaudible as perceptible to us.

But first, here's how it works:

The decentralized flow of sound and video is established by a 3 x 3 grid of aquarium-like tanks made from acrylic, which are each 30 cm high and 1.2 sqm. The acrylic aquariums, each accompanied by two adjacently hanging speakers on the ends, are hung in the pitch-black darkness of a large installation room. Each of the 9 cubes contains a thin film of water, about a few centimeters deep and inside, within which varying levels of fog and [subsequent] ripples are generated by the ultrasonic waves from (8) silent pumps planted in the corners. A couple meters above are the discreet ceiling-based projectors which channel the images downward into the water, acting as a screen.

Upon entering the room to the tune of layers of blissfully jarring sounds by Sakamoto, the set up is confronting- a room consumed by darkness with the nine hanging cubes, suspended about 3 meters above the floor; all together creating a grid-like set up where laying down accommodates the best view of a single cube; those who felt free slowly paced within and around the perimeter.

Read the rest of the story.

Warriors of Art: A Guide to Contemporary Japanese Artists, by Yumi Yamaguchi (Amazon UK and USA.)

Publisher Kodansha International says: Warriors of Art showcases forty of the latest and most relevant contemporary artists from Japan. Featuring the work of a wide range of painters, sculptors, photographers, and performance artists, the lavishly illustrated book is a shocking juxtaposition of the cute, the grotesque, the sexy, and the violent, offering a fascinating insight into Japanese society and its flourishing contemporary art scene.

Now this is a book which is easy to enjoy, flip through and come back to again and again. The introduction is short, the text introducing each artist goes straight to the point and the illustrations are plenty.

The author, Tokyo-based writer and critic Yumi Yamaguchi, has selected 40 artists whose work can only charm Western audience for the way they display and play with cruelty, cuteness, sex, etc. The fact that the Japanese culture is devoid of the taboos and barriers that Judeo-Christianism has imposed on us makes their work all the more appealing. Although i liked 95% of the works which appear in the book i couldn´t help but be disappointed when i realized that all of them fit a bit too perfectly the themes and aesthetics we expect from a Japanese artist.

Motohiko Odani

The title Warrior of Art is inspired by Bushido (literally "The Way of the Warrior"), an essay on samurai ethics first published in 1900. Just like more than a century ago, Inazo Nitobe was attempting to explain the soul of his country to Westeners, the artists presented in this book share with us their vision of Japan.
"Warrior of Art" is also the title apparently used to describe Taro Okamoto (1911-1996), an influential contemporary artist who emerged in postwar Japan and who brought modern art to a wider audience.

Among the artists selected are several names many of us are familiar with: Shintaro Miyake, Hisashi Tenmouya (whose work illustrates the cover of the book), Noboru Tsubaki, Yoshitomo Nara, Maywa Denki, Mr., Takashi Murakami (who is truly one of the heroes of this book), Tabaimo, Kenji Yanobe, etc.

Then there were discoveries, loads of them. I can´t resist to open the show with the Toast Girl, a performed often spotted donning a cosplay outfit (so far so very normal) but also a toaster on top of a workman´s helmet or roller-skate vacuum cleaners. Now could somebody invite her for a new media art festival here in Europe? She would make more exciting evenings than the usual electro-band cum LED light show.

More images

Hideomi Fukuchi's paintings represent long-limbed girls with super power jumping, shouting and displaying the most menacing grins you can think of. First they only look like your usual anime and manga characters but there's something very peculiar about them. After a few seconds you realize that some of them have three legs, huge feet and a six-pack just below their big round breasts. One moment the paintings just reproduce anime heroes, the next one they are displaying a new artistic expression based on a popular genre.

Hideomi Fukuchi (images)

Sako Kojima sculpts cute animals walking on grenades, a lamb licking its own anus, paints lonely, lost and sad animals of the forest and spends days inside a cage pretending to be a hamster that scratches the wall and bites bits of wood.

Sako Kojima, The Reason Why I Became The Hamster

Consuming Bodies: Sex and Contemporary Japanese Art, edited by Fran Lloyd (Amazon USA and UK)

Editor Reaktion Books says: Consuming Bodies explores the themes of sex and consumerism in contemporary Japanese art and how they connect with the wider historical, social and political conditions in Japanese culture. Essays by writers, historians, curators and artists, plus diary extracts of a sex worker, engage with a range of artistic practices, including performance, digital media, painting, sculpture and installation. Together the contributors examine the contradictions and ambivalences embedded in the Japanese experience of modernity, and the effects of commodification on the individual and the nation state.

The list of contributors features a nice mix of Japanese and Western authors, artists, journalists, researchers, curators and academics.

As the introduction points out, despite Japan prime presence on the global marketplace, Western audiences are still fairly unfamiliar with the Japanese contemporary art scene. The book has been written in 2002 and 5 years on, the statement is still true. Proof is that finding images online of some of the artists mentioned in the book has been hard work.

Araki Nobuyoshi, Personal Sentimentalism in Photography

A precious characteristic of the essays is that its authors do not isolate art and analyse or comment on it for its own sake but they also take into account the historical and material circumstances which have conditioned the emergence of contemporary Japanese art. besides the account of the imaging of sex and consumerism moves beyond the glamour, exotic and amusing aspects of Japanese behaviours and explores with much finesse the balance between the private and public aspects of sexual activities as found in media, comics, departments stores, etc.

Miwa Yanagi, Eternal City I

Of course the book provides you with that Japanese quirkiness we like so much. I learned about Soaplands (a type of brothel where "client" can be bathed with female "companion"), Pink Salons (a brothel which specialises in oral sex); Compensated dating (the euphemism that usually refers to the practice of high school-age girls being paid by older men to accompany them on dates enabling the girls to get the lifestyle they crave for) which doesn´t carry the same evil connotations as in Western countries, women´s attitude towards sex and prostitution is different in Japan as it is not necessarily regarded as degrading in itself.

I also discovered the inevitable dark sides of sex, consumption and art such as the strong gender division, illegal human trafficking and how different the art system in Japan is from ours, from school to art galleries.

Makoto Aida, The member of the giant Ico Chan vs. King Gidora

Chapter 1 and 2 give an historical perspective on sex and consumerism from the Edo period until today. The three following chapters focus on the work of contemporary artists who reached their artistic maturity during the height of the bubble economy in the late '80s. Chapter 4 in particular is a montage of images performed by Bubu and Yoshiko Shimada; titled Made in Occupied Japan, the work recalls the experiences of US GIs in Japan, prostitution, and Japanese housewives. Chapter 5 is all about the cult of kawaii and how it came into being. Chapter 6 explores the work of Makoto Aida. Chapter 7 Tokyo´s Urban and Sexual Transformations: Performance Art and Digital Cultures is mostly about performances and theatre, not much about digital anything.

It is interesting to be reminded that when Japan opened its borders, art and craftmanship were so indistinguishable that the language had no word for "art", they had to invent Hijutsu which means "technique of beauty". This has several consequences on contemporary art in Japan, one of them being that there is absolutely no stigma attached to being an artist sponsored by commercial companies.

Immunity to pleasure - Balloon, 1993 and For Pleasure! - Dogs, 1995

The representation of sex in Japanese art often comes with a high dosis of dissent. Nothing new except that the formula is now adopted by many women artists eager to trash the confucianist idea that they have to be demure and submissive creatures.

Sex in itself is actually not enough to shock, the Japanese do not carry the burden of Christian guilt. For the more austere Samurai rulers, licentiousness was more the stuff of self-indulgence and weakness but not necessarily more than other forms of entertainments. That might explain why today bars, pachinko parlours, discos, game centres and sexual entertainment all come under the Law for the Regulation of Business Affecting Public Morals (1947). Another noteworthy peculiarity of the nation´s laws is that showing pubic hair was forbidden until 1981 when the government officially allowed for the appearance of 5% amount of pubic hair in photographs.

The work of Takahiro Fujiwara embodies quite well the ambivalent attitude towards sex. Fujiwara specializes in kitschy sculptures that look like big sex toys. There´s this naked women lying on her back with open legs (which reminds Allen Jones´ furniture) which he presented in a kids´playground as a kind of hobby horse. No one found it particularly obscene. The artist believes that one could only do such thing in Japan, albeit under certain conditions. Fujiwara explains. "Sex is something everyone is interested in, but using real experience is too physical, so by using something like a sexual toy which does not refer to one´s life and body but which is cute, one can get away with dealing with a taboo..."

I loved BuBu´s Dairy, the final chapter of the book. BuBu is both an artist and a sex worker and she wrote about her daily life: who her clients are, which kind of present they offer her (from potatoes to pastries and lottery tickets), the way her 80 year old client makes love, nightmare, etc.

While walking in and around rue Charlot yesterday, i stumbled upon the Galerie Art All Aaccess. They are currently showing the work of 3 very talented Japanese artists.

Kentaro Kobuke, Saeka Enokura and Yutaka Kato are the new generation of Japanese artists, the one that emerged after the already ultra famous Murakami, Nara, Ozawa, etc. They transform what characterizes their everyday life (an invisible position in Japanese society, a child-like and boundless imagination and a lack of financial resources) into intriguing drawings and paintings.

Until November 3, at the Galerie Art All Aaccess, Paris.

Vicente Gutierrez, a writer and editor currently based in Tokyo, has kindly proposed to be a correspondent for wmmna in Japan. He recently sent me an introduction and the translation of his interview with Exonemo, adding that i could edit anything to my liking. Well, there's nothing in what you're going to read below that i could improve, so here's his text:

Exonemo, the Japanese duo made up of Sembo Kensuke and Yae Akaiwa, have developed several experimental works ranging from sound and video processing, software programming, hardware circuit bending, installations as well as live performance. With enough crossing over, exonemo continue to blur the lines of discipline and if you ask them whether they are designers, programmers, visual or media artists, you'll find they don't really care.

Exonemo performing (photo credit Martin Holtkamp)

After meeting in university, they started working together under the contrived moniker 'exonemo' and specify the Unix hacker culture of the 90s as a bedrock influence as well as the continuing evolution of the internet- "as web technology keeps developing, it allows us to do more and more."

The concept driven circuit tweakers have reanalyzed the contexts of computer programming and investigated a new potential of the internet, making it their primary platform. As a result, exonemo has created new consequences of hardware and soft technology and their work serves as a lasting commentary on our evolving relationship with technology- whether that be a sense of alienation or [dis]connection.
Exonemo's inviting DIY style and rising popularity have led these two rebel programmers to be often considered the new face of Japan's media art scene.

WMMNA had a chance to catch up with Exonemo right before their performance of Exonemonster, a mix of forgotten electronic instruments revitalized with a mind of their own, at the Centre Pompidou in Paris on October 4th.

Here's a video preview.

I heard you were just in China, what was Exonemo doing there?

We just exhibited Fragmental Storm at an art gallery called Long March which was in the Art District in Beijing (798大山�艺术区) from September 25th until October 22nd.

Now you're off to France, what will you be doing there?

We are going to have another exhibition and have a live performance of Exonemonster, a device we created, at the Centre Pompidou in Paris on October 4th. For live information, you can check in-famous.

Exonemonster (image courtesy of exonemo)

Can you tell us about Exonemonster?

Exonemonster is a musical instrument which has several other musical instruments fixed on a board with nails. All of the instruments have had their circuits bent. Its not just a musical instrument but also an object with naked circuits, nail and switches. With Exonemonster, we can play a variety of unpredictable sounds by wiring these circuits to each other and as a result, overdrive them in a somewhat complicated way on stage.

So, where did the idea come from and why did you make it?

I think it was probably after going to a lecture on Max/MSP (software) or Supercollider software. Max/MSP, can produce sounds by wiring digital objects. So after hearing about that, we decided we wanted to make a kind of free-play system that would be based on analog wiring; and we were twisted enough to decide to use analog while others were focusing on using laptops. So after that, we started working on an instrument with bent circuits. We used it as a Max developed object and fixed it on a board with nails and connected the instruments with clips to change the sounds.

We were trying to get closer to the idea of Outsider Art by approaching it in a subjective way, not an objective way and so, because the sound of exonemonster is uncontrollable, so too, we made its appearance 'uncontrollable.' Then it became a monster that we can't even control anymore. When we play or perform with exonemonster, it always surprises us. Now, we've come to develop a little bit of affection for it, as if it were a real friend.

Exonemonster (image courtesy of exonemo)

How important is interactivity in your work ? I'm not only thinking of exonemonster but also rgb-f__cker or remixhibition=>reactivity. Are you trying to make some kind of tools for people?

I think interactivity is something like a ceremony that connects our work and the audience. When we approach a project, if interactivity is necessary, we implement it, and if it isn't necessary, we don't consider it in the project. For example, ZZZZZZZZapp has no interactivity once it starts. DanmatsuMouse is basically an exhibition you can see, but I think its better if the audience can feel the reality.

Some of your interactive software works are downloadable (Discoder). Whose work is it? Exonemo's or the user's?

The part that the user created with our work is the user's work and the program they use to edit the work is ours. But I think a whole new experience is made by mixing both sides, so I can't exactly tell who's work it is.

Most of your work explores the relationship between people and technology, why did you decide to explore and work in this direction?

I don't really think about it in terms of that direction very much, but I do think everyone gets really excited when technology and people meet. It's interesting- people seem normal at first but then turn into animals and totally change their behavior, it changes our behavior. Its like, if it weren't for mobile phones being so popular, if a man talked to himself walking down the street, it would seem like he's crazy but because he's cellphone's are a common technology its OK. I think such a point is interesting.

Well, do you think people today are disconnected from technology?

No, not at all, there's so much technology available and released on the web that you can get so much for free now.

Road Movie

So, which is more important for you, reaching users individually with personal, interactive software or as a group with public installation or performance?

Well, for us, these two aspects make for completely different experiences so we try to do different things when we produce for the internet or for an installation. But at the same time, the line's been blurred and we have works that people can experience both ways, like the Road Movie. Both channels are important for us.

Yes. and about using the internet in your work (Fragmental Storm, Discoder-Discoder), what is the internet for you? Information? A canvas? A place?

I think its a place like a 'park.' Where people can come and go freely.

Where do you think the internet is going?

Well, its in the hands of the people so it's going wherever there are people's desires, it's unlimited!

And from here, where is exonemo going?

Well, we just finished DanmatsuMouse which we created this year and we have had many exhibitions and performances recently so want to try a different work flow and wait until the next idea comes to us. Next, we want to do something on the internet. We're thinking of something like a website to remix and play with our works ourselves. Its not really a work, per se, but something more like an environment.

Thanks for making time for us Exonemo, we look forward to seeing and playing with whatever you come up with next!

Watashi-chan, by Tomoko Ueyama, is a garment that visualizes sounds in a space. The balloons attached to the clothing inflate when there is a sound in the space, even if the wearer does not consciously perceive that sound.

How it works: Watashi-chan divides the human audio range into six frequency bands and calculates the quantity and frequency of signals entering each frequency band. An electromagnetic valve is assigned to each frequency band. As a quantity of frequency signals is calculat-ed, a signal is sent to an electromagnetic valve to open it. As a result, air is sent to a balloon corresponding to the quantity of frequency signals. After a balloon has been inflated for one second, air is released again, so that the balloon does not inflate too much.

More images.
The work is part of Ima-karada - IAMAS in Tokyo, an exhibition which introduces activities of the IAMAS (Institute of Advanced Media Arts and Sciences / International Academy of Media Arts and Sciences) media school.

Runs on August 24 August and 26, at the Spiral Garden (Spiral 1F) in Tokyo.

More inflatable in fashion: Self-Sustainable Chair, wearable canoe; The Life Dress; the Inflatable Breasts Dress; Fat Suits; Wearable Crisis Management; Modes for Urban Moods and Inflatable wedding dress; SurvivaBall and the Aeolian Ride.