Last year, I stumbled on a blog called RFID in Japan. I quickly learned that Japanese researchers were working on vending machines equipped with surveillance cameras, systems that diagnose drain pipes by running off water containing RFID tags or projects that track cattle semen with tags.

First I added RFID in Japan to my feeds, then to my blogroll, then I sent its author -Manekineko- a Christmas card and recently I asked him if he knew someone who could blog for wmmna about the new media art scene in Japan.

Got a lovely reply from him and from now on he’s a co-blogger on wmmna!

Here’s the short bio he gave me: “Manekineko has lived in Japan, the U.S. and Germany in the past few decades and currently works in fields related to wmmna in an academic research environment. One of manekineko’s many faces shows up as konomi at RFID in Japan.”

The picture is the Remakeable T-shirt made by Ryota Kuwakubo for Muji: you bought a t-shirt at the store and instead of ditching it when it gets too old, just cut along the lines, stuff it and turn it into a doll.