![2008 [12th] Japan Media Arts Festival Award-winning Works](/english/festival/images/h1_jusyousakuhin-en2008.gif "2008 [12th] Japan Media Arts Festival Award-winning Works")
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| © Junji Watanabe / Eisuke Kusachi / Hideyuki Ando |
Excellence Prize
Touch the Invisibles
Interactive
Artist : WATANABE Junji /
KUSACHI Eisuke / ANDO Hideyuki
(Japan)
When you push down a row of small people on the screen, you can feel them even though they are only images. Your fingertips pick up a sensation by means of a device attached to your nails. This machine makes it feel as though you are touching an immaterial object.
WATANABE Junji
Born in 1976. He studies the relationship between human sensations and the environment from both a theoretical and artistic standpoint.
KUSACHI Eisuke
Born in 1978. He is involved in production of media arts works from the viewpoint of interface design.
ANDO Hideyuki
Born in 1974. Associate Professor at Osaka University. He is involved in the study and production of interfaces using optical illusions.
We are very pleased to receive this prize. All three of us have different specialized fields: viewer experience design, software programming, and hardware development. To create a piece of work with these three was fun on the one hand, but on the other hand, we had no idea how it would turn out. But we believe that the reason we could create the work is because three of us were involved. This award has given us a lot of encouragement, and we would like to carry on with our creative endeavors. Thank you very much.
When you do not move your finger, you feel just a vibration on your nail. But when you go over the screen with your finger, you get the distinct feeling that something invisible is touching your fingertip. Such a strange perceptual experience has become art. This work makes us think anew about the relationship between “viewing” and “touching,” which we usually regard as being naturally connected. The group of artists has presented interactive art works based on the most advanced academic research in perception. This piece was highly regarded not only for its technology but also for its excellent presentation as a media artwork.
What makes you create a work?
The three of us will answer individually.
My own questions about the senses that human beings have. (WATANABE Junji)My own way of implying new and interesting technologies. (KUSACHI Eisuke)
My own way of answering the question of what I can leave for my children. (ANDO Hideyuki)
What tools do you use the most at present?
Windows PC and PIC microprocessor.
What do you place greatest value on in your work?
To have something remain in the viewer’s heart that creates a feeling of comfort.
What personal concept runs through your creative activities?
We want to take the world we usually feel and make it possible to feel it in more varied ways, and changing the way we feel it will be instrumental in realizing the richness of the world. We created this work in a kind of casual way in order to make a visible object with the theme of revising the relationship between the senses of seeing and touching.
When you create a work, in what way do you think of a presentation using technologies or media as a means to communicate?
By using technology, we can change physical rules in the work so that they are different from those in the real world. For example, in this work, you can touch the object inside the screen or you can get a sense of touching something without attaching a device to the finger pad. We think technology is a tool for designing rules themselves in the world of our work.
Could you name a person, a work, or an event that you have been most influenced by?
The three of us will answer individually.
Traveling in islands. (WATANABE Junji)Michel Gondry’s music videos. (KUSACHI Eisuke)
My own child. (ANDO Hideyuki)
What kind of work would you like to create in the future?
We would like to create a work that has a personal theme of individual feeling together with a social theme of area and community. Perhaps it sounds a little overstated, but we think it would be great if experiencing our work made someone happy somewhere.
What is the meaning or importance of creating for you?
Our works aim to make viewers realize new senses. In order to make it possible, we design a catalyst to make them re-experience how they perceive or act in the world. Our work is, perhaps, to design experience as an extension of a workshop rather than a presentation, which, if we dare to give it a name, can be called Technology-based Workshop or Workshop Installation.
