![2008 [12th] Japan Media Arts Festival Festival Report](/english/festival/2008/images/h1_repo_festival.gif "2008 [12th] Japan Media Arts Festival Festival Report")
The 2008 [12th] Japan Media Arts Festival was held from Wednesday, February 4 to Sunday, February 15, 2009 at The National Art Center, Tokyo. The record-setting 2,146 applications came from 44 countries and regions worldwide. There were 4 divisions: the Art Division, the Entertainment Division, the Animation Division, and the Manga Division, and outstanding works selected from these were exhibited in one location.
Based on the theme of “Connected to the Future,” this year’s Japan Media Arts Festival featured a variety of projects, including exhibitions and screenings where visitors could encounter the leading edge of media arts; symposia where the audience could listen directly to leading creators; and a workshop where the next generation of artists could be nurtured. We will report on the atmosphere of the Festival, which attracted more than 55,000 visitors, a number greatly exceeding last year’s total.
Prior to the Festival, on Tuesday, February 3, 2009, the Awards Ceremony of the Japan Media Arts Festival was held at Tokyo Midtown Hall in Tokyo Midtown. YAMAUCHI Toshio, Senior Vice Minister of Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, presented testimonials and trophies to the award winners of each division. Also, NAKAYA Fujiko, a Japanese video artist, whose video works feature communication as their theme, received the Special Achievement Prize, throwing light on a person who has made substantial achievements in the field of media arts in Japan.
In the Celebration Banquet held after the Awards Ceremony, IWAI Toshio and NISHIBORI Yu, the artists behind TENORI-ON, which won the Grand Prize in the Entertainment Division, gave a presentation and live showing of TENORI-ON, which the participants enjoyed a great deal. Also, since it was a good opportunity to deepen exchanges among artists and creators active in a various fields, the banquet was a joyful event from beginning to end.
When stepping into the exhibition hall in The National Art Center, Tokyo, visitors can see many works arranged in a spacious area. First of all, there is the Art Division. One of the features of media art is that there are many works you can physically experience, not simply look at. One such work is Touch the Invisibles by WATANABE Junji, KUSACHI Eisuke, and ANDO Hideyuki. When you press down on small people projected on the monitor, the image transmits a sensation to the fingertip. This is a mechanism in which vibration from a device attached to the nail transmits a sensation of touch, creating the strange perceptual experience of touching unsubstantial objects. This work had a great impact on many people.
A cityscape of Dresden was displayed in a corner of the exhibition hall. Some visitors could be observed placing their elbows on an iron rail and covering their ears with their hands. An Excellence Prize winner, touched echo (Markus KISON) depicts tragic memories of Dresden in the final stages of World War II, incorporating sounds. Many visitors were impressed by this work, which made us think deeply about war.
One very striking work in the Art Division was the Grand Prize winner, Oups! (Marcio AMBROSIO). In conjunction with humorous graphics projected on the screen, viewers began to make involuntary movements. The animation is varied, including people getting electric shocks from a plug, muscular men doing squats, and a person turning into a worm. By moving their body, the people experiencing the work engage with its world, drawing laughter from those watching them. From children to adults, everyone got excited and enjoyed moving their arms and legs or jumping.
Besides these works, there were of course still images and moving images, and various Jury Recommended Works also attracted a lot of attention. These included The Way of TypeTrace ~ Maijo Otaro Edition (ENDO Takumi / Dominick CHEN / MAIJO Otaro) in which members of the audience input letters on a keyboard in front of them, and these letters are projected accordingly on a monitor, and Flow 5.0 (Daan ROOSEGAARDE), in which a device senses where a person will walk and causes propellers to rotate.
When you visit the Manga Division, there is also a space to browse through works in addition to the display of original drawings and panels. As it is a wonderful opportunity to see the originals directly, a lot of visitors spent a long time there poring over the drawings. There were many striking manga available in the browsing space, and many people, from children to adults, enjoyed reading them.
The Grand Prize winner, PIANO NO MORI (ISSHIKI Makoto), and an Excellence Prize winner, MAESTRO (SASOU Akira), both took music as their motif. These two works are brilliant in their narrativity and presentation, and it almost feels as if we can hear the music between the pages. In addition, there were works by leading artists from the Japanese manga industry, including SHIORI TO SHIMIKO by MOROHOSHI Daijiro and Munakata Kyouju Ikouroku by HOSHINO Yukinobu. One of the main attractions of the Japan Media Arts Festival is that visitors can get a close look at original pictures. When people see original drawings directly, they get a really strong sense of the artists' approach to their work. Also featured were Web Manga, for which the number of entries has gradually increased each time. Works containing movement and sounds using Flash, or works that can be viewed on a cell phone gave the impression that the range of manga presentation is expanding.
The Animation Division assembled a series of high-quality works and we want to take time to watch each of them. The Grand Prize winner, The House of Small Cubes (KATO Kunio), won the Oscar for best animated short film in Academy Awards 2009 after winning this award. This work, which dispenses with dialog, conjures up a warm and nostalgic world in the hearts of the audience. Many visitors stopped by to watch it.
KAIBA (YUASA Masaaki) and DREAMS (ARAI Chie) which both won Excellence Prizes, use original methods to represent individual inspiration. They both radiate a distinctive presence. Apart from screening films, the Animation Division exhibited valuable materials from projects, including storyboards and sketches. These were a source of fascination for many people.
The Entertainment Division featured many unique works that broke free of existing concepts, including many works that the audience could actually physically experience.
The Grand Prize winning work, TENORI-ON (IWAI Toshio / NISHIBORI Yu, representing the TENORI-ON development team), is an instrument using a set of 16 by 16 LED buttons, which allows people with no musical knowledge to compose and play music visually and instinctively. This is an innovative electronic musical instrument that makes us feel that the purpose of music is to enjoy sounds. There was a long line of people who wanted the chance to get hands-on experience of it.
Among the Web works that attracted attention were an Excellence Prize winner, FONTPARK 2.0 (NAKAMURA Yugo), in which players can create illustrations with fragmented parts of letters, and the Encouragement Prize winner Gyorol (BOKU Masayoshi representing the Gyorol production team), in which players can catch fish using an interface between a cell phone and a website. Both works had the enjoyable nature of a game about them, which enabled them to successfully hook a large audience.
Besides these, one of the characteristics of this year's Entertainment Division was that many visual works carried social messages. One such work was an Excellence Prize winner Carbon footprint (Matt CHANDLER), which depicted the process of corrosion of an empty can that has been thrown away and sounds an alarm on environmental issues. Another was Ensuring the Future of Food (groovisions).
