2009 Japan Media Arts Festival Entertainment Division Encouragement Prize ASAHI ART FESTIVAL

Encouragement Prize

ASAHI ART FESTIVAL

Web

Artist : OGAWA Hiroko representing the Asahi Art Festival production team

(Japan)

This is a website that assembles information and reports about art festivals in Japan, which has been gathered from uploads to YouTube, Flickr, and Twitter by festival organizers and participators, intending to convey the big picture of festivals to the viewer. It is also the purpose of this site to support the activities of art NPOs online by utilizing social networking media, bringing more viewers in from other sites by means of word of mouth.

OGAWA Hiroko representing the Asahi Art Festival production team

OGAWA was born in 1978 and graduated from Kyushu Institute of Design, and later, from the Institute of Advanced Media Arts and Sciences. She is a graphic designer, previously employed by GK Graphics Inc. Since 2007, she has been working as a Managing Partner, Design/Creative Director/Chief Designer for Alliance Port, LLC. She is currently working on designs that utilize both print material and websites, i.e. analog media and digital media.

It is a great honor to receive a prize for my website among those highly entertaining games and movies in the same division. It has also been a good opportunity for me to think about the diversity of media, by seeing that not only art works, but also manga, animations, games and websites, more familiar media for me, can be exhibited all together in the gallery.

Asahi Art Festival is a network of art projects that are dotted all over the country. On the website, we tried to convey the big picture and the atmosphere of the festivals by publishing the information unedited from the social network media of the participating organizations throughout the country. Also, we have been providing support for the viewers to utilize the participating organizations’ social network media as an informational and communication tool. We, as the creators of the website, are very glad that the strategic and the structural aspects of the website, which we put so much effort into, were highly evaluated. Thank you very much. I would like to use the encouragement of being awarded this honor in the Entertainment Division, which is full of variegated works, to continue being challenging.

Asahi Beer supports people involved in various art-related activities, which is very much valued in itself, but we would also like to applaud the website’s structure and strategy. It mobilizes social networking media to spread information by word of mouth. It is simple, free from frustration, and cultivates new media possibilities. Although there was disagreement as to whether it really constituted entertainment or not, we regard it as an important form in terms of activating the mind. It is innovative and also important to realize that the participants are the active components of the website, which does not generate content itself.

What makes you create a work?

When I considered both the ideal and realistic limitations of the Asahi Art Festival website, I found fascinating the potential to use social network media experimentally, especially as it was not being commonly applied to organization websites at that time.

What tools do you use the most at present?

Adobe products, paper and pen.

What do you place greatest value on in your work?

As a graphic designer, I value concepts and creating something from them. In addition, it is important for me to approach the challenge of new media or technologies without being conservative.

What personal concept runs through your creative activities?

It is to create new senses of value by connecting people to people, people to objects, or people to information.

When you create a work, in what way do you think of a presentation using technologies or media as a means to communicate?

I recently started being conscious that each medium is different and they have their own characters that we cannot simply compare from the perspective of new/old or good/bad. I believe that each medium has useful information, and that once they are combined they can produce a synergy effect.

Could you name a person, a work, or an event that has most influenced you?

My teacher from my school, my boss from my former job, and my colleagues at work, they provided me with a lot of knowledge, experience, and stimulation.