Session Title:

Carbon Neutral by Stationary Nomad and Tea Culture

In 1980, Nam June Paik coined the term “Stationary Nomad,” a concept of working in various places on the earth to reduce energy consumption toward a carbon-neutral society. An advocate of the concept, he foresaw an era where artists expressed themselves on electronic canvases and the spread of the current non-fungible token(NFT). Forty years later, in this post-corona world, the idea of nomads is fast approaching to be a pervasive model.
Japan has been a forest ecosystem and its culture of tea has increased the value of the regional ecosystem. I will revisit the concept of nomads as a norm which was suggested to tackle the problems of materiality and temporality that haunted the 1970s and see how it can be applied as a solution to the calculated nature ecosystem of today.

Session Title:

Online Conviviality via Eastern Festival Culture

How can we bring back a sense of festiveness in this world of COVID-19? We are now in a society where people are divided and connectivity via bland online meetings is becoming the norm. In this session, I will explain how the Eastern festival culture can bring about a sense of festiveness and conviviality in the internet community. I will delve into case studies such as festivals after the Great East Japan Earthquake 10 years ago as well as discuss user interfaces and knowledge about media art that can improve online experiences.

Exhibition Theme:

Cycles of Hyper Intuition

The New Japan Islands, an official SXSW 2020 event,was cancelled due to the coronavirus outbreak. Instead, selected portions of the official event were performed and broadcasted live on March 22. The venue was the Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation. It was an alternative means to exchange information in this age where people cannot gather together physically.
The theme of this year's event was Cycles of Hyper Intuition.
The New Japan Islands 2020 focused on exploring a new philosophy on beauty, by blending the concept of Reisei, an ancient Japanese aesthetic sense of spirituality, with the rationality of this digital age.
The spatial concept was termed Field of Divine Nature.
Mingei, that is, Japanese folk craft, photographed in 8K by the NHK group was projected on a huge 12.4m x 7m wall. Created by unnamed ancestors, the 18 Mingei pieces from the Jomon, Heian, Kamakura, Edo, Meiji and Showa eras are the crystals born from the innate and intuitive beauty rooted in the nature of the region.
8K video with a resolution of 32 million pixels exceeds the criticality of human vision. Crossing the boundary between analog and digital, the viewing experience evokes a state of Cycles of Hyper Intuition. And the atmosphere of the Field of Divine Nature arouses futuristic creativity.
The beauty of Mingei projected in 8K provides a sense of being in harmony with life, going beyond the binary conflict of human vs. nature and technology vs. tradition.
The broadcast featured three performances and ten sessions. Intended for a US audience, the broadcast took place from 6 pm to 2:30 am CST.
Opinions and questions flew in from all around the world via Twitter and Zoom during this 8 ½-hour broadcast. It was a brand new platform for worldwide knowledge-sharing and dialogue.
We are now faced with an unprecedented value shift. With people fragmented by the virus, better audiovisual resolution in network communication is in demand. Once upon a time people had an uncontrollable fear of nature and felt it with their bodies. But the virus has provided an opportunity to redefine the human body. The countless images all over the internet flow into our bodies as uncontrollable muddy currents. Our bodies now exist in a new "nature" where the nature of the past and digital have merged.
So what is the state of Cycles of Hyper Intuition that occurs in this moment? When digital nature, which exceeds human intelligence, and super-sensation, which transcends humanity, are intermingled, a new vernacular is created.
Cycles of Hyper Intuition redefines the form of creation.
In the midst of this new nature, we will continue to advocate The 0th Industrial Revolution, a panoramic perspective of the future from the standpoint of the past. We need to overcome divisions, prepare for a future characterized by new physicalities and cultures as digital and nature become fused.
And we all need to co-create an environment that fosters innovation and dialogue.

Session Title:

Geo-Technologies Based on Local DNA and Philosophy

Geo-political studies have shown digital ecosystems vary depending on geographical zones, such as the platformers and capital circulation-oriented California, regulation-heavy, sustainability-sensitive and design-attentive Europe and the Chinese-style tie-in of governmental policy with production industries. In Japan, “Mingei,” rooted in local DNA and based on the theory of “functional beauty,” is both an art and philosophy. Though the Japanese digital ecosystem may seem to be simply economic success-driven, the speaker will present how Mingei is a strong force behind Japanese digital innovations, helping to interpret and blend in outside ideas. Interpreting the technological evolutions through Mingei may redefine and provide a new overview of the digital ecosystems around the world.

Exhibition Theme:

Digitally Fermenting Landscape

Currently, society around us is changing by the minute, or actually, by the second. The internet, which used to be a utopia of decentralized ecosystem, is causing new social problems such as filter bubbles and concentrated data concessions. On the other hand, new ecosystems are being nurtured from the soil where the digital infrastructure is rooted. Be it in the field of architecture, sculpture, food or digital expressions, cultural seeds born from the islands of Japan, interrelate in an ever so complex manner with various phenomena, giving rise to new seeds which augment human knowledge while coexisting with the old. Cultural memes created by humans and connected devices have evolved uniquely and independently in our society, merging with nature and technology, creating the next landscape of the industrial society. This transforming Japanese culture can be called as an encompassing fermenting ecosystem. Similar to the process of fermentation induced by the activity of invisible and uncountable microbes, the Japanese culture ferments, obscuring boundaries between public and private states. The theme of this event then, is to propose an inclusive future vision which accepts the chaotically fermenting scenery in a positive way, and even embroiling pop culture in it.

Session Title:

Nature and Aesthetics: New Theories from Japan

From ancient days, Japanese culture viewed beauty as the assimilation of the practical and aesthetics, in other words, technology and art, which is reflected in everyday products. Called Wabi Sabi, it is a sophisticated view of finding beauty in nature through repeated efforts to stabilize the disparity between complexity and simplicity. According to media theory, when TV came into Japanese lives, mass media lulled the viewers into the mediocrity of middle class values, away from the refined perspective on nature. Now, with IoT and AI creating a totally computational and ultra-connected society, a new world that blends the artificial and nature evolves. We will take a look from the 1970’s to the present and present a new theory on nature through the point of view of a redefined Wabi Sabi.