[Assignment 2] The 10th Sentiment!

The Japan Media Arts Festival is an annual festival held by Japan's Agency for Cultural Affairs since 1997. The festival for a nominal year was usually held during February or March next year, rather than at the end of the nominal year. For instance, the 2010 Japan Media Arts Festival, where award-winning works for Year 2010 were exhibited or screened, was actually held in February, 2011.

During the festival, awards are given in four categories: Art (formerly called Non-Interactive Digital Art), Entertainment (formerly called Interactive Art; includingvideo games and websites), Animation, and Manga. Within each category, one Grand Prize, four Excellence Prizes, and (since 2002) one Encouragement Prize are awarded. These are sometimes also called Japan Media Arts Awards.

The Tenth Sentiment

Artist :KUWAKUBO Ryota (Japan)

Born in Tochigi Prefecture, 1971. Ever since he co-produced BITMAN with Maywa Denki in 1998, he has been releasing media art works using electronics both in Japan and overseas. His featured themes include the relations between contrasting matters, such as analog and digital, human and machine, sender and receiver of information, and more. His major works include Video Bulb, PLX, ShiriFurin and Nicodama, among others.

The Project : The 10th Sentiment

Summary :

A model train equipped with a light source slowly navigates through various household objects lined on the floor, and projects their shadows. Dancing on the walls, floor, and ceiling of the room, the shadows of the objects keep changing like a landscape seen through the carriage windows, surrounding viewers with images as if they were passengers riding on the train. By exposing them to a repetition of conflicting experiences—immersion and bird’s eye view, déjà vu and jamais vu—this work sharpens audiences’ senses and inspires them to share impressions.

Comment from other viewer :

This attractive work has a simple system that puts the spotlight on spatial exposure. Unlike cliché interactive art works that tend to depend too much on technology, The Tenth Sentiment is a realization of “interaction” seen as a direct and versatile acceptance of the work by its viewers.  

Furthermore, it can also be interpreted as part of the history of imaging machines and a step into developing new horizons. The work is related to the ancient shadowgraphs, the 17th century magic lanterns, the moving pictures, and the experiments of László MOHOLY-NAGY (Hungarian photographer, painter, and art educator) with light and shadow, and at the same time attains an innovative spatial and dynamic first-person sensitivity by allowing audiences to project themselves into the composition and to attain the perspective from the train, through the movement of the light source, in addition to look down the world. 

By creating a unique universe through this example of self-made “Device Art”, KUWAKUBO reveals a new world that transcends the boundaries of installation, interactive art, visual images, and performance and redefines the origins of media.

Personal Opinions :

When you first enter the dark room, the room is bare except for a toy train set quietly humming on the floor. The concept is very simple. A model train with an LED light as a headlamp makes its paces around its tiny tracks. Around the train tracks are everyday objects found in the office or home. They are placed such that the light from the train casts shadows around the bare dark room and these every day objects balloon into the shadows of industrial structures and urban complexes. The effect is that you feel like you are in the train, riding through cities and the countryside with the silhouettes of the outside rushing past you.

Rows of clothespins resemble electric power stations snaking through a wasteland. A copse of standing pencils are telephone poles. Lightbulbs stand in for nuclear power plants. A pasta strainer becomes a factory leaking light. Other objects stretch out into office buildings, ports, parks.

A tiny toy train, one light source, an empty dark room, and lots of well-placed every day things become a lonely train ride through the industrial and urban wasteland of modern life.

Suggestion :

Basically, overall the project is quiet balance, with the medium light which is superbly control and the extra props which is very common yet can produce a unpredictable second image from the shadow. For me, maybe the artist can play with a music or sound effect which i think can level up the audience mood towards the installation storyline.