Information
Technology
Descriptions & Essays
In an information-oriented society, the encoding of individual information occurs immediately, almost as fast as the satisfaction of a desire. Our consumption habits, our criminal history, our chronic diseases, even our photographs taken by a security camera - all are stored in bar codes, assimilating them to the physical ID of the DNA.
What happens if the DNA merges with the code? What happens to the bar code itself, when merged with our physical ID?
In this interactive installation, the barcode following individual desire is made visible by a group of moving sculptures fixed on the wall.
The sculptures, made of human skin-like silicone on which a barcode is carved, react to the audience following its own movement, thus showing the strict connections between human and computerized body.
(...) A matrix of sensors, mini lightspots and surveillance cameras are arranged across the space and followthe movements of the visitors.
(source: www.transmediale.de)
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Video: OFFICIAL WEBサイト → http://doc.ycam.jp/
山口情報芸術センター http://www.ycam.jp
Pau Waelder 26-01-2015
Interview with Seiko Mikami for the VIDA 15.0 Awards (fragment)
June 4th, 2013
As an artist, you create interactive installations that confront the “data body” with the “physical body”. Do you think that it is the purpose of art today to help us understand our condition as humans in a society driven by technology?
I think that people are drawn by their ID or code of social-net society. My recent artwork “Desire of Codes” expresses the ambiguous boundaries between the *data body in the virtual world* and the *physical body in the real world* in the information-oriented society. The database in this work is built from images taken at the exhibition venue, such as the visitors’ skin, eyes, hair, bags, etc. which are recorded in real-time by the devices on the wall. These images also recorded similar images some seconds, some hours, and some months ago, which are ultimately projected onto the screen in a complex mixi of elements from the past and the present. Additionally, surveillance images recorded at public places around the world, such as airports, parks, hallways or crowded streets, and images from the database are separated and transferred to a 4.7M round-shaped screen which ressembles an insect’s compound eye: the images are displayed in the 61 hexagonal facets that make up the screen. Looking at the constantly changing projected scenery with its shifting time axes, the visitor feels as if watching a fragmented dream or memories stored in the brain, and discovers the desires that are automatically generated through the act of monitoring. This work tries to visualize a new reality in which fragmentary aspects of space and time are recombined, while the visitor’s position as a subject of expression and surveillance at once indicates the new appearances of human corporeality and desire.
The body plays an important role in your artistic projects. Do you think that, as viewers, we have lost consciousness of our own bodies?
The role that the body plays in my work is different for each project. For example, my “eye-tracking project (1996~)” evolves between consciousness and unconsciousness. This interactive media art installation consists of “eye tracking input” technology and structures of molecules that are generated in real time according to the movements of the viewer’s eyes during their interaction. This space can be navigated simply through one’s gaze and this gaze in turn is converted into XYZ coordinates that simultaneously generate the structures. However it is extremely difficult for humans to control their gaze. For instance, eye tracking technology is used for lie detectors. This proves how our gaze expresses our unconscious affects, and is uncontrollable by our intention. The eye-movement is affected by both our conscious and unconscious processes. What is at the core of this project is the gap between the controlled, voluntary process, and the uncontrolled passive process. Therefore using eye tracking, the eyes mediate the space that exists between the self and the body.
VIDA awards artistic projects that explore the concept of artificial life. How would you define this concept?
I think that “artificial life” is already existing in our own body. For the last 20 years, I have developed artistic projects that involve human perception. Even the concept of perception is very complex and a subject matter that becomes to wide to encompass. There is also the fact that we do not yet fully understand our body well enough. In order to approach both perception and the body, I decided to separate the individual senses: seeing, hearing, the sense of touch, and others, and I am advancing in this project, developing each interface individually. The point of each project was to create the ‘interface’ set to each perception by elaborating a particular censor mechanism. Meanwhile, my entire project is motivated by a conviction that something such as what we call ‘artificial’ in the context of computer technology already exists within us. “Artificial” is composed in each of my projects as an extension of what we already have –a network that mediates our subjectivity and synthesizes what we perceive, as well as the world that is perceived.
Full interview at: http://vida.fundaciontelefonica.com/en/2013/06/04/in-conversation-with-the-vida-15-0-jury-seiko-mikami/
Pau Waelder: Desire of Codes, 26-01-2015, in: Archive of Digital Art Interview with Seiko Mikami for the VIDA 15.0 Awards (fragment)
June 4th, 2013
As an artist, you create interactive installations that confront the “data body” with the “physical body”. Do you think that it is the purpose of art today to help us understand our condition as humans in a society driven by technology?
I think that people are drawn by their ID or code of social-net society. My recent artwork “Desire of Codes” expresses the ambiguous boundaries between the *data body in the virtual world* and the *physical body in the real world* in the information-oriented society. The database in this work is built from images taken at the exhibition venue, such as the visitors’ skin, eyes, hair, bags, etc. which are recorded in real-time by the devices on the wall. These images also recorded similar images some seconds, some hours, and some months ago, which are ultimately projected onto the screen in a complex mixi of elements from the past and the present. Additionally, surveillance images recorded at public places around the world, such as airports, parks, hallways or crowded streets, and images from the database are separated and transferred to a 4.7M round-shaped screen which ressembles an insect’s compound eye: the images are displayed in the 61 hexagonal facets that make up the screen. Looking at the constantly changing projected scenery with its shifting time axes, the visitor feels as if watching a fragmented dream or memories stored in the brain, and discovers the desires that are automatically generated through the act of monitoring. This work tries to visualize a new reality in which fragmentary aspects of space and time are recombined, while the visitor’s position as a subject of expression and surveillance at once indicates the new appearances of human corporeality and desire.
The body plays an important role in your artistic projects. Do you think that, as viewers, we have lost consciousness of our own bodies?
The role that the body plays in my work is different for each project. For example, my “eye-tracking project (1996~)” evolves between consciousness and unconsciousness. This interactive media art installation consists of “eye tracking input” technology and structures of molecules that are generated in real time according to the movements of the viewer’s eyes during their interaction. This space can be navigated simply through one’s gaze and this gaze in turn is converted into XYZ coordinates that simultaneously generate the structures. However it is extremely difficult for humans to control their gaze. For instance, eye tracking technology is used for lie detectors. This proves how our gaze expresses our unconscious affects, and is uncontrollable by our intention. The eye-movement is affected by both our conscious and unconscious processes. What is at the core of this project is the gap between the controlled, voluntary process, and the uncontrolled passive process. Therefore using eye tracking, the eyes mediate the space that exists between the self and the body.
VIDA awards artistic projects that explore the concept of artificial life. How would you define this concept?
I think that “artificial life” is already existing in our own body. For the last 20 years, I have developed artistic projects that involve human perception. Even the concept of perception is very complex and a subject matter that becomes to wide to encompass. There is also the fact that we do not yet fully understand our body well enough. In order to approach both perception and the body, I decided to separate the individual senses: seeing, hearing, the sense of touch, and others, and I am advancing in this project, developing each interface individually. The point of each project was to create the ‘interface’ set to each perception by elaborating a particular censor mechanism. Meanwhile, my entire project is motivated by a conviction that something such as what we call ‘artificial’ in the context of computer technology already exists within us. “Artificial” is composed in each of my projects as an extension of what we already have –a network that mediates our subjectivity and synthesizes what we perceive, as well as the world that is perceived.
Full interview at: http://vida.fundaciontelefonica.com/en/2013/06/04/in-conversation-with-the-vida-15-0-jury-seiko-mikami/
Literature
Broeckmann, Andreas, ed. Trust : an exhibition on the occasion of ISEA 2010 Ruhr, 16th International Symposium on Electronic Art. Heidelberg: Kehrer, 2010.
Exhibitions & Events