Exhibition Overview
To celebrate the thirtieth anniversary of Ars Electronica, the worldwide media art festival held annually in Linz, Austria, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo (MOT) will mount Cyber Arts Japan, a special media art exhibition, focusing particularly on art and technology in Japan.
The ties between Ars Electronica and Japan have been close since the festival’s founding in 1979, thanks to the many Japanese artists who have participated and won awards in the festival. They include Isao Tomita, Ryuichi Sakamoto and Toshio Iwai, and Maywa Denki, for example. Cyber Arts Japan will focus on the works from the festival to explore new possibilities for connecting art, science and technology, and society.
This exhibition, organized with the support of Ars Electronics Linz GmbH, presents, for the first time, a group of significant video documents and reference materials that narrate the thirty-year history of the festival. The exhibition’s several sections will include 25 projects and 50 works of art. In addition to work by prizewinners from the past and this year’s prizewinning works, a Device Art exhibition at the Ars Electronica Center will be synchronized with Cyber Arts Japan, and a networked deconstruction and reconstruction project , in tribute to the Museum of the Future, will link Linz and the Tokyo exhibition site in real time. Cyber Arts Japan will also present high-profile media art that finds its material in new hybrid domains such as giving visual expression to literary works, digital public art, and space art.
Cyber Arts Japan will be held conjunction with the Japan Media Arts Festival, the Agency for Cultural Affairs event at the National Art Center, Tokyo. Plans also call for cooperating with related institutions in Japan such as the NTT Intercommunication Center [ICC]. The simultaneous MOT Collection exhibition will present work by Jikken Kobo (Experimental Workshop) as well as the Entrance Space Project, a large mural by “vagabond” artist Takehiko Inoue, as it examines trailblazers in media art and the present state of the media art domain. Bringing together a significant cluster of interactive, participatory works, events, and films, this exhibition will be a valuable opportunity to reconsider what the power of expression in Japan means and to explore where the next generation of media artists may take us. Exhibition Official Website: www.mot-art-museum.jp/exhibition/cyberarts
What Is Ars Electronica?
Ars Electronica, launched in the city of Linz, Austria, on the banks of the Danube, in 1979, has become the world’s largest electronic art festival. Celebrating its thirtieth anniversary in 2009, Ars Electronics has become an international setting for digital art and media culture, through its museum, the Ars Electronica Center, the annual Ars Electronica Festival, the Prix Ars Electronica, and Futurelab, its media art R&D lab. The Ars Electronica Festival is held each September on a specific theme, such as “Code,” “Simplicity,” or “New Cultural Economy.” During the five days of the festival, over 100,000 people gather in Linz for an amazing variety of over one hundred events, including the CyberArts exhibition of Prix Ars Electronica prizewinning works (in the categories shown below), the Ars Electronica Gala, Klangworke (Cloud of Sound), a vast musical event on the Danube, and Campus, a cooperative program between Ars Electronica and academic institutions. In conjunction with the selection of Linz as the 2009 European Capital of Culture, a new permanent facility, the Ars Electronica Center, opened in January of 2009. There Ars Electronica Futurelab carries out R&D in media art, while the center as a whole, a success model for how art and technology have changed society (a city), is the base from which many new talents are reaching the rest of the world. Ars Electronica Website: www.aec.at/about_about_en.php
The Eight Grand Prix Categories
Computer Animation/Film/VFX
Interactive Art
Digital Music
Hybrid Art
Digital Communities
19–Freestyle computing
[the next idea] Grant
Media Art research Award
Events during the Festival
During the festival in September, the Gala (awards ceremony) is held at the Brucknerhaus, a festival and conference center named after the musical genius Anton Bruckner. During that ceremony, the Golden Nicas (the grand prizes), Awards of Distinction, Honorable Mentions, and other awards are presented. The winners of the Golden Nicas and Awards of Distinction give presentations at the Prix Ars Electronica Forum during the festival. The OK Center for Experimental Art (the OK Center for Contemporary Art, Upper Austria) hosts CyberArts, an exhibition of prizewinning work. The Ars Electronica Center displays prizewinning work from U19–Freestyle Computing, the section for young people in Austria. The prizewinners in the Computer Animation/Film/VFX category are screened in the special Electronica Theatre. The musicians who win awards in the Digital Music category introduce their works in performances at club events and concerts. Participation by the Japanese institutions IAMAS (2004) and the University of Tokyo (2008) has been warmly received in Campus, the academic exhibition.
