Format

#JapanRevisited202x

Austrian Cultural Forum (AT/JP)

In a matter of weeks, artists around the globe have suddenly found themselves surrounded by a haze of uncertainty. Art fairs, residencies and festivals are postponed, in-person collaborations are cancelled and international travel has all but disappeared. As an encouragement to keep pushing forward and to break this mist of uncertainty, the Austrian Cultural Forum Tokyo has launched #JapanRevisited202x.

Influencer

oneseconds (NL)

A 20 minute online interactive performance where the audience decides the faith of the protagonist. Influencer questions the autonomy of the human being in modern times. How far are we influenced by the majority?

Future Focus – Fragile Worlds I

Invisible Flock, Kasia Molga, Dr. Joanne Tippett, Irini Papadimitriou

This session takes viewers on a virtual studio tour and conversation with artists sharing work, and engaging with and responding to environmental change, and an exploration of how stories of a changing landscape are communicated through nature and other species.

Abducting Europa - Live artist talks

Simon Denny (NZ/DE), Andy King (UK), Szabolcs KissPál (HU), Annika Larsson (SE/DE), Liliana Piskorska (PL), Jonas Staal (NL/GR)

Artists from the “Abducting Europa” exhibition will discuss their work in a series of artists talks, live and pre-recorded. Political fantasy, from myths of national rebirth to the esoteric dimensions of deep web conspiracy theories, these talks will discuss the use and abuse of history, the lure of a Golden Age, and alternative visions on Europe.

Role of Media Art

Etsuko Ichihara (JP), Nao Tokui (JP), Natsumi Wada (JP), Shiho Fukuhara (JP), Asako Tomura (JP), Minoru Hatanaka (JP)

Japan Media Arts Festival, which was founded in Japan, focuses on the field of art, entertainment, manga and anime, and is becoming more and more centripetal in its inclusion of various fields. What is the role of media arts in this context? This session the panelist will be discussing the future of media art along with the unique setting of this year’s Ars Electronica to be held online.

EUPHRATES

Masahiko Sato (JP), Masashi Sato (JP)

The process and how EUPHRATES create their work remains unknown. Under what kind of environment EUPHRATES continues to create numbers of works with variety in the choice of media, including educational television programs, picture books, and the video work that won the award at the 23rd Japan Media Arts Festival, which expresses a different point of view from the usual.

Radicalization by Design - Panel discussion

Joanna Bryson (UK/DE), Bharath Ganesh (US/NL), Richard Rogers (UK/NL), Sahana Udupa (DE). Moderation: Arjon Dunnewind (NL) and Marc Tuters (CA/NL)

Live panel discussion - Speakers from the “Radicalization by Design” web project and other guests will discuss issues of freedom of speech, of extreme speech and deplatforming. Recently the big corporate social media platforms have come under immense pressure to clean up their act.

Radicalization by Design - Webproject

Florian Cramer (DE/NL), Bharat Ganesh (US/NL), Jon Rafman (CA/US), Richard Rogers (US/NL), Dimitri Tokmetzis (NL)

Webproject - Radicalization by Design will discuss the question of whether our media are radicalizing us. Is social media tearing society apart? How do trolls, conspiracy theories, memes and fringe platforms impact politics today?

Last Words / TypeTrace

dividual inc. / Dominique Chen (FR), Takumi Endo (JP)

In this era, the body and words = memory became a different way of storing things. The internet has become the norm, and people's words are stored somewhere that has no concrete place in the cloud, which becomes an extended memory. Even when the body disappears, it keeps going and continues to affect someone else.

Soundform No.1

Natura Machina / Yasuaki Kakehi (JP), Mikhail Mansion (US), Kuan-Ju Wu (TW)

Media may have been very primitive by nature. Electronic music and visuals were born from the complexity of chemical reactions and information transfer processes that led to the creation of devices and their intentional manipulation. This work brings us back to primitive ways of thinking, where such complexity has become the norm today.

Vocalise

Miyu Hosoi (JP)

The vibrations of voices in the air create a recognizable sound that spreads through space. Through the Internet, it transcends location and is delivered to the audience. We hope that people all over the world will enjoy her live performance at Ars, where she experiments with her own voice.

Museum inside Network 91 Revisited

Akihiro Kubota (JP), Kazuhiko Hachiya (JP), Koichiro Eto (JP), Yukiko Shikata (JP), Minoru Hatanaka (JP), Seiichi Saito (JP)

NTT ICC in 90s represented an exhibition without reality? This session will invite panelist to think about what media art can do for society in the present day and age, referring to past examples.

Valparaiso Brushwood

Gustavo Celedón (CL) Marcelo Raffo (CL) Verónica Francés (ES) Cristian Galarce López (CL)

Presenting a wide range of images of Valparaíso and exploring the city, this audiovisual capsule aims to elaborate Valparaíso Brushwood Garden as a concept, showing the current socio-political situation in our country, also presenting the contents of our project, featuring the artworks and artists from the Artistic Research Center.

Reminiscence of the Unknown, Image and Matter || Digitally Natural, Naturally Digital || Sehnsucht nach Masse

Yoichi Ochiai (JP)

This work is a documentation of Ochiai’s the exhibition filled with his confrontation with nature and his deep spirit of inquiry makes us reflect on the time when the relationship between nature and the human being must be reconstructed, so-called Anthropocene, and the many lives that we are forced to recognize through the Covid-19.

Feminist Structures: Networks and the Collective

Sibila Sotomayor Van Rysseghem (CL)

One-actress experimental theatrical performance via webcam, in livestream format, where the original video component is visually transformed and processed in real time through Max/Msp Jitter, in a way that the resulting image is affected by the sound of the voice and body of the same performer, reacting to the energy, rhythm and/or dynamics of the speech and movements.

Synesthasia Garden

Daisuke Yamashiro (JP)

Yamashiro, who has the unique ability to "involve" various things, has created a work that involves the power of Takanabe-cho in Miyazaki Prefecture, where he created this work, and the five senses of the audience. It is a landscape, and the space itself is a piece of music, a device that allows us to feel time.

Elliptical Memories, for six plus one performer

Cristian Galarce López (CL)

Specially composed and designed for Ars Electronica 2020, this work will be performed at a distance from multiple locations and presented in a VR room. The sound sources are centralized in a single platform designed in Max/Msp, to perform Real Time Processing over six independent audio channels.

Black Aura Re-Reversal

ReKOGEI (JP)

One would accept change for the sake of not changing. Craft is appreciated when it is continuous, but it creates new possibilities when things change unintentionally. This work represents Urushi today, a traditional craft technique passed on to generations in Takaoka City, Toyama Prefecture.

Rhizomatiks presents PLAYING TOKYO Vol.09 “Special Edition”

Seiichi Saito (JP), Carsten Nicolai (DE), Kazunao Abe (JP), Marko Peljhan (SI), Yukiko Shikata (JP), Daito Manabe (JP)

"Staying TOKYO" originally started as "Flying TOKYO," the talk and workshop event we have been holding since 2009 inviting some of the renowned international artists with whom Daito Manabe has a close relationship. Since the self-restraint advice by the Japanese government, the event has evolved as "Staying TOKYO" and has been running online every week. The first half of the event is a remote talk session with me, Seiichi Saito, inviting guests, and the second half is DJ/VJ session led by Daito Manabe and the engineers at Rhizomatiks introducing online experiments and tool development. Now that self-restrain advice is pull off, with the end of the emergency declaration, we changed the name to "PLAYING TOKYO" and shifted to a new phase to try to include the audience as much as possible in our expressive activities in real space. What can artists do now and what should they do in the field of entertainment? This is a "PLAYING TOKYO: Special Edition" by Rhizomatiks.

Rewinding the History of Japanese Media Art

Ai Hasegawa (JP), Akinori Goto (JP), Ken Furudate (JP), Michiko Tsuda (JP), Minoru Hatanaka (JP), Seiichi Saito (JP)

The history of Japanese media art is very diverse and profound, and it has found various new frontiers. This talk session explores the history of modern Japanese media art in reverse chronological order.