Tokyo Garden

Tokyo Garden is an online place where we all can explore the origin of Japanese Media Art. As William Gibson describes in his novels, Tokyo is a city of cyber, high-tech and a uniquely wired culture. Why? We will try to find an answer, tracing where, how and from whom our media artists’ roots originate. For this challenge, we are planning to contents such as talks with different artists and curators, virtual studio tours, a sharing archive, and current artists’ work, including winners of the Japan Media Arts Festival 2020. Of course, we will also have many entertainment programs with DJs and artists. We hope you can virtually visit Tokyo, enjoy it and think together about the future of media art.

Tokyo Garden is hosting a portal website for various Japanese creators and organizations who have played an important role in Japan’s media art scene such as ICC and Dommune, with their original exhibitions and performances in association with Ars Electronica 2020. Dommune, for example, was founded in 2010 by artist Naohiro Ukawa, and was Japan’s first live streaming studio and channel. Monday through Thursday, it has been streaming for five hours a day for ten years, experimenting with live video delivery in an era where the traditional concepts of „broadcasting“, „publishing“ and „advertising“ are going bankrupt. In collaboration with Tokyo Garden, Dommune will showcase new possibilities for visual communication at Ars Electronica Festival.