The term “device art” is already a part of the vocabulary of contemporary art. The Device Art Chronicle demonstrates how the concept originated and how it developed within the Device Art Project. Through discussions among its members and guests, we were able to define features that characterize Japanese media art. They include playfulness, appreciation of tools, and the continuity between art and design. These can be better understood by relating them to earlier cultural traditions from the Japanese middle ages to the postwar avant-garde art movement. Japanese art history, which is quite different from its Western counterpart, allows us to observe media art from alternative viewpoints. The essence of device art is also international. Some of its features, such as the attention to interface design, are shared by many works of media art. The Device Art Chronicle applies a media archeological approach to media art, aiming to explain its prehistory, and how local and global features are connected.
Biography:
Machiko Kusahara is a professor at the School of Culture, Media and Society, Waseda University and holds a Ph.D in Engineering from the University of Tokyo for her theoretical study on the interplay between media culture, technology, art and society. Kusahara taught media art theory and practice at IAMAS, InterMedium Institute (IMI), Tokyo Kogei University, Kobe University, and UCLA before joining Waseda University.
She came into the field of digital media in early 1980s as a curator, critic, theorist and educator in computer graphics and digital art. Since then she curated and wrote internationally while serving as a jury member for Ars Electronica, SIGGRAPH, ISEA, Japan Media Arts Festival, and Hiroshima International Animation Festival among many other competitions. Currently her research focuses on two related fields. One is media art in Japan, including Device Art, and Japanese postwar avant-garde art as its starting point. The other is the research on early visual media in Japan including magic lantern, panorama, and prewar optical toys from a media-archeological perspective.
Kusahara has written extensively both in Japanese and in English in both fields. Her recent essays on media art are included in “A Companion to Digital Art” (ed. Christiane Paul) and “Routledge Handbook of New Media in Asia” (ed. Larissa Hjorth and Olivia Khoo). An essay in English on Japanese magic lantern history will be published later this year.
