| #691 |
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2004 |
Perilous 691 Once again, I am writing this from Tokyo, this time en route to a presentation at Transmediale 2004 in Berlin. It is pretty cold at the moment with temperatures going to about –2 degrees at night but the skies are very clear and it’s quiet pleasant with a few layers of clothing on. Yet again there are some amazing record discoveries to be made with the combination of Warzawa (slightly west of central Tokyo in Kichijoji), the many Cisco shops (in Shibuya), and Tower Records (also Shibuya) being able to provide pretty much everything from rarities to new release music from all over the world. Everything that gets locally released over here seems to get extra tracks added, or a bonus ‘Japan only’ DVD, or even in some cases a specially molded toy (by Kubrick of course) – I guess this adds to the excitement of collector shopping here. Of the most unique things spotted in the last day or so, there would be a Dose One CD/book combination, the Rune Grammafon CD/book comibnation with artwork by Kim Hiorthoy, and a crazy foldout scrapbook with stickers, CDs and other stuff from Chicks On Speed. Although tempting with the favourable exchange rate, I’ve been trying to opt only for releases by Japanese artists – with new albums from Sketch Show (ex-YMO member Harumi Hosono), Riow Arai, and others. There’s some excellent digital art in Tokyo at the present, most notably at the NTT Inter Communciation Centre, a place that needs to be visited when in Tokyo. A new media art gallery inside Tokyo Opera City near Shinjuku, the NTT ICC currently is showing a series of work curated by ZKM from Germany titled Future Cinema. There were some truly amazing interactive works on show around the show’s theme including a new installment of Lev Manovich’s SoftCinema – a self generating computer-run film comprised of a series of media ‘objects’ – video files, narratives, audio – which are brought together to tell a ‘random’ story. The way Manovich has built the engine that drives the installation means that these story elements are brought together in ways that make sense to the viewer (and according to rules set down by the element authors) – each time a ‘proper’ story and narrative is made. A bit like an automated self-generating ‘choose-your-own-adventure’ as a film. Another work, Pedestrian by Shelley Eshkar and Paul Kaiser projects a videogame style streetscape on the floor of the gallery. Perhaps modelled using the Grand Theft Auto game engine, characters emerge from the vertically viewed city (top down) and interact – a series of storylines begin to emerge for each ‘pedestrian’ before the focus shofts to another. Elsewhere Japanese artists Masaki Fujihata and Takeshi Kawashima project in 3D using polarising lens a ‘mind map’ of their travels in France. Each Handycam video sequence has been recorded with its GPS coordinates and then played back with the GPS material forming the 3D spatial parameters for how the video appears in your viewing space – immediately drawing parallels with how you migh to conceive of how memories are stored and played back by your own brain. Fascinating stuff. There’ll be plenty more of this sort of cutting edge technological art in Berlin . . . . but that’s next Perilous in two weeks time. Also, maybe you have heard on the grapevine . . . . Frigid is coming back from the dead. In Newtown fon Sundays rom the end of February. And free of charge. At the new @Newtown (the old RSL). Yellow Peril (www.snarl.org)  Goto
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