Photo set

Middle-nineties were undoubtedly a seminal period for the media arts with flourishing new international initiatives that boosted by the global telematic networks advent, connecting media history with the future of media. The Tokyo's InterCommunication Center (ICC) was initiated by NTT the major Japanese telecommunication company in 1997 to commemorate the 100th anniversary of telephone service in Japan, and from then on it played an essential role in Asia media art scene. They're celebrating their first decade through a series of symposia (moderated by Minoru Hatanaka and Yukiko Shikata) and an exhibition that tries to both going over the recent past and make an analysis of the present. The ICC formula ("encouraging dialogue between technology and the arts") is invisibly embedded in the exhibition enlightening the public on how machine, data and their relationships with our evoluted brains have changed during the years. The exhibition is divided into five different zone. The 'art and technology' seemed to give the most comprehensive vision. In the selected works is finally clear how the abstract visualization of data is very often coupled with simulation of 'natural systems', or how 'reality' has been tentatively implemented in digital artworks. This part includes seminal and heterogeneous artworks (like 'PLX' by Ryota Kuwakubo or "The Secret Lives of Numbers" by Golan Levin), an 'emergencies' part hosting emerging and prospective artists, an educational chronology and an entire anechoic room. In the 'research and development' zone a few projects show the visions of research groups, like 'Gainer Kaidan', based on IAMAS PDP (Programmable Device Project), that interactively and creatively sonifys the main ICC stairs establishing an instinctive relationship with the walking visitor. In the 'network' zone the interface to telematic networks use is questioned reacting with 'live' forces as well as pure poetry to routine behaviors that risk to freeze the still high potential of radically changing the rules in human communication. Finally, the 'archive' zone is meant to preserve the history of the ICC restless activity, through a library and the HIVE image recording archive, testifying how we not only need emotions, paradoxes and stimuli, but also memory to continue to use technology to evolve.