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From the Avant-Garde: Re-Conceptualizing Cultural Origins in the Digital Media Art of JapanAuthor(s): Jean M. IppolitoSource: Leonardo, Vol. 40, No. 2 (2007), pp. 142-151, 157-158Published by: The MIT PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20206376 .
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HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE
From the Avant-Garde:
Re-Conceptualizing Cultural Originsin the Digital Media Art of Japan
JeanM. Ippolito
ABSTRACT
isconceptions concerning
digitalartists inJapanmake
themout to be mere followers,
sawy with technologybut not
necessarily the conceptual
originatorsof theirwork.
Examiningthe aesthetic and
philosophical content of their
work, however, reveals thattheir
attitudes toward the explorationof process, performance and
the inherent atureofmaterials
come from innovativend daring
avant-gardegroups of the
1960s and 1970s inJapan,
including he Gutai and Mono-ha
groups, whose ideas predatethose of theNew York avant
garde schools, even outside
of the technologicalmilieu.
M
T-JL-he point at which one stands while observing
a natural phenomenoncan have an effect on how it is per
ceived and catalogued in the memory. Similarly, from the
perspective of an art historian, I perceive the work of inter
nationally renowned digital media artists Yoichiro Kawaguchi,Masaki Fujihata and Naoko Tosa as an immense historical ac
cumulation of cultural and philosophical influences that well
up into apinnacle within each complete work of art. This at
titude toward the art object issues from a method of scholar
ship developed within the field of art history. When examininga work of art, the art historian sees itnot
simplyas the result
of asingle artist's conception but as a mirror that reflects the
currents of the era from which it comes. This critical approachis often in conflict with the artist's own ideas about his or her
work. It is a very personal thing to the artist, who is sometimes
hesitant to acknowledge a scope of influence broader than
that which comes from within, but if one looks at a work of
art from a broad, conceptual view, the object itself, when one
is produced, is aproduct of the time and place from which it
comes. One can think of the objectas a
product of society,
something
that
belongs
to and reflects
society
as a whole. In
this respect, the work of art is a conduit of both cultural and
societal influences.
Having been trained in the traditional methods of art his
tory, with specialization in Japanese art, I naturally look for
Japanese influences in the art of Japan. This sometimes pro
vokes fear in the minds of today's internationally active Japanese artists, since they certainly do not want to be associated
with clich?d stereotypes. It is not clich? imagery that is of im
portance inmy own assessment of digital art, however; it is the
fundamental approach to the medium that comes from deeprooted cultural immersion.
My perception of traditional Japanese influences in Japanese digital art comes not
only from an understanding of
traditional Japanese art and culture but also from knowledge
of the reactions of native Japanese artists to their own history and culture. An awareness of the struggles for recognition by the avant-garde groups of Japan in the 1950s throughthe 1980s, as well as
knowledge of similar struggles of Ameri
can and European artists, provides a unique perspective within
the international avant-gardearena.
From this vantage point, this article
reinterpretssome of the underlying
concepts and influences in the work
of Japan's early digital artists.
Re-conceptualization #1: The pio
neering computer graphic artists of
Japanare not simply emulators of
Western European and American
creativity; theyare
unique contrib
utors to the artistic innovations and
aesthetic thinking of their experimental art groups.
Re-conceptualization #2: Artists of Japan who draw onJapa
nese cultural influences are not limited to the incorporationof known images from traditional Japan.
Re-conceptualization #3: Although the content of Japanese
digital media art sometimes has no narrative, the meaning is
often profoundly complex and philosophical.These re-conceptualizations
are based onpopular assump
tions and
stereotypes widely expressed
on both sides of the
ocean. They sometimes appear asannoying hurdles that im
pedea
deeper philosophical understanding of the works of
art and artists. The standard audience that may be interested
in Japanese influences tends to look for readily recognizable
images such asgeisha and Mount Fuji
orimages from Edo
period ukiyo-e woodcut prints.
Fig. 1. Takamasa Kuniyasu, Return toSelf, bricks and logs,installation view atHara Museum ARC, Gunma Prefecture, 1990.
(? Takamasa Kuniyasu)
JeanM. Ippolito arthistorian), rtDepartment, niversityfHawaii atHilo,200W. KawiliStreet, ilo,HI 96720,U.S.A. E-mail:<[email protected]>.
Article Frontispiece. Takamasa Kuniyasu, La Spirale duMidou,installation view, Le Mus?e Despiau-Wl?rick, Mont-de-Marsan,
France, 1997. (? Takamasa Kuniyasu)
?2007ISAST LEONARDO, Vol. 40, No. 2, pp. 142-151,2007 143
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Fig. 2. Conceptual diagram of the building blocks used in Yoichiro Kawaguchi's growth
algorithm. (?Jean M. Ippolito)
Even in Japan, these misconceptionshave created roadblocks to my study of
the cultural roots of digital media artists.
Some Japanese artists that I interviewedheld back in fear of being associated with
stereotypical imagery and refused to have
anything to do with such research. Theywant to be a part of the international art
arena and do not want to be peggedas
Japanese artists. In Japan, to be associated
with such traditional imagery is to be
clich?d, and some artists are scorned for
capitalizingon stereotypes in order to
get the attention ofWestern enthusiasts.
Chuichi Fujii, a traditional-media artist
whose large sculptural pieces resemble
bonsai trees, admits to cultural influ
ences, but hesitates to focus on them for
fear of exploiting stereotypes:
Without saying thatwe are American or
Japanese, we carry our cultures within
us, and that emerges in a work. With
out being conscious of it, culture just
naturally is an influence. I don't like it
when artists use their culture as a sell
ing point. And I don't like art that is
based on images ofMount Fuji or geisha.
Although my work may have a certain
influence from Japanese traditional cul
ture or Buddhism, Idon't want this tobe
come a major issue [1].
Shigeo Chiba, an art historian and
critic in Tokyo, wrote an article for Art
Forum in 1984 that advises the casual art
observer from outside Japan: Althougha show of interest inJapanese particularities isdesired, dwelling
on the exoticism
of Mount Fuji and Geisha girls is intoler
able [2].
For myself, I certainly enjoy traditional
Japanese imagery in art; however, I have
found profound influences in digitalwork that may be of concern to the con
noisseurs of moreconceptual art in the
international arena. Some of the work of
these concept-based artists is often mis
understood because of the lack of nar
rative. The cultural influences of these
artists stem, not from the popularart of
Japan, but from the avant-garde move
ments of the 1960s and 1970s.
Early Avant-Garde Art
Groups inJapanOne of the earliest independent avant
garde groups in Japanwas the Gutai
group. The Gutai movement began in
1955 with a group of artists in Osaka
searching for newapproaches to art.
Some of the artists of this group were ex
perimenting with new materials and new
methods of painting. The leader of the
group was Jiro Yoshihara, and many of
the participantswere his students. They
attemptedto do away with the traditional
brush and canvas for painting. In the
exhibition Experimental Outdoor Exhi
bition of Modern Art to Challenge the
Mid-Summer's Sun, held in apublic park
in Osaka in 1955, the exhibited works
consisted of clear plastic tubes filled with
colored water suspended from trees,
paper plates lined up on the ground,
plastic ground cloth stretched with foot
prints leading the audience/participantsto a set location, etc. [3]. There were no
works of art in traditional media?no
painton canvas. The artists of the Gutai
group wereexploring
new materials with
which tomake art. This experimentationled to new processes and included per
formance art. The Gutai group staged
performances at theater spaces in Osaka
as well as
Tokyoin the late 1950s and
early1960s. Members of the group also ex
perimented with different approaches to
painting. Kazuo Shiraga,an ordained
Buddhist priest, would swing from a rope
and paint with his feet. Saburo Murakami
would runthrough successive canvases
made of paper on stretcher bars to cre
ate human-size holes through each [4].
Atsuko Tanaka is famous for her electric
piece Bell and the electric-light dresses
in which she would parade. Akira Kana
yama made drawings using a remote
controlled toy car [5].
Members of the Gutai group were not
acknowledged for their innovative workin the international arena until very re
cently. Even standard textbooks on 20th
century avant-garde art movements did
not include the Gutai group's contribu
tion until the publication of more recent
editions. The fourth revised edition of
Arneson's History ofModern Art (1998),
however, does recognize that the per
formance art of the Gutai group predatesthat of Allen Kaprow and others of the
early 1970s [6]. High Red Center, a coali
tion of three artists from Tokyo, also
staged performances, some of which
were reenacted by members of the inter
national Fluxus artists in New York [7].
The desires of the Gutai group to find
new processes and materials for makingart in the late 1950s and 1960s grew in
parallel with the Abstract Expressionistmovement of New York in the early 1950s.
The Gutai artists were fascinated byac
tion painters such as Jackson Pollock.
They wanted to further the experimental ideas of the New York art movements,
which also influenced European artists
such as Yves Klein. They saw in the ex
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periments of the action painters a de
sire to tap the inner rhythms of the sub
conscious mind through automatic tech
niques (automatism). Although some
parallels can be found between auto
matism and traditional Buddhist use of
repetitive activities to tap resources within
the subconscious mind, these were not
evident on the surface of the group's
work and theories, and certainly not ob
vious to contemporary international art
circles [8].
An avant-garde movement that beganin the early 1970s in Japan, known as
Mono-ha (School of Things), was pro
pelled byan
altogether different motive.
Itwas founded by the Korean-born U-Fan
Lee, who soughta
uniquelynew art that
drew from Asian philosophy and culture
[9]. The Mono-ha artists had a refresh
ing newapproach to the raw materials
from which they produced their artwork.
They usually used natural materials such
as wood,clay,
charcoal, earth, air, metals,
etc. Janet Koplos,a
specialist in contem
porary Japanese art theory and criticism,
explains that the Mono-ha artists had
a direct approach to ordinary materials,which were considered to have an inher
ent character and value; the actual real
ity of space, bound into works which
interacted with their settings, and a rela
tional, relative emphasis in which the
sculptor, the sculpture, and the worldwere seen as one continuum, inwhich
creation was not possible, and the ex
pression of ego was not desirable [10].
They would juxtapose and contrast
these materials to reveal the materials'inner essence and changing characteris
tics when confronted by the variables of
space and time. Artists of the Mono-ha
movement included Kishio Suga and
Nobuo Sekine [11], known for simplebut profound installations that used
nothing but a few pieces of wood or stone
to prop up windows and change the na
ture of agallery space or show contrast
between natural and artificial surfaces
over time. Toshio Hara, of the Hara Mu
seum of Contemporary Art in Tokyo,ex
plains: Generally, their art is a direct
response to natural processes of growth
and decay [12]. Although the Mono-haartists were active in the galleries of Japanin the early 1970s, their legacy continued
onthrough the 1980s in the work of art
ists dubbed post-Mono-ha by critics and
historians. These artists include Taka
masaKuniyasu and Tadashi Kawamata,
who areinternationally renowned today
for their installations using logs, bricks
and scrap lumber.
Kuniyasu created a number of instal
lations by stacking the standard building
blocks of baked clay bricks and cut logsthat have since become the signature of
his work. The artist claims to begin with
out a preconceived plan and stacks the
materials in a repetitive rhythm until he
nolonger needs to think about what he
is doing [13]. Thus the installation takes
on a life of its own as it grows to fill
the gallery space, sometimes spilling out
through the doorway and windows so
that it appears to flow down the street
(Fig. 1 and Article Frontispiece).Kawamata uses scrap lumber that has
been discarded or set aside to build his
installation structures. He gathers up
the materials and hammers the wood
together to change the space inside the
galleryor outside the building. His work
sometimes has the appearance of scaf
folding,as if itwere holding up the build
ra^^K? 'I?HhB H^H^^? 'KmHb/^^^S^>^?^p^^^^^^^^^WSrfli^^^^^^^^l^^^^l
Fig. 3. Yoichiro Kawaguchi, still image from ?ggy, computer-generated animation, 1990.
(? Yoichiro Kawaguchi)
Ippolito, rom theAvant-Garde 145
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Fig. 4. Yoichiro Kawaguchi, Gemotion Dance, interactive installation with performance, 2002. (? Yoichiro Kawaguchi)
ingor
providing footing for the generalmaintenance of a structure. Kawamata's
structures become walls and corridors;
thus they affect how people move throughthe building's space. Although his work
is occasionally misinterpreted as apoliti
cal statement about war ordecay [14],
from apost-Mono-ha perspective it is
about transformation and change [15].
One additional example of the postMono-ha approach tomaterials is found
in the work and attitude of Chuichi Fu
jii. Fujii works with large cut logs that
he tapers gradually by wrapping copper
wire around them and adjusting the work
in stages to form uncanny shapes and
precariously balanced structures. He ex
plains:
Wood is wood, and it should be ap
proached simply; the point of departureshould be the A of ABC_There seems
to be a lot of art inwhich itmakes no dif
ference what material it ismade from.Myattitude is that one should start from an
understanding ofwhat amaterial can do,whatever thematerial is [16].
Howard N. Fox sums up the traditional
Japanese influences that he sees appar
ent in the work of these artists in his
somewhat controversialessay
for the ex
hibition A Primal Spirit at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art:
Their art draws upon ideas and aesthet
ics that are not only traditional but dom
inant inJapanese art, including Shinto
attitudes?that man isequivalent to and
involved with nature and the spirits and
life force embodied therein, that the art
object is the locus of the individual's spiritual encounter with nature, that the
artist works with thematerials to dis
cover their inner being, rather than
against them to impose his technical vir
tuosity?and Buddhist concepts?thatman isnot at the center of the universe,that the art object represents a micro
cosm ofthat universe, and that the function of art is fundamentally meditative
[17].
Early Digital MediaArtists inJapanParallels can be found in this unique ap
proach tomaterials and awareness of the
transitory nature of time and space in the
attitude of the Mono-ha artists and that
of the digital media pioneers of Japan.
Let us consider, for instance, the work of
YoichiroKawaguchi,
aninternationally
acknowledged digital media pioneer. On
the surface, Kawaguchi's work appearsto be a simulation of nature's organic
growth and evolutionary processes. The
artist himself often presents his work as
springing from his own childhood ob
servations of evolutionary growth and
change during his upbringingon Tane
gashima, atropical island teeming with
land and sea creatures [18]. This rela
tionship to growth and change is often
found in the concerns of the post-Monoha artists. Kawaguchi's work is stimulat
ing and visuallyawe
inspiring, but, for
international avant-garde art circles, not
necessarily concept laden. There is no
story line to his animated pieces, and his
themes are not instrumental in nature.
The standard interpretation of Kawa
guchi's work is that the computer is used
as a tool to produce images that are beau
tiful to behold on the surface. The art
ist uses high-definition resolution and
Implicit Surface modeling techniques to
enhance these images [19]. When we ex
amine the fundamental building blocks,
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however, we can find parallels with post
Mono-ha artists' use of basic materials
and processes over time to reveal the
transitory nature of art. Kawaguchi uses
virtual cones and cylinders in agrowth
algorithm that recursively fills the vir
tual space [20] (Fig. 2). The cones and
cylinders are the equivalent of Kuni
yasu's bricks and logs. Furthermore, the
random element programmed into the
computer algorithm and its recursive po
tential is the equivalent of the intuitive
stacking performed by Kuniyasu and
other Mono-ha followers. Kawaguchi's
use of computer technique, however, H
does not simply mimic the actions of H
avant-garde artists; itexplores the nature H
of the algorithm and the computer as H
process. Although Kawaguchi's work con- H
tains broader concepts of birth, growth H
and decay froma visual and philosophi- Hi
Fig. 5. Masaki Fujihata, M?ndala, computer-generated animation, 1983. (? Masaki Fujihata)
Ippolito,From theAvant-Garde 147
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Fig. 6. Masaki Fujihata, Owan no Fune niHashi noKai 1984, digital still image from Geometric Love, 1987. (? Masaki Fujihata)
Fig. 7.Masaki Fujihata, FieldJVorks @ Alsace, digital GPS project, 2005. (? Masaki Fujihata)
cal perspective, when we look deeper, at
the algorithm itself,we find that the artist
also explores the nature of the material,
the computer's abstract space.
Kawaguchi also utilizes the random ca
pabilitiesof his
computer programto
simulate the unpredictability of nature's
momentum. These are aspects of his art
that he has built upon since his first piecewas exhibited in the 1983 SIGGRAPHElectronic Theater. International artists
participating in the early computer
graphics movement were astounded bythe organic quality and liquid-like
sur
faces of Kawaguchi's work (Color Plate E
and Fig. 3), but few looked beyond thetechnical finesse. When we look be
yond the images,or within the algo
rithmic space, we can find a conceptual
exploration of the computer's ability to
simulate natural evolution and change
through artificial processing. Although
Kawaguchi continues towork with growth
algorithms, he has more recently be
gun experimenting with the presenta
tion format for his work by combining
projected images with dance performance (Fig. 4). Also, daringly, he had a
piece in the format of a byobu, a tradi
tional Japanese folding screen, ondisplay
at the SIGGRAPH 2005 Art Gallery inLos Angeles [21].
The work of Masaki Fujihata, another
pioneer in the field, is different from
Kawaguchi's, both superficially and con
ceptually. Fujihata treats the computer it
self as a material to be explored, much
as theearly
Mono-ha artistsexplorednatural materials such as wood or earth.
For Fujihata, the nature of the computeras amedium is found in the abstract con
ception of universal space that the com
puter represents. On the surface it is
difficult to infer stylistic similarities be
tween one
bodyof
Fujihata's earlywork
and the next, since each is anexploration
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Fig. 8. Naoko Tosa, Neuro-baby, 1993, installation atMachine Culture, SIGGRAPH 1993. (? Naoko Tosa)
of a different aspect of the computer'sabstract realm. M?ndala (1983) (Fig. 5),
recognized at the SIGGRAPH Elec
tronic Theater for its
high-resolution
ren
dering using the Cray supercomputer
[22], is conceptually much more inter
esting than its simple surface visuals re
veal. M?ndala represents the computeras a simulation of the universe, just as a
Buddhist m?ndala is a diagram of the
spiritual universe. Fujihata began this
piece with the image of a historically significant painting of Shingon Buddhism
dating from the Heian period (794
1185) in Japan. The Womb-World M?n
dala (a type of M?ndala usually pairedwith the Diamond-World M?ndala) is a
diagrammatic representation of the Bud
dhist theological universe. Fujihata useda
computer-generated sphere to represent each of the central manifestations
of Buddha in the painting. Althoughcomputer-generated spheres rendered in
high resolution were not at all uniquein 1983, the concept of the computer as
a microcosm of the virtual universe was a
revelation.
Fujihata's further exploration of the
conceptual material of the computer is
found in a body of work that he created
in 1987called Geometricove [23].The ob
jects produced are a result of his exploration of how the computer algorithmcan abstract common utilitarian
objectsinto objects of art (non-utilitarian objectsof beauty). Fujihata would begin with a
simple lacquer rice bowl of the kind used
at everyday meals in Japan. By writing a
program that would slice and dice the vir
tual material and rearrange it into a new
aesthetic whole, he would produce an art
object, no longer useful, but solely of aes
thetic value (Fig. 6). There are parallelsbetween this concept and that of earlyMono-ha artists, who would change the
nature of agallery's space by subtly
ma
nipulating the relationship of the mate
rials to that space. In 1990, in abody of
work entitled Forbidden ruits [24], Fujihata experimented with the weightless
space of the computer and the idea of
natural selection (Color Plate F). The
Forbidden Fruits areobjects with organic
form and surfaces, similar to those found
in the work of Yoichiro Kawaguchi. In
fact, Fujihata goes to the point of paro
dying thework ofKawaguchi [25] in orbidden Fruits, as these organic shapesare a natural result of working within the
virtual space of the computer, a space
that lacks the gravitational pull of the real
world.
In 1996, Fujihata created some of his
earliest
internationally
renowned
digital installations, exploring the interactive
potential of the computer realm; these
included the Beyond Pages and Global In
teriorprojects. Beyond Pages explored the
potential of books of the future by al
lowing people to interact with the virtual
images and content of a visual represen
tation of a book; Global Interior Project al
lowed people to meet by avatar when
traveling through virtually created inte
rior space from distant locations [26].
The latter technological concept has been
incorporated into numerous on-line video
games since then, so itmay not seem
unique to current audiences, but in 1996itwas a
surprisinglynew idea. Fujihata is
currently working on a series of projectsthat re-create the character of a geo
graphic place through time using video
clips and interviews combined with GPS
technology [27] (Fig. 7). Each of Fujihata's separate creations is an
exploration of the characteristics of the
computer as a virtual material and how
it relates to our actual environment.
Naoko Tosa is younger than Kawa
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Fig. 9. Naoko Tosa, installation view ofNeuro-baby II, 1993. (? Naoko Tosa. Photo: Jean Ippolito.)
guchi and Fujihata, and her earliest work
wasproducing computer graphics effects
for video and film.However,
her 1993 in
teractive piece Neuro-Baby shows concep
tual parallels between the computer
algorithm and the workings of the hu
man brain. Just as Fujihata found parallels between the macrocosm of the
universe and the microcosm of the com
puter's interior abstract space, Tosa finds
parallels between the algorithmic think
ing of a computer and the neuron trans
fers of the brain. Like Fujihata, Tosa
explores the nature of the computer's ab
straction, the algorithm and its virtual
realm. Neuro-Baby deals with neural net
works, a kind of artificial intelligence that
simulates the unpredictable emotional
responses of the human mind. Tosa's first
version of the work was an interactive vir
tual baby that responded to voice input
throughamicrophone. Different voices
and pitches affected the expressionon
the baby's computer-generated face in
various ways (Fig. 8). The neural network
utilizes artificial intelligence with a ran
dom component, as nature's changescan
be surprisingly npredictable [28]. Thesecond version o? Neuro-Baby (Fig. 9) was
adigital representation of the fetus float
ing within the womb. Tosa created this
piece by embedding computermonitors
in the abdomen of cast fiberglass models
of the female torso. A later piece, entitled
Unconscious Flow, continued Tosa's work
with human emotional input and digital
responses, and was displayed for audi
ence participation in the TechnoOasis
Gallery of SIGGRAPH 1999 [29]. Re
cently, she presented the Inspiration Com
puting Robot, an interactive piece that
explores random connections in lan
guage, at the Emerging Technologiesvenue of SIGGRAPH 2005 [30]. Her
2006 Leonardo article ZENetic Computer:
Exploring Japanese Culture examined
Japanese cultural concepts through interactive design [31].
ConclusionTo compare the work of a group of artists
who use current computer technology to
another group who use primarily natural
materials such as wood and clay may seem
a stretch of the imagination. It is not the
artists' material, however, that is significant. It is the approach to the material
?experimenting with its nature, discov
ering its inherent uniqueness through
processesand
juxtaposition?thatis of
interest. This approach is not so appar
ent on the surface but is found in the
artists' attitudes toward their media and
in their discoveries about the nature of
the simulated space and the random el
ement that is somuch a part of the digitalrealm. This attitude stems from the avant
garde traditions of Japan and is carried
over to the new-media experiments of
the pioneers in technology and art. Justas artists of the Gutai group experimentedwith nontraditional materials and pro
cesses, some of which included tech
nological media?electric bells, lights,
remote-control devices, etc.?the digitalmedia pioneers explored new devices
and processes through algorithmic pro
gramming. In addition, the Gutai artists
often performed their art in theaters
with noresulting
art object created,
placing the emphasison the process
rather than the result. Early computer
graphic artists such as Kawaguchi pro
duced short animated film clips that
showed the results of the idea and process but did not carry a plot
or narrative.
150 Ippolito,From theAvant-Garde
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The Mono-ha group focused their efforts
on the exploration of the nature ofma
terials. Although the former used more
traditional natural materials such as
wood and clay, the Japanese digitalme
dia artists of the late 1970s and early
1980s carried this exploration of the in
herent nature of the medium over to the
digitalrealm in
utilizingthe
computer'svirtual space and the random and repet
itive qualities of the algorithm.
This research supports the speculationthat cross-cultural currents in the inter
national art-and-technology movements
were not a one-way street, that the con
ceptual nature of the avant-gardemove
ments did not simply spring fromNew
York, but rather that each culture devel
oped its ownavant-garde experimental
groups in parallel with others interna
tionally, and as ideas and attitudes de
veloped they were shared through such
international groups as Fluxus. The in
ternational art-and-technology move
ment of today isnot best viewed as a result
ofthat development, but rather as its on
going evolution.
24. Masaki Fujihata, ForbiddenFruits (Tokyo: Libro
Port, 1991).
25. Interview, 1993.
26. Masaki Fujihata, artist's statement, inJean Ip
polito, ed., The Bridge Art Show, VisualProceedings:The Art and Interdisciplinaryrograms ofSIGGRAPH96(NewYork: ACM SIGGRAPH, 1996) pp. 24-26.
27. Interview,27June 2005.
28. Naoko Tosa, artist's statement, inSimonPenny,ed., Machine Culture, Visual Proceedings: The Art
and Interdisciplinaryrograms of IGGRAPH93 (NewYork: ACM SIGGRAPH, 1993) p. 167.
29. Naoko Tosa, artist's statement, in Maria
Schweppe, ed., ArtGallery: Techno Oasis, inMaria
Schweppe, ed., SIGGRAPH 1999Electronic rt andAnimationCatalog (NewYork: ACM SIGGRAPH, 1999)
p. 11.
30. Kawaguchi [21] p. 154.
31. Naoko Tosa and SeigowMatsuoka, ZENeticCom
puter: Exploringjapanese Culture, Leonardo^, No.
3, 205-211 (2006); see also Naoko Tosa and SeigowMatsuoka, artist's statement in Lauro-Lazin [21] p.154.
Artists'Web Links
Fujihata,M., <www.fujihatajp/>.
Kawaguchi, Y, University of Tokyo, <www.iii.u
tokyo.acjp/~yoichiro/>.
Tosa, N., Kyoto University, <www.tosa.media.kyotou.acjpx
Manuscript received 5January 2006.
Jean M. Ippolito is an art historian and as
sistant professor at theUniversity ofHawai'iat Hilo. She is a contemporary Japanese art
specialist who studied at theAdvanced Com
puting Center for the Arts and Design
(1989-1994) at Ohio StateUniversity ndwas the recipient of
aFulbright Dissertation
Research Grant (1992-1993) for research attheUniversity of Tsukuba, Japan. Ippolito's1994 dissertation focused
on computer
graphic artists who are now considered pioneers in the digital media field.
References
1. Chuichi Fujii, artist's statement inHoward N. Fox
and Toshio Hara, A Primal Spirit:Ten Contemporaryfap??ese Sculptors, xh. cat., exhibition organized bytheHara Museum ofContemporary Art,Tokyo, and
theLos Angeles County Museum ofArt (NewYork:
Harry N. Abrams, 1990) p. 63.
2. Shigeo Chiba, Modern Art fromajapanese View
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3.Alexandra Munroe, ToChallenge theMid-Sum
mer Sun: The Gutai Group and Morphology of Revenge: The Yomiuri Independent Artists and Social
Protest Tendencies in the 1960s, inA. Munroe et al.,
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theGuggenheim Museum and San Francisco Museum ofModern Art, 1994) pp. 83-100, 149-163.
4. Patrick Frank, Prebles'ArtForms,8th Ed. (UpperSaddle River,NJ: Pearson Education, Prentice Hall,
2006) p. 448.
5.Munroe [3] p. 92.
6.H.H. Arnason, M.F. Prather and D. Wheeler, His
tory f odern Art, 4th Ed. (Upper Saddle River,NJ:Prentice Hall; and Harry N. Abrams, 1998) p. 515.
7. Munroe [3] p. 159.
8.Munroe [3] p. 84.
9.JanetKoplos, Contemporaryapanese Sculpture NewYork:Abbeville Press, 1991) p. 41.
10.JanetKoplos, Mono-ha and thePower ofMate
rials, New Art Examiner (29-30 June 1988) p. 30.
11. T.Minemura, MeasuringUp to theMono-ha?and Beyond, in .Minemura et al.,Mono-ha andPost
Mono-ha: Art inJapan since 1969 (Tokyo: Seibu ArtMuseum and Tama Fine Arts University, 1987) pp.190-194; p. 191.
12.FoxandHara[l] p. 7.
13.Takamasa Kuniyasu, artist's statement, inFox and
Hara[l]p.81.
14. R. Rhodes, Tadashi Kawamata, ArtForum 28(November 1989) p. 162.
15.Koplos [9] p. 209.
16.Koplos [9] p. 50.
17.FoxandHara[l]p. 26.
18. Interview, 1992.
19. Interview, 1992.
20. Jean Ippolito, ACritical Analysis of the Com
puter Graphic Art ofJapan Using Six Case Studies,
unpublished dissertation (Ohio State University,1994) p. 82.
21. Yoichiro Kawaguchi, artist's statement, in Linda
Lauro-Lazin, ed., ArtGallery: Threading Time, in
Linda Lauro-Lazin, ed., SIGGRAPH2005ElectronicArt
and Animation Catalog (NewYork:ACM SIGGRAPH,
2005) p. 90.
22. Masaki Fujihata, Geometric ove (Tokyo: Parco,
1987) p. 92.
23. Fujihata [22].
Ippolito,From theAvant-Garde 151
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Color Plate E
Yoichiro Kawaguchi, still image fromMorphogenesis, computer-generated animation, 1984. (? Yoichiro Kawaguchi)See article by Jean M. Ippolito.
157
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