New Dimensions: Expanded Consciousness (May 23 through June 15) is the latest exhibition at the Mikke Gallery in Yotsuya, Tokyo. It proffers a window onto the increasingly intrusive, yet intriguing, realm of digital art.
New Dimensions: Expanded Consciousness is curated by Masako Shiba whose speciality is the fusion of art and technology. Shiba is the co-founder of BEAF (Brooklyn Experimental Art Foundation) and had worked in New York City for 20 years before taking on a slew of art projects in Japan, one of which is art director at Spacetainment, a startup that aims to bring art and entertainment elements to Japan’s space industry.
This is a decidedly cerebral and strangely calming experience. Generally speaking, AI art strikes me as coercive in its attempt to force the same adrenaline rush that one gets from offing an enemy in a video game. But New Dimensions refrains from brain overwhelm and subsequent exhaustion. If anything, AI’s presence here is so understated as to be soothing. That’s in keeping with Shiba’s opening message: “The exhibition is an attempt by the artists to expand the senses, cognition and existence through the medium of technology.” So, rather than see tech as the opposite if not the enemy of art, the goal here is to view it as a more perfect tool to understand and then expand the confines of modern human consciousness.
The exhibition showcases the works of seven artists, one of whom is Lu Yang. A much bigger installation of Wang’s work is being shown at the Machine Love exhibition in Mori Art Museum and it’s instructive to compare that to New Dimension’s smaller, more modest exhibit. Both works feature a video of Wang’s avatar, DOKU (which in Japanese means ‘poison’) though they seem to transmit different messages. At the Mori Museum, DOKU dials up the fear that humanity as we know it will self-destruct to make way for machine overlords but in New Dimensions, DOKU is reflective and completely tuned into her own channel.
Yasuo Mori’s work is a palm sized metal object that had been installed on the surface of ISS (International Space Station), realizing a first-time collaboration between art and aerospace. This feat is by no means easy, according to a JAXA engineer who has worked on the ISS payload project. Miles and miles of red tape had to be cleared before the project was okayed, followed by an endless cyber trail to set down the correct protocol and EVA (Extra Vehicular Activity) procedures. Perhaps Mori has opened the door to a not so distant future where art aficionados board rockets to visit galleries set up on spaceships orbiting Earth.
Emi Kusano, Schlumper, Kazuki Takakura, Sacha Stiles and Mariko Mori are the other participating artists.
If there’s something missing from New Dimensions, it’s probably the element of weirdness. The atmosphere is so correctly controlled that one begins to crave a drop of…well, anything that hasn’t passed that through a digital screen. Which brings me to my favorite weird artist dude, Katsushika Hokusai. Granted, Hokusai lived several centuries ago but he’s still having exhibitions, the most recent one called HOKUSAI ANOTHER STORY, displayed at the Tokyu Plaza in Shibuya until mid-May. Not bad for a guy who lived in the Edo Period.
Hokusai died in 1849 at the astounding age of 94. By all accounts he never stopped working and died clutching a paint brush. During his lifetime he produced some 34,000 works even though the Tokugawa Shogunate periodically banned ukiyo-e and imprisoned artists.
Hokusai took all this in stride. He wasn’t interested in fame or wealth or spreading some kind of message. The man was a geek and a workaholic, down to the very dregs of his existence. He lived to work, but not vice versa. He didn’t give a hoot about his reputation and changed his name multiple times. He hardly ever used a desk and painted on the floor. As long as Hokusai could make art, nothing else mattered. He was inspired by anything and everything – a gust of wind kicking up a woman’s kimono, a cat napping in the sun, his own craggy face at age 80, scenes from nature, Mt. Fuji and on and on.
Long after Hokusai kicked the bucket, his paintings were reproduced on cheap news sheets and one day, these were used to wrap a bunch of ceramics in a crate headed to France. In Paris, the export agents opened up the crate, unwrapped the products and exclaimed ‘voila!,’ – not at the ceramics but Hokusai’s artwork. Almost overnight, Hokusai became a sensation across Europe. Would he have cared? My bet is not.
Hokusai’s most famous work The Great Wave Off Kanagawa is a cliche that beats out all other cliches about Japanese culture, but it’s fascinating for the sheer strangeness of the composition and utter disregard for perspective. The emotion-less world of Hokusai has something in common with New Dimensions. But the weirdness that defies analysis, the provocative urgency that only the artist’s hand can produce, reminds us that when a machine comes between the artist and their work, something precious is obliterated. But then, one of the objectives of AI art is to redefine the what is or isn’t, precious. I guess the modern consciousness must expand to accommodate that.
All photographs of exhibit by Kaori Shoji