Artwork as an Interface between Audience(s)

Speaker
Noriyuki Fujimura
Artist/Research Fellow, STUDIO for Creative Inquiry, College of Fine Arts, Carnegie Mellon University

When
-

Where
Newell-Simon Hall 1305 (Michael Mauldin Auditorium)

Description

The lecture includes brief demonstrations of two past projects and a few new artworks involving voice recognition and enhanced reality which have been developed in the STUDIO for Creative Inquiry.

We are in era of progressive technology and confusion of urban environment. For a longtime now, artists have been trying to work on the problem outside of museums(so-called “Public Art”). And it is easy to find huge modern sculptures in public plazas of any city in the world. But those sculptures no longer have the power which they had before. How do we design urban spaces using the power and potential of art? Noriyuki Fujimura is trying to adopt interactive art into public/urban space to explore what the future of public/urban space is. “Remote Furniture” (1999) is an artwork consisting of computer-controlled chair objects inspired by our everyday life. A pair of rocking chairs creates tactile communication between two members of the audience. He has shown this artwork during the past three years in various public spaces around Tokyo, where it always creates unexpected encounters between passersby. “World/World” (2001) is his recent artwork in collaboration with Nodoka UI, who researches and creates water fountains. This artwork is also computer controlled and networked to the other side of the earth. Audiences in two remote places can communicate with a movable pole that appears to pass through the earth. The aim of this artwork is to create shared experience through physical objects even between different countries, languages and cultures. This artwork was partly realized in the fall of 2001, between “The Virtual Mine Project” in Neunkirchen, Germany and The Museum of Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music in Tokyo, Japan. Fujimura’s past work and projects were presented of the “CAST01 -Living in Mixed Reality-” conference in Bonn, Germany, in October, 2001, and published in the conference proceedings in a paper titled “Public Communication Sculpture”.

Speaker's Bio

Noriyuki Fujimura began to make interactive artworks using his experience in the field of architecture and urban design. He has a BA in architecture (Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music) and a Masters degree in Media and Public Policy (Keio University). He is currently a Visiting Artist/Research Fellow at the STUDIO for Creative Inquiry in the College of Fine Arts, supported by the Japanese Ministry of Cultural Affairs. He will present his artwork as part of a group exhibition “Healing the Environment” at the Pittsburgh Center for the Arts this November.

Speaker's Website
http://www.norifujimura.com/