The Japan Media Arts Festival was launched with an open entry system due to invite works using new methods or innovative expressions. This system opened the festival's doors to everyone from professional to amateur alike. As a result, it has produced tremendous outcomes with the discovery of outstanding works from countries and regions whose creative activities have rarely been introduced in Japan so far.
The number of entries has continued to increase, and we received the largest number ever this year to 2,645 works in total. This enormous number of entries caused the jury a tough time too, as the number of prizes available is only a small fraction of the total number, with only one prize available for every 110 works submitted.Nonetheless, given our initial objective to make the Japan Media Arts Festival a prize event that is open to as many people as possible, we have kept the number of prizes unchanged since the festival's inception.
In the process of screening this year's entries I think that there were two points on which the jury concurred. Firstly, there was a tendency to move away from evaluation focusing on technological novelty in the submitted works, and secondly, that a new field is in the process of being formed within Media Arts. Although it was once the case that these works represented new forms of expression, and while there was probably a tendency for technological innovation and methods of use to be evaluated highly, it is now the case that digital expressive technologies have become wellestablished and have matured, and are forming a tangible field of expression in their own right.
With regard to the Exhibition of Award-Winning Works, I should also add a small addendum. According to the April 2010 edition of The Art Newspaper (published in the United Kingdom), the 12th Japan Media Arts Festival held in 2008 was ranked in the world's 14th position in the number of visitors ranking of art exhibitions worldwide.