23rd JAPAN MEDIA ARTS FESTIVAL

Outline

  • Entry Period

    2019.8.1(Thu) - 10.4(Fri)

  • Organizer

    23st Japan Media Arts Festival Executive Committee

  • Chair

    MIYATA Ryohei [Commissioner of the Agency for Cultural Affairs, Government of Japan]

  • Operating Committee

    FURUKAWA Taku [Animation Artist]

    TATEHATA Akira [President, Tama Art University]

Exhibition

  • Dates

    2020.9.19(Sat) - 27(Sun)

  • Awards Ceremony

    2020.9.18(Fri)

  • Venue

    Miraikan - The National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation

  • Satellite Venue

    CINEMA Chupki TABATA

  • Admission

    free

  • Cooperation

    Miraikan - The National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation

    Bureau of Port and Harbor

    Tokyu Plaza Ginza

    Technical Art

    Panasonic

    MAPP_

    The Chain Museum

    Dentsu Isobar

    Rhizomatiks

    Rhizomatiks Architecture

    LIVE BOARD

    BEAMS

    Wellcome

    sequence MIYASHITA PARK

    Dōngxī Restaurant & Sakaba

    Keio University Shonan Fujisawa Campus(SFC)

    Musashino Art University

    Tpoint Japan Co., Ltd.

    Bunkamura

    Shibuya City

    SHIBUYA PARCO

    Konno Hachimangu Shrine

    Aoyama Gakuin University

    Togo Shrine Harajuku

    United Nations University

    JINNAN HOUSE

    SHIBUYA CAST.

    SHIBUYAKURITSU MIYASHITA PARK

  • Cooperative Programs

    Inter College Animation Festival(Inter College Animation Festival Committee)

    Cherish, your imagination(Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo operated by Tokyo Metropolitan Foundation for History and Culture Co-organized by: NHK Enterprises, Inc.)

    GⅢ vol.133 Read the end of 19s Century (Belle Époque) deeply through items appear in TAKAHAMA Kan’s Manga ―Exhibition of Nyx’s Lantern, Cho-no-michiyuki…(The Contemporary Art Museum, Kumamoto [Kumamoto City・Kumamoto Art and Culture Promotion Foundation] Cooperation: Leed Publishing Co., Ltd., CG-ARTS)

    MUTEK.JP 2019(MUTEK.JP)

    Short Piece! Sendai Short Film Festival 2019(Sendai Short Film Festival Executive Committee Co-organized: sendai mediatheque)

Jury / Major

Jury

Art Division

ABE Kazunao(Curator, Art Producer and Professor, Tokyo Polytechnic University)

AKIBA Fuminori(Aesthetician and Associate Professor, Nagoya University)

Georg TREMMEL(Artist and Researcher)

IKEGAMI Takashi(Researcher of Complex Systems Sciences and Professor, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences at the University of Tokyo)

TASAKA Hiroko(Curator of the Tokyo Photographic Art Museum / Director of the Yebisu International Festival for Art & Alternative Visions 2020)

Entertainment Division

SAITO Seiichi(Creative Director and CEO, Rhizomatiks co.,ltd.)

KAWADA Tom(Inventor / AR3Bros. (Three Brothers of Augmented Reality))

MORIMOTO Chie(Communication Director, Art Director)

NAKAGAWA Daichi(Critic, Editor)

TOKITA Takashi(Producer and Game Creator, Square Enix Co., Ltd.)

Animation Division

UDA Kounosuke(Animation Director)

SATO Tatsuo(Animation Director and Scriptwriter)

SUGAWA Akiko(Professor, Institute of Urban Innovation Yokohama National University)

YOKOSUKA Reiko(Animation Artist)

WADA Atsushi(Animation Artist)

Manga Division

SHIRAI Yumiko(Manga Artist)

KAWAHARA Kazuko(Manga Essayist)

KURATA Yoshimi(Manga Artist and Professor, Otemae University)

NISHI Keiko(Manga Artist)

OMOTE Tomoyuki(Researcher, Kitakyushu Manga Museum)

Festival Platform Award

KAWAMURA Masashi(Creative Director and CCO, Whatever Inc.)

MIZUGUCHI Tetsuya(Founder and CEO, Enhance / Project Professor, Keio University, Graduate School of Media Design)

MIZUTANI Hitomi(Sales & Marketing, THETA Business Division, Smart Vision Business Unit, Ricoh Company, Ltd)

Major

Art Division

HAGIWARA Shunya(Web Designer and Programmer)

HIRAKAWA Norimichi(Artist)

IMURA Yasuko(Lecturer, Institute of Advanced Media Arts and Sciences)

MYOKAM Hiroko(Curator and Researcher)

TAKAWO Shunsuke(Lecturer, Department of Creative Media Studies, Faculty of Literature, Konan Women’s University)

TSUDA Michiko(Artist)

YUBISUI Yasuko(Assistant Curator, NTT InterCommunication Center [ICC])

WATANABE Tomoya(Artist, Talent)

Manga Division

HIDAKA Toshiyasu(Researcher of Manga)

INOMATA Noriko(Associate Professor, Ibaraki University)

KUBO Naoko(Assistant Professor, Department of Fine Arts Hijiyama University Junior College)

KURAMOCHI Kayoko(Researcher, Kyoto Seika University International Manga Research Center)

MATSUDA Naomasa(Manga Artist)

MIURA Kazushi(Associate Professor, Shokei University)

NISHIHARA Mari(Lecturer, Aichi Gakusen University)

ODAGIRI Hiroshi(Freelance Writer)

OGINO Hitoshi(Manga Artist and Research associate, Tokyo Polytechnic University)

Award-winning Works

General comment

  • TATEHATA Akira

    President, Tama Art University

    This year marks the 23rd anniversary of the Japan Media Arts Festival. Although it provided a platform for the new field of Media Arts to mature over the past quarter century, the festival has not necessarily helped consolidate the concept of Media Arts. It could be said, though, that the festival has brought into clearer focus the very nature of Media Arts, where genres remain in flux as social conditions and technology change and fluctuate. This has required the Japan Media Arts Festival organizers to remain flexible. In light of this, new awards were established this year: the Social Impact Award, the U-18 Award and the Festival Platform Award. The Grand Prize in the Art Division wasawarded to the bio-art piece [ir]reverent: Miracles on Demand. As a critique of Catholicism’s anthropocentric view of history, this fascinating piece presents a process in which microorganisms produce a blood-like fluid, resulting in the spectacle of a godless miracle performed in an incubator resembling a communion table. The Grand Prize in the Entertainment Division was awarded to Shadows as Athletes. As its title suggests, this work pairs the body movements and shadows of athletes in a number of Olympic events, reversing them so that the shadows play the main roles. This clever concept and the perfection of its visuals leave the viewer spellbound.

  • FURUKAWA Taku

    Animation Artist

    It has only been a year, but perhaps one year may be all it takes? Either way, I see a real and distinct difference between this year’s award winners and the works selected last year. I suppose it’s not particularly polite to attribute this difference to any “fad,” but that’s what I am going to do, anyway. For example, I’ll cite works that transform big data into something no longer seen to be popular. Aside from in the Animation Division, we haven’t seen the large number of video works this year that we did in the past. This is a year of looking for that freshest of fish, walking through the market in search of the fishmonger yelling, for instance, “Come and get it! This year’s sea bass catch is delicious!” Today, in 2020, even pieces that address AI must offer some personal perspective in order to be selected. Since Media Arts is a field that exists in the present progressive tense, this is only natural. It is also natural that the types of work submitted to the festival are changing as the tempo of the world around us accelerates. Some of these works are clever and quite cool, like the Grand Prize winner in the Entertainment Division, Shadows as Athletes, which portrays shadows as living creatures. Others, like Two Hundred and Seventy, an installation made from hundreds of rubbish bags and selected for the Excellence Award in the Art Division, or TON-TON VOICE SUMO, a piece created for senior citizens and winner of the New Face Award in the Entertainment Division, address social themes in a captivating, analogue and somewhat ironic style. It is somewhat a relief to me that irony can remain alive in the times we face today. In other entries in 2020, we see the revival of a piece like GON, THE LITTLE FOX in the Animation Division, as well as creators looking to the future and straight out asking, “What is a human being?” in Robo sapiensu zenshi (Prehistory of Robo Sapiens), the Grand Prize winner in the Manga Division. If there were ever a year to enclose the prize-winning works in a time capsule to be unearthed by those who succeed us, this would undoubtedly be that year.