17th Entertainment Division Critiques

A Feast of Fluttering Things: Objects, Humanity, Mourning

Entertainment works in the Media Arts are replicated and spread. As long as you have the same environment, you can recreate them anywhere at any time. But since viewing a work is something that takes place in each and every scene in life, the artist cannot control the quality of the experience completely. On this basis, we are strongly pulled to works looking to the "individuality" that is an upshot of this replication and diffusion.YAKENOHARA "RELAXIN'" is a cute video work but also one where the inhabitant of the room is implicitly depicted through the wriggling of "things". But change the angle and now that wriggling seems to be one of mourning. The protagonist in rain is an invisible person attempting to escape from the perceptions of the player who at times controls them. Meanwhile, the life form in BADLAND striving at all costs to survive is a tough character but just a black shadow. Ryugagotoku5 Yume Kanaeshimono features outsiders who can be robbed even in fictional places. Perceiving Fukushima GameJam, which creates new industries while gently snuggling up to current social problems, as a pair with Snake the Planet!, which destabilizes the borders between the public and private, it was also exciting to try to examine the relationship between the real world and computer games.If the concept in painting of "figure and ground" was replaced with the tendency from this year's entries, it might well become "presence and absence". Sound of Honda / Ayrton Senna 1989 succeeded with remarkable immediacy in larking around with someone not even there. If you think about it, interchange with absentees is one of the primordial impulses of humanity and ar tists today are utilizing diverse technology to develop it. Due to this, our view of life and death may well be renewed in the near future. That the entertainment adjoining people on a daily basis can bring this about is an imagination most glorious.

Profile
IIDA Kazutoshi
Game Creator and Professor, College of Image Arts and Sciences, Ritsumeikan University
Born in 1968 in Tokyo. IIDA began his career as a director with Aquanaut’s Holiday (PlayStation) in 1995. He also created such games as Tails of the Sun (PlayStation), Doshin the Giant (Nintendo 64DD), Discipline: The Birth of the Empire (WiiWare), Evangelion the Movie: Third Impact (PSP), and LINE easy diver (LINE GAME). He is known for his unique conceptualization style, thinking outside the box. In 2011, he was in charge of story and direction of Songs of ANAGURA: Missing Researchers & Their Remaining Devices, the permanent exhibition of the National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation (Miraikan) and which won an Excellence Award in the Entertainment Division at the 15th Japan Media Arts Festival. He is also the author of many books and articles.