The Japan Media Arts Festival is 20 years old this year. Unlike other festival genres, it has always consciously sought to introduce technologically and methodologically new forms of expression. In that sense, the festival's 20 iterations comprise a veritable history of work “on the edge.”During the past few years, the festival has impressed us not so much with technical novelty as with the maturity of the Media Arts field. However, this maturity is hardly a guarantee of future stability. Indeed, a certain “calm before the storm,” with the extraordinary phenomenon of artificial intelligence on the verge of inundating the art world, seems to prevail in works submitted this year.Be that as it may, the Grand Prize winners in each division are emblematic, on many levels, of the times we live in now. Entertainment Division winner SHIN GODZILLA is of course a blockbuster known to everyone, but what makes it intriguing is its remarkably complex allegorical treatment of social conditions today. In the Animation Division, your name. is another blockbuster, but also a fantasy with a mysterious appeal achievable only in a society that experienced the trauma of the Great East Japan Earthquake. Art Division winner Interface I is a unique and accomplished (as well as humorous) work that creates a digital-image-like world by purely analog methods—an experiment with an especially positive meaning in an era overwhelmed by digital technology. The Japan Media Arts Festival not only indicates the direction of the arts of the future, it also deserves attention as a vivid cross-section of our times.

FURUKAWA Taku
Animation Artist

In January 2017, the word “media” was popping up in newspapers and on TV with a vigor that threatened to break the New Year mood. Talk about “the use of SNS and other new media as an ally” and “the responsibility of the media” circulated along with stories of certain individuals resorting to Twitter to attack the media. We seem to be in an era of surprises that make us wonder whatever happened to the role media had been performing since the 20th century.Let us go back in time just a little way. Last summer SHIN GODZILLA, which won the Entertainment Division's Grand Prize this year, had Japan abuzz. Some people were moved by the final scene at Tokyo Station, others saw it as a commentary on the government's response to the Fukushima nuclear accident—topic after topic spread by word of mouth and SNS. Then, with barely a pause, your name. opened just as students ended their summer break, and became a record-breaking hit. Quite naturally it was chosen for the Grand Prize in the Animation Division. In a ripple effect, audiences began thronging to other high-quality animated movies. And of course, Pokémon GO, winner of an Entertainment Division Excellence Award, was making waves right around the same time. It was, in hindsight, a rather special summer. What, then, are we to make of the anxieties of this year? Well, perhaps they are giving artists a daily dose of new ideas for masterpieces.