Media Art, Evolving into Actuality

We might say that media art is created alongside the growth of the technology that surrounds us. This year's Japan Media Ar ts Festival received close to 2,500 entries in the Art Division, among which can be seen artworks produced by innovation acquired from technology, as well as on the other hand, artworks which express the largesse of media art.And so while some artists are pursuing the heights of technology, there are also artists who are selecting eclectic media as the technology which exhibit their own ideas and expression. This use of unrestricted media and experimentation in genre-crossing shows diversity while also maintaining flexibility, though this is precisely what media art is, and the disparity between artworks caused by the transitions of time is surely leading to no small measure of change in the Japan Media Arts Festival as well. The largest numbers of entries were video works and these were particularly notable. The overseas works emphasized not so much technical aspects; rather, many works had a strong sense of narrative and the documentarian, based on contemporary actualities. While they are equipped with the modes of expression of so-called "video art", here we can also see how media art is expanding as the borders between genres melt away. Might not this also be a reason for why there were so many entries?Grand Prize-winner crt mgn presents a mature image of media art. At the same time, Excellence Award-winnersDronestagram and The Big Atlas of LA Pools are reflecting a society created by recent internet environments, revealing methods for transforming online data into media art. In the evolution of computer technology,the advent of the era of big data with the popularization of SNS has drawn attention for revealing the zeitgeist's new developments in media art about citation and duplication, a theme which has always had importance in contemporary art.