The Pulse of Alternative Futures

Just what are Media Arts? The more you examine the entries, the less you understand - it's overwhelming. Viewing the torrent of hundreds of works, the mind is painted in the colors of the Media Arts world, and then something emerges on the horizon. Not media or technology; it's raw humanity. Listen carefully and we can hear the breathing of the artists, the scent of the artists remaining as glimpses. Look through this and the stains and marks emerge...
The gaze and ideas of artists become the light of creativity, transcending technology. New media and novel technological inventions are tools for the masters of creativity to use, no more than vessels. From rock art to cave paintings, the Nazca Lines and the pyramids, these are all examples of primeval media art that has carried mythology. Since long ago media and technology have been merely one tool for making the imagination concrete. And with imagination, the most important ability for new media art is being able to realize creativity, that is, the future.
I want you to feel this diverse set of award-winning entries. GOSHIMA Kazuhiro's This may not be a movie, which invented a camera-cum-projector using optical fibers. Sensing streams - invisible, inaudible by SAKAMOTO Ryuichi and MANABE Daito, which senses, visualizes, and auralizes electromagnetic waves. Ingress by Google's Niantic Labs integrates a virtual world inside a game with the real world using GPS and global maps. Noramoji Project attempts to preserve the handwritten words on regional shopping arcade signboards. Here beats the pulse of a group of alternative futures that have easily knocked down our stereotypes of the future.