I’m In The Computer Memory!

This is a participatory installation piece that makes visible the memory operating inside a computer. Viewers can explore and search inside the memory by touch panel, and the pro- cess is displayed on a large screen in front of them. What is happening inside the memory, which operates in real time, is shown in square blocks, and viewers search in between them. They can visually see that some sort of information is being pooled within the memory, but it is hard to know the details of it or why it is there. This piece lets viewers get a feel for the invisible world that exists inside the computers they use every day. Its source code (i.e., program) is avail- able online through a source code operation service.

“Mono-ha” was an art movement that was active in Japan around 1970. It saw mono (things) simply and just as they are. With this in mind, I coined the term “Desktop Mono-ha” around 1990 as a way to name the reality of icons that are simply placed on GUI computer screens. Today, surely there are “Programmer Mono-ha” art- ists who think it would be reasonable to make the data within the memory visible as something that exists and to confront it, and AIDA is likely one such artist. The “Being-in-the-World” concept that the Mono-ha artists spoke of, and the worldview of “now, here, me” which sees a mouse cursor as the self, are beautifully embodied in the simple format of this piece as well as in the “!” on the end of the title. (NAKAZAWA Hideki)