15th Entertainment Division Excellence Award
Song of ANAGURA Missing Researchers & their remaining Devices
Other [japan]
INUKAI Hiroshi / SHIBASAKI Ryosuke / IIDA Kazutoshi / ARIYAMA Ichiro / KASAJIMA Kenji / KAMURO Shinya
Outline
The entire of exhibition space of the National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation is turned a stage for the exhibition of this particular work. Based on the theme “The places where five researchers, who were trying to make the world a better place through spatial information science, lived,” multiple sensors, projectors and PCs have been installed, and a mechanism has been incorporated that causes the actions of the players to give rise to information, which influences their surroundings, and which in turn alters their own actions. It is an ambitious work through which humans can actually enter inside a computer – an instrument of information science – and which highlights the relationship between human information, the human body and the world.
Reason for Award
An amusement park for experiencing spatial information science
This is a permanent exhibit at the National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation, which has gone well beyond the boundaries of conventional museum exhibits. It is a device that enables both adults and children to experience, in an easily comprehensible way, research in the field of spatial information science, which is going to be increasingly important in the future. However, an adventurous sci-fi story has been prepared as the setting, and game designers have made use of the knowledge that they have gained through game production. Although it is a museum exhibit, it has a very strong sense of authorship, which is one reason why opinions on it are divided. However, it is a fact that, here and there, museum exhibits are reaching the stage at which this kind of authorship is tolerated, or even required. With this kind of project, game designers demonstrate their individuality. From the perspective of the game, this can be seen as a new form of game. At the same time we need to consider the generally low quality of so-called “consumer games” entered this year.