Winner of Innovative Technology Award

Shinichi Kataoka

Graduated the Department of Architecture, Musashino University of Fine Art, 1992 Currently enrolled in the International Academy of Information Science and Art

About the Work:
When we look at the relationship between the playing of an acoustic instrument and an electronic instrument, and sound, if we take the example of playing a drum, the act of hitting creates vibration on the film, which is then transformed into sound. There exists a direct relationship of cause and effect. If we try to recreate that with an electronic instrument, the action of inputting something (e.g. pushing on a switch) generates sound from the speaker. However, in this case, the area in between the input and output is like a "blackbox", and it is difficult to see a direct relationship. We can also surmise that this creates a type of distance between the performer and the instrument. In other words, although an electronic instrument can realistically recreate the sound of an acoustic instrument, it cannot imitate the wonderful feeling of "playing" one. Rather, maybe we could say that the focus of an electronic instrument was more on the recreation of sound, and its development has occurred with the lack of the "pleasure" accompanying the playing. The idea for this plan is to create a virtual place of exercise within an electronic medium, and to experiment whether we could make the relationship between sound and the action direct again.

Winner's Comments:

I am very happy to receive this award, which has been given to myself as a result of many stages of evaluation, however, the interim report of the evaluation, and the judging standard and content for the final result, have not been publicized, and I think it is unfortunate that the characteristics of judging an award on the Internet (e.g. immediacy and transparency) have not been maximized.
[Back]