Seiko Mikami
Upgrading the "Molecular Informatics" Exhibition

Yukiko SHIKATA

In the art laboratory in which I am participating as a curator, I have been continuing the collaborative work with Seiko Mikami for about two years, and have completed two projects. They are the ARTLAB5 "Molecular Clinic 1.0" featured on the Internet from last fall to April this year, and the ARTLAB6 "Molecular Informatics -- morphogenic substance via eye tracking", which is a VR installation using "eye tracking input" technology, held as an exhibition this past spring. Mikami has been studying computer science in New York since 1991, and since she was in a stage of shifting from creating works that were objects to those of media art, these two projects have marked a renewed start for her.

These works are based on the theory of molecular biology which states that "all objects can be artificially created by changing the chain reaction of molecular formation" . Naturally, Mikami's objective is not to prove this theory, but to apply this to media art in order to discover new potentials of form generation. This is not the kind of art that questions the aesthetic values of visible objects as seen in the norm of fine art in the past. It is an experimental art that interfaces the changes in the program (factor) itself and the changes of the visible morphosis (she calls this 'the interfacing of mathematics and perception'). The "work" mentioned here can be understood as an "event" which continuously changes by the participation of the people experiencing it. In "Molecular Informatics", the participant wears a pair of VR eyeglasses with an eye tracking sensor and enters a virtual space. The gaze becomes processed at real-time as information, and the molecules generate in a chain reaction synchronized with the tracks of the gaze. In other words, the continuing new generation of the molecular world becomes a reflection of how the participant sees the virtual world, and how he reacts to it. Even slight subconscious eye movements are processed into numerical data, instantly being expressed as molecular forms. Thus the people experiencing the work are forced to confront their unconscious self.

"Molecular Informatics" will be exhibited at the DEAF (Dutch Electronic Art Festival) held in Rotterdam, Holland from September 17 to 29, and is currently being upgraded. In this latest version, by utilizing a style in which two participants share and experience the virtual space simultaneously (multiple gazes and their relationships), an unprecedented world will be presented to us.

[Yukiko SHIKATA/Art Critic]

[London]
The exhibition that reflects on
the current situation of the
post modern city.
"Never Walk Alone"
held at the Photographers' Gallery.

Yoshitaka MOURI

The exhibition based on the theme of [the city], "Never Walk Alone", is currently being held at the Photographers' Gallery located at the Leicester Square in London. This exhibition shows works by 17 artists including Hans Aarsman, Merry Alpern, Eugene Atget, Suky Best, Don Brown, and Louis Lussier who express the city in various forms. The interesting point about this exhibition is that it goes beyond the location of the gallery. As the title indicates, a guidebook is made for the visitors so that they can travel around the city of London, and depending on the day, participate in walking tours included in the program. The show is planned so that the visitor can actually "experience" [the city]. It has been suggested by many scholars that [the city] has a strong relationship to the development of modernism. Going out of the house, becoming lost in a crowd of strangers, walking through an arcade, window shopping, enjoying tea at a cafe...hiding oneself as one of the crowd and observing the various events happening in the city are privileged enjoyments of the city-dwellers since the age of modernism, and Walter Benjamin called those who consciously engaged in such acts, a "Flâneur" ("wanderer"). According to Beaudelaire, to whom Benjamin owes much of his ideas, such people who consciously engage in such activities are noone else but "poets", and in that way, today everyone has become a "poet". This exhibition focuses on the changes of [the city] in this post-modern. According to the director, Paul Wombel, the video cameras installed all around the city have changed the nature of the city itself. If the 19th century-city had a strong connection to the development of photographic technology, the outstanding characteristic of the modern city is the video camera. What has been brought to us here is a voyeuristic interest, or a 24-hour mutual surveillance system. The people today are finding it more and more difficult to hide themselves and walk around the city as Beaudelaire did. The most impactful work in this exhibition was Merry Alpern's "Dirty Window", which is a series consisiting of voyeuristic shots from outisde the window looking onto scenes of love affairs or prostitution. Why do such kinds of photography look attractive? Will people be able to escape the temptation of voyeurism and mutual surveillance? Is it no longer possible for us to become a "Flâneur"? Coming out of the exhibition and walking along Great Newport Street, there again are video cameras installed by the gallery, constantly filming the street, constructing an ironical device in which we, ourselves, are also shown on the screen monitor exhibited in the gallery.

[Yoshitaka MOURI/Cultural Studies]

mouri@dircon.co.uk