December 5, 2019
At the 25th Campus Genius Contest, the final judging session by the Art Division judges was held on Tuesday, November 26. From among 330 entries, Wataru Ishihara (a second-year master's student at the Graduate School of Media and Governance) was awarded the Judge's Prize (the Kakehi Judge's Prize) for his work "Masquerade."
An award ceremony, an exhibition of the winning works, talk events, and more will be held at the National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation (Miraikan) (tentative) on February 1 and 2, 2020.
The Campus Genius Contest started in 1995 and has been held since 2011 with "CG" reinterpreted from "Computer Graphics" to "Campus Genius." Targeting students, it judges all works created using new media and technology—such as video, animation, music videos, graphics, installations, interactive art, games, applications, gadgets, performances, and web content—in two divisions: the Art Division and the Entertainment Division.
For the 25th contest's call for entries, there were no restrictions on genre, and the theme was open. The judging criteria include a challenging spirit, a strong message, the use of media and technology appropriate for the expression, and uniqueness.
Ishihara's work "Masquerade" was highly praised, leading to the award. Amidst many naive works that express a personal world, his piece accurately interprets the context of current social issues, makes a logical yet unconventional proposal for the future, and offers a glimpse of how it could be implemented in society, not just remaining a futuristic speculation.
Comment from Wataru Ishihara
Our personal information is collected by giant tech companies like GAFA, and our personalities are analyzed based on it. However, if we could mix a large amount of fake personal information into the collected data, we might be able to turn our true personality data into outliers.
Based on this hypothesis, I decided to create a service that continuously sends fake personal information to Google, and that work is "Masquerade." To the new eyes of algorithms, we as data are practically naked. Through services like this, I hope to create something like clothing for our digital personalities.
Also, in an award where video works win every year, I was a little worried about whether my work would be evaluated as a problem-posing service, but I'm glad it won the award.
I want to continue creating strange services as works for contemplating the future, so please try them out if you'd like.
・Profile
Wataru Ishihara
Born in 1995. Currently enrolled in the Graduate School of Media and Governance at Keio University. He explores and researches the possibilities of digital communities in a hyper-credit society while creating various works and systems on the themes of credit and "dividuals."
Major works include "Hack In, an SNS where you can log into other people's accounts" and "Speculative Fake College."
Selected as a Future Innovator at Ars Electronica 2019, received the Special Prize at the WIRED Creative Hack Award 2018, was nominated for the CGC Award 2018, and received the Judge's Special Prize in 2019, among other accolades.
Source: General Affairs Section, Shonan Fujisawa Campus (SFC) Office