March 22, 2022
Professor Hiroya Tanaka's Laboratory, Faculty of Environment and Information Studies, and METACITY (METACITY Promotion Council) have won the Social Impact Award in the Art Division of the 25th Japan Media Arts Festival.
The Japan Media Arts Festival is a comprehensive festival of Media Arts that honors outstanding works in four divisions—Art, Entertainment, Animation, and Manga—and provides an opportunity to appreciate the award-winning works. The 25th festival received 3,537 entries from 95 countries and regions around the world.
The work by Professor Hiroya Tanaka's Laboratory, "Bio Sculpture," is a project that uses long-term sensing, including fluctuations in the microbial environment, to clarify the effects of creating environments that would be impossible in nature through digital technology. It won the award for its significance as a new development in media art accompanied by practical, comprehensive knowledge.
An exhibition of the award-winning works is scheduled to be held from September 16 to 26, 2022, at the National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation (Miraikan) in Odaiba, Tokyo.
Comment from Professor Hiroya Tanaka on Winning the Award
This work started when I hit it off with Ryuta Aoki, who leads METACITY, but it was not a piece created with a clear concept from the beginning. It became a project where we explored the future possibilities of design surrounding natural environments and artificial objects as we created the work.
In the process, we also received comments from my colleagues, Professor Hajime Ishikawa of the Faculty of Environment and Information Studies (Landscape Architecture) and Associate Professor Haruo Suzuki of the Faculty of Environment and Information Studies (Genomic Microbiology) , which are reflected in the work. After the exhibition, we asked BIOTA Inc. , whose CEO is an SFC graduate, to conduct a microbial analysis. As a result, I believe the work has come to embody the transdisciplinary nature of SFC, and the experiment is still ongoing. In the future, I hope to continue promoting craftsmanship that discovers new points of contact between nature and the artificial, using large-scale 3D/4D printing technology.
[Bio Sculpture Project Team]
Yasuo Nagura (2nd-year master's student, Graduate School of Media and Governance), Shih-T'ai Chinen (3rd-year student, Faculty of Environment and Information Studies), Nanaka Matsuki (3rd-year student, Faculty of Environment and Information Studies), Mayuki Omura (2nd-year student, Faculty of Policy Management), Arata Aoyama (Completed master's program in 2021, Graduate School of Media and Governance), Moe Kawai (Graduated in 2021, Faculty of Policy Management)
Posted by: General Affairs Section, Shonan Fujisawa Campus (SFC) Office