Boğaziçi'nde "Çağdaş Sanat" Röportaj Dizisi, 2011
Berzah Özgü Özalp, Boğaziçi Üniversitesi
berzahozgu@gmail.com
Misawa Daichi was born in 1983 Japan, who is working in the realm of interactive art, along with images and sounds. He is awarded a Finalist prize in Asia digital art award 2011 for his art work, Passages, and have bachelor of laws from Keio university and diploma in information from IAMAS, in Japan. Nowadays, he is working based in Linz, Austria..
Berzah Özgü Özalp: How do you define New Media Art? And, how do you define your works?
Misawa Daichi: I think new media art includes a field that art meets scientific or technological progress. I hope that my art works include such character.
Berzah Özgü Özalp: How is your own culture reflected on your works?
Misawa Daichi: An animistic notion "living with intelligence that are encompassed in everything", is reflected in my art works, as a distributed and cooperative display (e.g. Reverence in Ravine, and Sky in Cloud). It is one of common ideas for me, and perhaps may derive from Shinto.
Some Japanese old notions and pop-cultures cannot be ignored as well: a sense of evanescence in Hojoki(方丈記), aesthetics of a momentary pleasure in Ukiyo-e(浮世絵), functional and daily technologies in Karakuri-dolls(からくり人形), and so on. As a complementary opinion, I would like to claim that I'm also influenced from the western cultures and studies so much.
Berzah Özgü Özalp: Could you talk briefly about your exhibition "Translocating"? Your exhibitions have their own titles, how do you name your works?
Misawa Daichi: It's a project for cultural exchange exhibition. The first exhibition took place in Seoul, March 2011, between Japanese and Korean artists; it has achieved successful result. A slogan of the project was "move from one place to another"; it criticized today's advanced virtual communications, such as cloud computing services and videos distribution systems, or other virtual communications. So, it was our mission to focus on real communications. I hope I can continue this project in the future.
Berzah Özgü Özalp: You have had many exhibitions. Is there any exhibition of yours that you may call "the best among all" so far?
Misawa Daichi: An exhibition at Multimedia studio in IAMAS, Ogaki in Japan, January 2011. It was almost solo exhibition for me, which exhibited my works: Reverence in Ravine, Passages, Sky in Cloud, and An Apple (a working title). It was for my professors of IAMAS, and seemed that the response was fine, particularly on Reverence in Ravine.
Berzah Özgü Özalp: What do you focus on the most on your works?
Misawa Daichi: Artistic context and scientific significance. I'm always focusing on both processes, and want to correspond both of them.
Berzah Özgü Özalp: I am curious about the process of creation on your works. How do these ideas come to your mind?
Misawa Daichi: After a broad research, it suddenly comes to in my mind in a moment. I think it is important to be curious about interdisciplinary research to create a good idea.
Berzah Özgü Özalp: Who are your favorite new media artists?
Misawa Daichi: W. Kandinsky, John Cage, Nam Jun Paik, Christa Sommerer&Laurent Mignonneau , and Masayuki Akamatsu. I'm happy that they are interdisciplinary artists.
Berzah Özgü Özalp: What are the new projects you are developing? Do you have any established plans or upcoming projects?
Misawa Daichi: A new project is a sound installation, which is named Transparent Sculpture: Passages. It is going to be exhibited at Ars Electronica 2012. A related project of that Reverence in Ravine, is also going to be introduced at the VSMM2012 conference, Milan, in September 2012. Proceeding of it is going to be published on the IEEEXplore digital library.