From perceiving cells to the coded individual.

Seiko Mikami has been attracting worldwide attention with her broad-ranged artistic activities themed around “information society and the human body,” introducing numerous works and projects anticipating computerized information society since the 1980s. Based in New York since ’92, she later began to incorporate computer science in her works, and has continued to expand her field of activity toward bioinformatics, investigating into informational environments and forms of perception in contemporary society through interactive installations focusing on aspects of biology and immunity. In recent years, large-scale exhibitions of Mikami’s internationally acclaimed works have been shown in Northern Europe, Germany, Austria, Russia and France among others. This occasion to unveil her newest work at YCAM marks at once Mikami’s first major exhibition in Japan in several years.
This exhibition takes as its central theme “surveillance society and the human body”, and explores issues related to surveillance technology in the public realm, with an eye to the impact the developments in this field especially since 9.11 have been exerting on contemporary society. As a result of the dramatic developments in recent years, surveillance technology is ubiquitously pervading both public spaces and electronic networks, where it reveals the ambiguous nature of a discipline that comprises the contradicting notions of unlimited expansiveness and limiting control. At this occasion, Seiko Mikami unveils a new large-scale installation co-produced with YCAM to pursue new forms of corporeity and desire that emerge from the current state of surveillance technology and network society.
In this event YCAM challenges a new exhibition format that includes an additional display of a new installation realized with complex systems scientist Takashi Ikegami as a supplementary work based on the same ”human body in surveillance society” theme. Ikegami has designed this interactive installation in reference to the dynamics of mind time, inspired by the idea of self-organizing, subjective timeline in brain science. In addition, Seiko Mikami and Sota Ichikawa unveil a revised version of gravicells, which has toured a total of twelve locations in eight countries around the world since the artists first unveiled it at YCAM in 2004. This composite exhibition of a brand new work and related display will be an opportunity to experience temporal/spatial transfiguration achieved through cutting-edge information technology and multi-dimensional interaction.

Seiko Mikami “Desire of Codes”

Date & Time: March 20 (sat) – June 6 (sun) 10:00-19:00

Yamaguchi Center for Arts and Media [YCAM] Studio A, Foyer, and Studio B

Admission free

- Exhibited work

Seiko Mikami “Desire of Codes” (new work / commissioned by YCAM)

- Related works

Takashi Ikegami “MTM [Mind Time Machine] ” (new work / commissioned by YCAM)

Seiko Mikami + Sota Ichikawa “gravicells - gravity and resistance”(revised version / commissioned by YCAM)

* “gravicells” exhibition date: January 24 (sun) - May 9 (sun), May 22 (sat) – June 6 (sun)

* Please note that the exhibition of “MTM” in the Foyer will be close on the following opening events: 20th of March from 18:00 till 19:00 and 21st of March from 13:00 till 16:30.

* Also exhibited during the same period is ”for maria installation version”, a new sound installation by Keiichiro Shibuya + evala.

Organized by Yamaguchi City Foundation for Cultural Promotion

In association with Yamaguchi City, Yamaguchi City Board of Education

Grants from THE ASAHI SHIMBUN FOUNDATION

Corporate sponsors: AD Science Co., Microvision, Inc.

Cooperation: Tama Art University Media Art Lab.; The University of Tokyo, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Department of General Systems Studies Ikegami lab; ATAK; DGN co., ltd.; Perfektron LLC.

Co-developed with YCAM InterLab

Produced by Yamaguchi Center for Arts and Media [YCAM]

Design: METAPHOR

Curator: Kazunao Abe (YCAM)