Toward the innovative collaboration between art and science: the task in the age of media culture through case studies in the contemporary field of media arts

Since the middle of the 1960s, a new movement toward the collaboration between art andtechnology has been growing all over the world almost at the same time, partly influenced by thecritical writing of C.P. Snow's "The Two Cultures" and Georgy Kepes's insightful essays in"The New Landscape", and partly by the appearance of new media technology expedited by thetheory of Marshal MacLuhan. From the 1970s through 80s, this movement has been graduallyshifting to the digital media arena due to expanding computer technology. Since then, its majorcreative trend, enhancing the collaboration between art, science, and technology, has becomeeven stronger, and it has been appealing to society as one of the most desirable culturalcontributions in history. I have been witnessing such historical movements since the 1960s as a journalist until recently, and I cannot help but think that without such an active integrationbetween the artistic sensibility and scientific way of thinking in the future, we will be unable toovercome the conflicts among different cultures in the world, which have become more andmore serious.Since the beginning of the 1980s, the introduction of powerful digital media technology hasgiven us the potential to make this integration more feasible. By using such media technology asa bridging tool, we now have new scope to make the collaboration between art and scienceeasier. For these reasons, in the past 20 years, ambitious artists and even engineers who areinterested in artistic expression have started to create innovative artistic works based on suchintegration. Especially by using the unique character of digital media, which can bridge thetraditional art genre or category, radically new forms of media art have been created in the pastfew years. In such an environment, new initiatives to establish media art/design schools or mediascience/art institutions are in progress throughout the world. Our school, IAMAS, was organizedas one of such creative institutions in 1996 in Gifu, Japan. After 7 year's efforts through trial anderror, we have been successful in producing new outputs based on such collaboration between artand science. I myself have been involved in administering the school from the beginning,targeting for a better systems base, relying on my own experience since the 60s and theteamwork among our staff and our long time friends in the fields of arts and sciences around theworld.In my presentation, I will show you some of the examples of recent creative works realizedthrough such innovative integration, made by unique artists with engineering skills, and also byscientists or engineers with artistic sensibility. Some of them have backgrounds in both art andscience and have learned the joy of collaboration. I will also show some of the works made bythe students of those new media institutions, including some from our school. If you have beeninterested in such collaboration between art and science previously, you might have seen some ofthem already at various art events or exhibitions. I'm sure there are some of you who are alreadyinvolved in such unique creation through collaborating with artists or by yourself.An interesting aspect of the newer type of media art is that it appeals to more people easily,from kids to the elderly, compared to the sophisticated conceptual artworks that are often foundin contemporary arts today due to its easy interactivity with our human senses. It sometimesstimulates the esthetic sensibility and the basic curiosity of the human mind, and even expandsthe ordinary senses within daily life. It also gives the audience a sense of self-appreciation of theability of the human mind, because the member of the audience him/herself is able to becomeinvolved in a new creative process through such interaction with the installation work. Itbroadens our consciousness toward a new way of understanding about our senses, the meaningof life and death, and even the inter-relationship between man and nature. It might give us aninsight to find a better way for different people in the world to co-exist. It could also inspirepeople to find a better way of creating peaceful conditions in the world.