Authors:

 Kusahara, Machiko.

Title:

 Your Next Life Might Be a Dog - or a Robot? - Japanese Perspective in Digital Media

Keywords:

 sense of relativity, virtual creatures, vision change

Abstract:

 When Japanese officials made their first tour to Europe in prior to opening its border, they were surprised by realistic European paintings. They had never thought that paintings could be so real. In 19th century, Europeans were facinated by ombre chinoise while Japanese were enchanted by perspective drawings brought from Europe. Some painters learned perspective drawing as a new technique as well as shading. Now it is difficult to imagine that our ancestors did not even think of drawing realistic images with correct perspective and shading. Our vision changes. Yet the essence of the traditional system because it is closely related to the basic elements of the culture. Japanese games and animation character design is an example. Flat color and deformed face is what we already had nearly thousands years ago - only the direction of deformation is reversed. When a virtual girl friend smiles to her male user, her big eyes that occupy one third of her face might be effective.

However, the deformed face means more than that. When Japanese Ukiyo-e artists introduced perspective drawing, they often had more than two vanishing points on a single image. Of course it does not make sense. But froating gaze without an absolute viewpoint is another Japanese tradition.
What lies behind is sense of relativity. This also relates to the absense of critical distinction between human beings and other animal. Until recently old people believed that one might be re-born as a dog in his/her next life (or even as a robot, in future? )This explains why Japan produces many games featuring virtual creatures.
In this paper, analysis on traditional way of thinking embedded in Japanese digital art and entertainment will be discussed. Japanese vision and notion of life reflected onto digital media will be the main issue. They might be already influencing young generation in other countries that grew up with different cultural background. Conflict between parallel cultures might
Kusahara, Machiko. kusahara@po.ntticc.or.jp Kobe University Graduate School of Science and Technology Machiko Kusahara has been curating and writing in the field of digital art since 1984. With a background in both science and art as well as in the history of science, her research focuses on the crossing point of art, culture, and technology. What digital technology such as computer graphics, multimedia, virtual reality, and telecommunication has brought to the society and what is the relationship between these technology and the traditional culture, is her major theme of research. Her recent research includes a sttudy of the notion of life and body in cyberspace in relation to Japanese culture. Kusahara has been working with artists and researchers in and out of Japan.She has been an active user and organizer of network projects since 1984. Machiko Kusahara is an Associate Professor of Media Study at the Graduate School of Science and Technology of Kobe University, Japan. She is also a program committee member of NTT/ICC (InterCommunication Center) in Tokyo, Digital Image Artist Group, Virtual Reality Society of Japan, a collection committee member of Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography, and other associations in media art and theory. She was a jury member of Interactive Media Festival (94 and 95), Ars Electronica (97 and 98), and many other quality exhibitions while serving as an international committee member for SIGGRAPH, ISEA and other festivals. Her works have been exhibited worldwide, including Osaka Prefectural Gallery of Contemporary Art(Japan), Alvar Aalto Museum(Finland), SIGGRAPH98(Orlando, FL) and others. Kusahara has published numerous writings and antholgies including "Computer Graphics Anthology" (compilation of early computer graphics animation in 10 laserdiscs with a book, Bunkensha Publishing 89), "Computer Graphics Access" (ibid, with 7 discs, 92), as well as essays inluded in art@science (Springer, 97), cyberarts97(Springer 97), Fleshfactor(Springer 97).