[spectre] TESLA salon with Seiko Mikami, Thu 28 Sept

[Andreas Broeckmann]

TESLA salon - art/science 2

Seiko Mikami - On the Continuum of Perception and Interfaces

The renowned Japanese artist Seiko Mikami talks about her work and 
presents a preview of her latest project which she is working on 
during a year-long residency in Berlin.


Thu. 28 Sept., 20:30 h
(conversation in English)

TESLA, Klosterstr. 68, Berlin-Mitte
http://www.tesla-berlin.de

Seiko Mikami: On the Continuum of Perception and Interfaces

All projects by Seiko Mikami involve human perception. Perception is 
highly significant, yet also a very complex and wide subject area. 
Moreover, we still don't understand our body and its functions very 
well. In order to approach these issues, Mikami decided to 
disassemble the individual senses: seeing, hearing, the sense of 
touch, gravity, etc., advancing eachsense separately through 
different interfaces. The point of each project is to create an 
'interface' set to one sense of perception by elaborating a 
particular sensory mechanism. Mikami's entire project is motivated by 
the conviction that something like what we call 'interface' in the 
context of computer technology, already exists within us. Mikami's 
projects make the audience experience their own state of perceptions. 
The interfaces designed for her projects function as extensions of 
what we already have--a network that mediates our subjectivity, that 
synthesizes what we perceive and the world that is perceived. Mikami 
explores the 'in-between' or 'inter-medium' of the information 
interchange, through perception, between the body and the surrounding 
space. She audifies and visualises what is not conventionally the 
object of those sense. Thus her key proposition is: "the eye is not 
merely a thing that sees and the ear is not merely a thing that 
hears; it is possible for the ear to see, for the nose to hear, and 
for the eye to touch."



Seiko Mikami (Japan) is an artist who teaches Information Art at Tama 
Art University, Tokyo. Most of her works are interactive media art 
installations incorporating human perception, including the eye 
tracking project "Molecular Informatics" at Canon ARTLAB (Tokyo 
1996), about the acoustic sense and the living body sound at NTT 
InterCommunication Center's permanent collection (Tokyo 1997), 
"Gravicells" on the theme of  gravity called the 6th consciousness in 
Yamaguchi Center for Arts and Media (Japan 2004, in collaboration 
with Sota Ichikawa). She has participated in festivals and 
exhibitions all over the world, incl. DEAF, Ars Electronica, and 
transmediale (2002, 2005). Her latest work, first shown in the 
"Desire of Codes" show at Kulturhuset (Stockholm, Sweden, 2006), will 
be presented at TESLA during transmediale.07. Her work was published 
in "Seiko Mikami - Art Works" at Diputacion Provincial De Malaga, 
Spain (2004). - Mikami is currently on a sabbatical and based in 
Berlin as a fellow at the University of the Arts. From December till 
February 2007 she will be an artist in residence at TESLA.