[spectre] Condolences for Seiko Mikami (1961-2015)

[shu lea cheang]

Dear Yukiko

Much memory with Seiko, thanks for posting this write up. My grief is with you.

sl



At 10:40 AM +0900 3/3/15, yukiko shikata wrote:
>Condolences for Seiko Mikami (1961-2015)
>
>Always energetic, charming, engaging and charismatic -- a chiasma of 
>various people -- Seiko Mikami was one and only artist who realized 
>works derived from her unique vision of the world. She passed away 
>so suddenly. Since then I feel very lost, thinking over her. I met 
>Mikami at her first exhibition "New Formation of Decline (Horobino 
>Shin-zokei)" in 1985, held at the ruined space of a former Yebisu 
>Beer Factory Laboratory*, Ebisu, Tokyo. For about 30 years, 
>thereafter, she had been a stimulating artist and encouraging friend 
>to me. As a writer, curator and a colleague of Tama Art 
>University,** I shared her students, and witnessed her activities as 
>an International artist and caring professor.
>
>In a series of huge installations in Tokyo in the 1980s, she 
>developed her subjects based on the concept regarding city as 
>metaphor, from bone-like physical structures (the exhibition at 
>Yebisu) to nerve systems*** and further to the immune system, and 
>finally the "Information war" in society and body.**** Each 
>exhibition was held in an unique space and location she had found to 
>fit her direction, where the whole space was encroached by huge 
>amounts of junk sculptures forming a heteromorphic dystopia, that 
>made us experience the transforming body in information society 
>tactually. She was then coming into sudden prominence, in the 
>booming Tokyo of the 1980s cyberpunk, techno culture scene - it was 
>far distant from the ordinary art scene with museums and galleries. 
>As a self-made artist, her work always expanded the notion of art 
>throughout independent activities and process-based interaction.
>
>During the period she lived in NY (1991-2000), when she studied 
>Computer Science at New York Institute of Technology and worked at 
>Bell Laboratories, she focused on invisible, immaterial and 
>microscopic aspects of the world, with flow-based perspective. Her 
>interest shifted to Bio-informatics and the notion of "membrane". 
>Since the mid-90s, by coining the concept "Perceptual Interface", 
>she started to realize interactive works to alienate the body by 
>media technologies such as "Molecular Informatics - morphogenic 
>substance via eye tracking"(1996)*****, "World, Membrane and the 
>Dismembered Body"(1997).******
>
>In 00s, after she returned to Japan and started to teach at Tama Art 
>University, "Perceptual Interface" was further extended to 
>"gravity", focusing on the very meta-existence not only forming the 
>world on Earth (all the nature, creatures and artificial entities 
>are based on it, including our body and perception), but also in the 
>universe; wherein "gravicells - gravity and resistance" (2004-10) 
>was collaborated with architect Sota Ichikawa (dNA) at Yamaguchi 
>Center for Arts and Media[YCAM]. In her last huge interactive 
>installation "Desire of Codes"(2010), co-produced with YCAM, her 
>standpoint expanded into omnipresent, multi-layered status of 
>data-base "body and perception" in the era of surveillance, 
>tracking, analysis and feedback loops through networks where 
>"desire" are triggered and accelerated by algorithms. The 
>installation was minimal, systematic, and uncanny, consisting of 
>three parts: (1) arthropod antennae with sensors and cameras forming 
>grid-structure on a big white wall to sense and track visitors with 
>eerie machine noises; (2) 6 robotic arms with a camera and projector 
>hung from ceiling to track visitors; and (3) multi-eye-like 
>projection composed of many small images of visitors, people in the 
>street from many places in the world via Webcams, appearing from 
>data-base by original programs.
>
>Though the material and the way of expression have changed, Mikami's 
>direction was consistent throughout her career. Her interest was to 
>deconstruct, dismember the illusion of "unified self/body" by 
>inviting visitors to experience physical and perceptual environment. 
>She had a unique perspective of somehow "beyond and bellow human 
>being," including smaller creatures such as insects or even 
>particles or molecules -- all those are autonomous, bottom-up, and 
>in a flowing process of emergence.
>
>Mikami was a critical, reflexive and at the same time, remarkably 
>crucial, intuitive "creature". She sensitively kept on capturing a 
>possible relation between information society and the body. The 
>impact of "3. 11" (the big East Japan Earthquake and followed severe 
>nuclear accident of Fukushima Dai-ichi" in 2011) in Japan let her 
>take a few years off to contemplate and comprehend; her coming work 
>would have to be the one integrating the issues in her way, perhaps 
>with particle- or dust-like super small drones in the air,****** but 
>now is stranded forever in time.
>
>
>Yukiko Shikata
>February 26, 2015 Tokyo
>
>
>[Notes]
>*Currently Yebisu Garden Place
>**She was professor of Media Art course of Information Design 
>Department, Tama Art University and I worked with her as a guest 
>professor
>***"Bad Art for Bad People", BF of Iikura Atlantic Building, Tokyo, 1986
>****"Information Weapon Super Clean Room", Toyoko Chikyu Kankyo 
>Kenkyujo (literally translated as "Toyoko Institute of Global 
>Environment"), 1990.
>*****Canon ARTLAB6, co-curated by Kazunao Abe, Yukiko Shikata
>******NTT InterCommunication Center[ICC]
>*******She devoted her energy for the new work, by commuting 
>Switzerland frequently last year
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
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