As part of the trip to Japan, Manami at British Council arranged for Duncan, Drew and I to visit YCAM - Yamaguchi Center for Arts and Media, in the South of the country. I had met Akiko Takeshita, YCAM's Performing arts producer, when she visited the studio last year and was keen to learn more about her organisation and explore possible collaborations. 

We were met by a group of YCAM staff and city officials who had been involved with setting the organisation up. YCAM was opened in November 2003 as a cultural-arts complex that accommodates a hall for stage performances, an exhibition space, a mini film theatre, and the Yamaguchi City Library. The vision was to create a cross art-form platform for artists and audience to participate in the shaping of a digital society, with a focus on creation rather than exhibition. All of the spaces in YCAM are flexible and are referred to as a studios (not theatre or galleries) with the idea that they are flexible spaces that can be transformed.

Artistic Programme

Last year YCAM's commissioned and produced three major installations. They tour their work internationally and send staff across the globe to set up their work. Some highlights:

Life installation 2007:

Produced at YCAM studio by Ryuichi Sakamoto and Shiro Takatani as part of an artist-in-residence programme:

LIFE - influid, invisible, inaudible ... :: ryuichi sakamoto + shiro takatani from bacteriasleep on Vimeo.

 

On the Fly:
On the fly was produced for YCAM's Minimum Interface exhibition, The flyer of the exhibition itself served as a navigation interface where Augmented Reality was triggered by holes in the flyer acting as create button interfaces.


on the fly @ minimum interface from Hisato Ogata on Vimeo.


Desire of Codes, an installation by Seiko Mikami:

 

 

Without records by Otomo Yoshihide and Yasutomo Aoyama

In this installation, there are about over a hundred portable record players without records:

 

"without records" - YCAM Otomo Yoshihide / ENSEMBLES from YCAMArchives on Vimeo.

 

 

True

a collaborative dance piece using myoelectric sensors to enable the dancer's body is control sounds and light:

 

 

One of the best things at YCAM was what they call their Interlab, an in-house tech lan resource which enables them to produce quickly and efficiently and achieve amazing results.  Engineers in the lab are involved in all technical aspects of the work they produce and also with the education programme. They develop great relationships with the artists they work with and support them
from early ideas to installation, a process which can take over a year.


I was also particularly inspired by their education programme, which included bespoke projects that their tech lab and education team were involved in authoring:

One of these was Ketai spy workshop, a game of hide and seek using mobile phone to develop media literacy. This workshop is done with primary school children and the focus is to let them decide the rules of the game and how their society will work. Participants are given a map of the building (including temporary maze structures that have been set up) and mobile phones. The game involves sneaking photos of other players which are sent to the server and points allocated based on the system decided by the children (maybe if the face is big they get 5 points, if they only get a leg,
they get one point, and points are added for artistic merit). After each game they refine the rules.

Walking around Surround was a workshop I particularly loved and would really like to do something similar (or find a way to get YCAM over to deliver it for us). Designed to develop sound literacy, participating children are first taken through listening exercises. They then get wireless speakers and  experiment with configuring them in different set ups around the building to make surround sound installations. Finally they experiment with Max/MSP and create compositions for their installations.

YCAM's programme is planned over two years in advance for the two or three big projects they do a year, but they also undertake around 10 smaller projects a year. I am very much hoping we can form some kind of collaboration across Watershed and YCAM - we talked about artist residencies, swapping education programmes, streaming talks, offering staff swaps or even just a very simple newsletter between us where we share what is cool.