Game/ Art/ Media

Video games have evolved rapidly for as long as they have existed. Online games are now a playground for children, and during the pandemic, they became a stage for weddings, graduations, protest movements, and sometimes even a platform for bands to promote new albums. So, what is the definition of this evolving thing that we call “video games?” What is unique about video games from an artistic perspective? A game researcher, artist, and curator will examine and discuss the possibilities of video games from their unique points of view.

Speakers:
Daito Manabe (Artist)
Hiroshi Yoshida (Associate Professor, Tokyo University)
Kensho Tambara (Curator)

Speaker’s Profiles

Daito Manabe
Daito Manabe launched Rhizomatiks in 2006. Specially-appointed professor at Keio University SFC.
Manabe’s works, which range into a variety of fields, takes a new approach to everyday materials and phenomena. However, his end goal is not simply rich, high-definition realism by recognizing and recombining these familiar elemental building blocks. Rather, his practice is informed by careful observation to discover and elucidate the essential potentialities inherent to the human body, data, programming, computers, and other phenomena, thus probing the interrelationships and boundaries delineating the analog and digital, real and virtual.

Hiroshi Yoshida
Hiroshi Yoshida (b.1973) has a PhD from the Graduate School of Humanities and Sociology at University of Tokyo. He was an associate professor at the Graduate School of Core Ethics and Frontier Sciences, Ritsumeikan University, and is currently an associate professor at the Graduate School of Humanities and Sociology, University of Tokyo (Department of Aesthetics). He researches video games from an aesthetic perspective. In 2011, he established the Ritsumeikan University Video Game Research Center while a professor at the university. He is currently living in Leipzig (Germany) and is a guest professor at Leipzig University in the Japanology Department. Yoshida recently published “Japan’s Contemporary Media Culture between Local and Global: Content, Practice and Theory” (Co-edited, English, 2021).

Kensho Tambara
Kensho Tambara (b.1992, Tokyo) graduated with a BA in Art History from Harvard University. In Boston, he focused on rites of passage and ceremonies via performance in contemporary communities, returning to Japan in 2017 where he has been active as an artist and curator. He mainly makes site-specific works and exhibitions created with the aim of inducing a change in the viewer’s gaze. In addition to artistic activities, he also curates exhibitions at galleries, established Art Space Shinokubo UGO, acts as Representative Director for the Open Art Consortium, and more. Tambara became Program Director for SONO AIDA #Shinyurakucho in December 2021.