When i first arrived in Roppongi the station spat me out into a huge shopping centre which lucky had one of the museums i wanted to hit up inside. The Suntory Art Museum. It was not what i was expecting inside but was still great to see the old artworks. The museum was nicely based around the theme of hospitality something which is highly regarded still in Japan today. Within the language having different forms of politeness for hospitality among other reasons.
I payed extra for an English audio guide and strolled around for a few hours learning how hospitality had so much impact on Japanese art. For example i really enjoyed how a 7 set of bowls was precariously laid out onto a tray for service in such a was as to complement the other bowls. Each bowl stacked inside the other, which all would fit perfectly into the largest bowl of the set. Unfortunately i was kindly asked not to take photos before i went inside so i respected this.
As the sun began to set i went to a place which would rival the awsomeness of Whitby's local baker 'Bothams' it really was Oishii! Just around the corner was The National Arts Center where i had seen poster spring up over Tokyo about a Media Arts Exhibition. Something i am somewhat interested in as it is similar to something which i studied for at university. I rarely take the time to spend time on the internet looking for new media art or have the time / money to attend exhibitions within the UK but being on holiday it would have been stupid to miss out on the chance to see Japanese media art.
Here are some photos from the day
taken with the leica
Man sleeps in busy shopping complex
outside the national arts centre
i just love how the lens handles lighting
girl runs (out of my focus, dam it) around the arts centre
i put the 20mm lumix lens back on for some better wide-angle of the stunning building
i thought it was funny how they pinned the art onto Japan, even though this form of art occurs all over the world, maybe its a bad translation and they really mean they have formed a new category of art which contains media from Japanese lifestyle such as games, animation and manga!
a piece of work which 'grew' sculptures, the aesthetics really just reminded me of generic processing (stacking circles and make them grow like organic forms - seen it all before)but it sounds interesting how he would take such onscreen based image and create real 3d objects from them though.
One thing that i was really happy to see was Shigeru Miyamoto's sketches from back when he designed 'Plummer Man' aka Mario and the early sketches for one of my favorite video games Donkey Kong!
sougoiiii
the exhibtion also held space for mange and animation artists
My favorite work from the day used CRT TV's to create audio from the static and adding effects to create a piece of 'glitchy' music. The set up was like a set of drums, 14 inch tvs surrounded him as he play by hitting the screen. His human contact disrupts the tv's static. Audio is taken from the the video feeds output which is leaves the tv as a video signal. This is what seamed to be happening anyway, my Japanese is no good and i could not understand the artist.
sun sets through the windows of the National Arts Centre
after sunset i wondered down to Roppongi Hills where i remembered the giant spider sculpture which was there. It was really dark but i found somewhere to rest the cmaera while it took a long exposure, the edge of the wall was in the shot.
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