Akira ASADA
(Assistant Professor at Kyoto University; ICC Committee)

The InterCommunication Center (ICC) is scheduled to open in 1997.In keeping with the ideal of a network-style museum which places particular emphasis on software that will serve as an interface between the arts and the scientific technology of the electronic information age, NTT has anticipated the ICC opening with a variety of events and publications that have been underway since 1991. In particular, the first year event InterCommunication '91: The Museum Inside The Telephone Network was an unprecedented experiment which likened the entirety of NTT's telephone network to a museum, allowing people to access the works and activities of vanguard artists around the world by simply using the telephones and fax machines in their own homes. NTT InterCommunication '95: on the Web -- The Museum Inside the Network can be described as the upgrading of that event to the world of computer communications based on the Internet.

Within a multimedia environment whose profound expanse far exceeds that of telephones and faxes, this project is certain to open up new creative dialogues through the global network. Of course, audio-visual information involves certain problems -- for instance, limitations in the amount of circuitry result in imperfect resolution, and a significant amount of time is required to download.

However, these kinds of problems will be technologically resolved soon enough. The important thing now is to anticipate that future by sharpening the kind of creativity and imaginative power that can fully exploit the multimedia network that is on its way, and to confront the technological side with the new demands to be generated from this kind of imaginative power. on the Web -- The Museum Inside the Network is none other than an experimental effort towards achieving this end. It is my hope that many people will keep tabs on this experiment, and, as much as possible,actively participate in it. For the museums of the future will exist precisely in the kind of open network it provides.