ICC



The internet, and the rest of cyberspace must not wind up the playground of a select few. In order to open this priveliged environment for the masses, discussions of simple commercialization will only result in a further overwhelming bias. Our response was to create monuments in cyberspace.
Actual monuments, for example Tokyo's Mt. Fuji, and Paris' Eiffel Tower are massive objects visible to the areas' inhabitants. They are discovered anew each time people turn street corners, indelibly impressed into people's minds. New monuments are needed in new cities. What, then is the appropriate production methodology for creating monuments (meta-monument) in cyberspace?
Depending on its method of manufacture, the people who will come to the monument will be very different. So too, it is important that they share in the production and development processes. At Masaki FUJIHATA Lab, Kouichiro ETO, who was then a 4th year student (and is now chief technical coordinator, contributing artist to both his own and several others' works, and co-artistic director of IC '95 "on the Web") started the "PeepHole" project, an experiment in the creation of a meta-monument by the active participation of those who access it. PeepHole is not communication via written, but visual language. Compared to written language, visual expression is filled with greater redundancy. Beauty is left to the eye of the beholder. Looking through the "PeepHole" is not so much a matter of the quality of information gained, but rather the encountered visual data relative to the subjectivity of the user. This was the greater enjoyment of this project. The freedom of observation relative to the changes in the subject image was up to the user. The meaning was in a deciding moment, that was still unlike that of a photograph.
Just as an urban monument functions as public space, "PeepHole" performs a public function. Through the "PeepHole," all that the viewer encountered was the FUJIHATA Lab, but through placing a server where anyone could access a familiar subject, we have now erected a "PeepHole" meta-monument in the Internet.

The "Moon Server Project" is an attempt at viewing the moon real-time and stereoscopically. Japan and Australia are roughly 7,000 kilometers apart, with a one-hour time difference. Servers feeding signals of the moon, some 40,000 kilometers distant, from astronomical telescopes both in Japan and Australia, and reassembling them on one site. Through this process, the perspective of distance is radically altered, and the moon is seen stereoscopically, with greater depth perception. Calculating that a person's eyes are seperated by approximately 6 cm, a beach ball held some 3-4m away should have roughly the same dimensions. Due to the many variables which the time and weather conditions may present, much of the original imagery will be taken before the beginning of the exhibition for display. Then, during the term of the exhibition this data will be updated at regular intervals.