Throughout my career I have produced works of art with media and the technologies employed by media. The impetus behind most of these works came from discoveries made while tinkering with things that are part of my daily life such as televisions, videos, and computers; the works emerge from the attempt to find what makes these things interesting. In my case, television has been in existence since I was born. Machines stimulate my creativity and I use machines to create--perhaps if these media technologies weren't close at hand I wouldn't, or even couldn't, produce art. That is how deeply I have been affected by the existence of media technology.

Yet I have recently come to realize that what stimulates me most is not the information conveyed by various media, but rather the actual machines those media use. What is interesting about the television is not the content of the programs but the fact that an electromagnetic wave broadcast from somewhere reaches one's own home to become points of light that are continually combined to create a moving image. What fascinates me is the mechanism of such media and the actual machines that make them possible. Perhaps my strong attachment to these things-in-themselves, in spite of the fact that I create media art, shows that I am still partly grounded in the age of materiality.

The work I have produced for the opening of ICC Seven Memories of Media Technology will be permanently installed in a place nearby the entrance hall. I was very conscious of the fact that it was likely to be the first thing visitors would see upon entering ICC, and that it would also serve as a lead-in to the workshop space. Thus, I thought that the work itself should be introductory in nature, an aid to the general public's understanding of media art and media communications. Since the installation space is long and narrow, rather than creating one large work, I aimed to convey a sense of continuity and diversity through the juxtaposition of several works in a series.

In thinking about this introduction to media art" as a permanent installation, I came up with the idea of choosing a few major elements of the media technology that has influenced me so and using them to create a kind of personal history. Perhaps in turning the absolutely commonplace machines that I have always used into art, something about the starting point and conceptual process behind my work might be conveyed. In concrete terms, I installed seven pillars in the exhibition space and placed an object in a specimen box on each of them that have great personal meaning for me, having been the stimulus behind my work--the flipbook, Phenakisti-scope, photography, television, video, computer, and music box. I then synthesized computer imagery of each of these objects taken through the use of half mirrors, in the hope of demonstrating, in my own way, the essential beauty, appeal, and moreover the potentialities of these media technologies by contrasting the material and immaterial aspects of each.