Hiroshi Yoshioka, Professor at Institute of Advanced Media Arts and Sciences(IAMAS), Ogaki, Japan. Editor-in-chief for the quarterly critical journal "Diatxt."(published by Kyoto Art Center)
The idea of cyber-utopias seems to take one of its extreme, most surreal forms, in the public sphere as well as in the subculture in Japan. It is true that until the early nineties the idea functioned as a kind of impetus to change the society for a better direction, by dissolving conventional relations and developing people's spontaneous network. But what has happened since then? Enthusiasm for electronic gadgets has been supported by the national policy of so-called "IT Revolution." Indulgence in constant telecommunication by way of the mobile phone and the Internet has been blindly promoted by industry. Critical moments in society have been seriously weakened as the idea of cyber-utopias has been authorized by the government. Now the idea appears like a false, depoliticized Socialist utopia, by which people pretend to imagine that all the problems could be solved just by the development of technology. In this presentation I will focus on the issue of "body" in the contemporary Japanese society, as I believe it is one of the most revealing topics to understand how the utopian view of technology functions in Japan. I will illustrate my point by introducing a work by Tadasu Takamine.
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