Exibition
One can often form an image of a city after listening to the stories of a local barber or taxi driver. Within this "image" wanders a shepard. One sheep strays from the herd and begins asking locals "What is your ideal place?"" The shepard, too, often thought about that question as he herded.
"The Shepard's Story" is a fiction film that also doubles as a documentary where viewers imagine the future while exploring a city. This film was made according to strict directions and other "Shepard's Story" films were made in other cities using the same rules. By simultaneously showing other "Shepard's Story" films, Ogaki's unique scenery becomes apparent. Artist Shinoda Inoue plays the shepard, and was able to create this movie with the help of many Ogaki residents.
Beginning in the Edo period, and through the Meiji era, Ogaki prospered as a center for learning medicine, especially Western theory. Within the area, The Ema Institute, founded by Ema Ransai, was well-known and had great influence on the surrounding region, including Iinuma Yokusai.
This exhibition presents, as art, the medical books and instruments used by the Katsuno family, who practiced Chinese and Western medicine for four generations. It also features plant reproductions based on Iinuma Yokusai's illustrations.
This object art was created by Yushi Yashima, and is an homage to the old study of Western knowledge.
This is a guidance system using the iPhone. Visitors may use this to access information about exhibits that interest them. We will be lending out iPhones with the system installed. Those who have their own iPhone just have to install a special application to experience the guidance system. (Please consult the information desk with questions on installing.)
"Aspect of city" finds characteristic patterns within a city, and rebuilds them in order to uncover that city's personality.
The project "CityAppearance=Ogaki" examines the alleys and spaces between buildings to show that one can capture the spirit of Ogaki from places nobody normally notices.
"The Accessor of Space" involves walking the city while receiving audio information on a cell phone. You hear general facts as well as individuals' personal memories related to your current location, all of which have been gathered from wikipedia or blog sites. These works take the familiar Ogaki we see everyday and show it in a new light.
Once upon a time, people used to exchange information with few words and at a leisurely pace. Some enjoyed crafting a lingering image with a mere 17 syllable haiku, while others played a game in which one places a cup on a water current and then must recite a poem before the cup passes by. However, nowadays there is a wealth of information available on the internet, and with over 50 million 'tweets" posted on Twitter everyday, an incredible amount of words are being consumed.
Keeping in mind the importance of water to Ogaki's identity, we reimagined the onslaught of information from Twitter as overflowing words pouring down stone steps like a waterfall. Seeing the words dance along the water's surface like the bubbles at a waterfall's basin imbues them with the feeling of long ago. In this way, we tried to contrast the wasteful consumption of information today with the meticulous usage of words in the past, while also expressing the potential of information and Ogaki, "the city of water".
Members of iamasTV have made a video project using "the people and city of Ogaki" as a motif.
In this building, projects and documents created by the iamasTV studio are displayed.
There is also an archive corner, where programs from iamasTV's 10-year history can be viewed.
http://www.iamas.ac.jp/tv/