Art journal #93: The Definition of Self by Masahiko Sato

This is truly a fascinating show. 21-21 always blends a very interesting mix of art, design; and an element of technology and its possibility to help audience gazes into the future.

This show is another crowd-pleaser, it is curated by communication designer Masahiko Sato (who works in the NTT Comm Science Lab).

The exploration of identity, definition of self, and "attributes" is such an important and contemporary topic that is social, technological, anthropological and personal at the same time. There are physical attributes like your weight, height, blood type, hair color, fingerprints, etc. that identify you (and places like hospitals will use these); and social attributes like your name, nationality, address, job, title, etc., that are just as important (if not more in the modern society) to identify oneself, and they are used everyday by friends, strangers, etc. Your habits and material possessions are also part of your attributes. People invest emotions into these attributes or their representation, e.g., if someone throw away your name card in front of you, you are likely to get offended - your existence is being denied, and you may even feel angry. Your name card is not you - but you still get emotionally worked up.

The exhibition is very participative, and starts with asking you to "log" your attributes - you enter your name, have your weight/height measured, iris scanned, and motion of how you'd draw in star in the air recorded. Then you are "in the system". Throughout the exhibition, you are identified and singled out by your attributes (weight, height, motion style, iris). You are challenged to "lose your relevance" in the world and have you

Everyday we are giving away our identity attributes. Our "self" is increasingly divorced from our own attributes. There are more and better technologies to record, validate; but not necessarily with us knowing or with our consent. How are these information used? Should we be worried? How will we be identified in the future? Is that a good thing or a bad thing? Fascinating questions that is technological and philosophical.

WKCD will be a big hit if we can have shows like this!!!

Here's the director's statement.

http://www.2121designsight.jp/id/director-e.html