[ISEA2009] Curator Statement: Yvonne Spielmann – Mapping Scapes of Sound and Vision: Notes on the field work Simultaneous Echoes by Masaki Fujihata for ISEA2009

Curator Statement

Notes on the field work Simultaneous Echoes, an audiovisual installation by Masaki Fujihata (visual artist) in collaboration with Frank Lyons (music composer) for ISEA2009, Londonderry/Derry, Northern Ireland, UK.

Field Works
For more than a decade, Japanese media artist Masaki Fujihata has explored In a series of field works the interrelationships between the visual representation of natural landscapes as we perceive them in painting, cartography, video and films, and the audiovisual expression of our physical activity to walk and move in these scapes and meet the people who live and work therein. The process of a field work is driven by the concept that the artist in person and small teams equipped with recording technologies of video, microphone, and GPS (Global Positioning System) enter the selected field with the target to measure, map and visualise real spaces according to the parameters of human activity and behaviour. For example, Fujihata and crew were climbing up and down Mount Fuji with laptop, video and GPS equipment by foot in 1992, and several measuring teams in parallel were surrounding and crossing Lake Shinji in 2002 by boat and bicycle, thereby collecting the visual data from camera and mobile phone imagery.

  • Yvonne Spielmann is Chair of New Media at the University of the West of Scotland, UK

Full Text (PDF)  p. 108-115