Art Media Center (AMC) of Tokyo University of the Arts is now in its 22nd year since it was established in 2000. During this time, social conditions related to information networks have changed dramatically. Now, even at our university, advanced knowledge in management, operation, and especially security of information, is required. Also, AMC has been and continues to play a central role in the online classes and the university’s digital twin projects. Since 2020, triggered by COVID-19 pandemic, full online access to the classes has been promoted by the university, and the digital twin of the university was created as a means to share information.

This exhibition, titled “GIFUKEI” is AMC’s first exhibition in three years, and will be using the coined word “GIFUKEI/ 擬風景 (meaning pseudo-landscape)” as a clue to show the way of “landscape=GIFUKEi” created by the creative techniques of “Modoki/ 擬” (“Modoki” uses the same kanji with ”GIFUKEI”),

The word "Modiki" is generally translated as "fake," but in the history of art, it has been translated as a method such as "Mitate (process of selecting)" and has been treated as a way to actively edit the difference from the reference object and sublimate it as an expression.

The process of ”Modoki" in this sense hides the originality of the artist, and the creativity of the act of representing the pseudo by bricolage of available techniques and philosophies, which is the theme of this exhibition.

AMC has been sharing various technologies related to information media with artists and researchers, mainly through the center's laboratory facilities, but the state of the pseudo is changing dramatically with the development of technology. Especially in the recent years, concepts such as metaverse and digital twin have emerged, and the virtual and the real have fused together, making it impossible to describe the world in terms of a simple dichotomy between the fake and the original. In such a world where the location of the original is ambiguous, what can the pseudo imitate, and what kind of creative method can it be?

This exhibition will take this state of "Modoki" as its starting point and introduce the practices of the Center as well as the works and methods of artists associated. Also it will be deepening the discussion through dialogue events with invited guests, in order to look at the new creative possibilities that “Modoki” will open up in the coming age.

Toru Kamekawa [Director of Art Media Center]