I am thinking of media art in its original sense.

First of all, can you tell us about your career to date?

yang02: I was born in 1984, graduated from the graduate school of Tama Art University in 2009, and it has been 9 years this year since then, and I started working as an artist directly after graduation. . I studied media art at university, so I am often introduced to that field.

. I have been invited to participate in such exhibitions. Just yesterday, it was announced that I received the Excellence Award in the Art Division of the Japan Media Arts Festival.

I see! Congratulations . By the way, what exactly makes media art different from regular art?

yang02. to put it bluntly, it is art using technology. To elaborate a bit more, the concept of art is based on the premise that it is imported from the West, and media art is a format that is also imported from the West.

I think the original meaning was artistic expression using new media, not the mediums conventionally used in fine art, such as paint, pencil, wood, stone, etc.

It has been about 20 or 30 years since the birth of media art in the sense of breaking down existing frameworks, and it has recently become quite popular in Japan. However, I think that most of what is currently being promoted in Japan has a strong element of entertainment.

I think of media art in its original sense, which is a little different from the media art commonly recognized in Japan, so I use new media to create works that are critical of and refer to the new media itself.

When you say "something that refers to itself", do you mean that you ask yourself why you use the format and media that you use in your work, and then reflect those questions in your work? And then you reflect those questions in your work?

yang02: Yes, that's exactly right , that's exactly right.

. my roots are in graffiti and street art.

What were your original influences and what sparked your interest in art?

yang02. My first encounter with graffiti was in high school. I am from Chigasaki, Kanagawa Prefecture , where there was a lot of graffiti. In terms of numbers, there were not as many as in Tokyo, but there were many good spots, and at that time there were many high-quality murals called "production pieces," which were painted by a crew of graffiti writers who spent a lot of time together.

When you are a high school student or a freshman or sophomore in college and have no money, you tend to resist museums, which seem a bit authoritative and pompous. I feel skeptical about it. Instead, I thought, "There are cooler things I can see for free and outside! . that's what I was thinking.

So my interest in graffiti led me to art school, and from there I started to take an interest in art as well. Even now, I think my roots are in graffiti and street art.

. In that era, there was also the Sakuragicho Wall (a long stretch of wall with graffiti along the JR elevated railway line, which was a bit of a tourist attraction at the time), wasn't there?

yang02: Yes, that's right. Actually, I participated in the event when that place was going to be demolished. It was run by a non-profit organization called Composition, and I was good friends with the people there, so I was allowed to participate. I was not really serious about media art until I was in my fourth year of college (laughs).

I started getting into media art after graduate school. Before that, I liked graffiti and would go out and take pictures and upload them to my website.

So you liked it that much! So you also like Kaze Magazine (*an independent magazine launched in 1999 that mainly introduces Japanese street art)....

yang02: Of course, of course , of course. I loved reading it, and I read the interviews and stuff (laughs).

I see. At that time, you were not using anything new to create your works, were you?

yang02. not much. . I was not a very ambitious student, just submitting them for assignments. However, there was a class in my department that taught me such technical matters, so I was somewhat familiar with it.

When I was in graduate school, a group called the Graffiti Research Lab emerged in 2006 to develop new tools for graffiti writers using technology to expand the possibilities of expression, which was very revolutionary and very popular at the time.

For example, they had a system called laser tagging, where you could use a laser to tag a building, or simply attach a button battery and a strong magnet to an LED and throw it and bomb it with light, and they were using technology to hack the streets, and they were amazing and sensational. I was influenced by them.

It's simple, but I wanted to do something like that myself, and from college I was working on a research project on a theme like street art using technology.

Graffiti is a stylistic beauty.

Incidentally, you mentioned that you were an unskilled student, but why did you still go on to graduate school as a media art major?

yang02I was very serious about my graduation project, but it was well received by my professor and I got a good evaluation, so I felt I was getting a good response. At the same time, I felt that I was getting better at handling technology.

I had the feeling that ideas would be born in a string of beads as I acquired skills. I felt that it would be a shame to graduate from school, so I decided to go on to graduate school.

Do you feel that the sense of expanding your ideas as technology expands and expands what you can do is the base of the fun that you are currently experiencing in your work?

yang02. Recently, however, I have begun to think critically about technology itself. Each time I create a new work, I learn new techniques and become able to handle advanced technology, but now I am beginning to question whether I can create without using technology.

If you can't express yourself unless you can use electricity, that is poor imagination. Therefore, recently, instead of daring to take the approach of creating a robot from scratch using technology, I have been creating a drawing machine that uses existing objects such as a fan or other moving appliances or toys as they are, and uses the movements originally possessed by these ready-made objects.

In other words, it does not use any of the usual means of media art, and can be created by anyone, even without expertise. In the future, I intend to create both groups of works that use cutting-edge technology and those that take a primitive approach, criticizing technology and media art in a way that does not use much technology.

I assume that many of your works are painted without having a concrete image of the finished product in mind.

yang02: I've been following and looking at graffiti for a long time, and what I've realized is that this is a stylistic beauty. For all the talk about style wars and how if you don't have a style, you're dead on the street, they all tend to be styles and imitations of each other that look like that.

For example, there are decorations like bubbles, cracks, etc., and letters from A to Z. Some people think it's cool to break up the letter "S" in this way, and others think it's stylish to do so now (laughs).

I realized that it was this kind of stylistic beauty, and the inner structure of such expression was described in analytical detail in the book "Simulationism" by the critic Noi Sawaragi, which is compared to the method of DJ sampling/cut-up/remixing, but the point is that that is what it was all about. That's what it was all about, wasn't it?

To put it plainly, I think it is an exchange of parrots. Based on this, I thought that since tags are no longer readable by ordinary people, the essence of tags is not in the readable characters, but in the dynamism of the vigorous strokes, which is why I created such a randomly moving drawing device.

In the case of a drawing machine using a double pendulum, it could look like a tag that is really drawn on the street.

. You mean that you naturally try to capture them as letters.

yang02I was trying to approach it. So, even if a work was not intentionally created by the artist, if the viewer sees it that way, it becomes a work of art, and I realized later that I was trying to approach it that way.

Therefore, the human habit of finding regularity in random things is itself an act of appreciation.

Our generation has a special attachment to Nike.

What was your honest impression when you received an offer from Nike to participate in "ATELIAIR" this time?

yang02I think everyone of our generation has a special feeling for "Nike. If you're a bit of a rascal, you're a bit like that. I was a member of a basketball team, and I remember wearing Nike bash shoes and watching Jordans, and just seeing that logo makes my heart flutter and reminds me of those days.

So, I thought, "Here it is at last" (laughs). (Laughs.) I am very happy. I am happy to work with "Nike," which I have been longing for. To be honest, it has been a while since I have worn Nike sneakers, but they are so light and comfortable.

. I realized that the evolution of technology is taking proper shape.

What kind of "air" themed works are being produced by "ATELIAIR"?

yang02. In 2015, I made a work using a drone, and I really wish I could have done something like that, but it was for air (laughs). The work I am submitting this time is a spring-loaded, bouncing drawing machine that seems to defy gravity, so I thought it would fit the theme of air. It is a spray-drawing machine.

The other is the one where you draw slowly with a pen . we have two drawing machines.

The theme of this year's Air Max Day is "Turning imagination into reality," and it's interesting that you can't envision the exact image of yang02's work until you actually give it shape. It's interesting that you can't picture the exact image of your work until you actually give it shape.

yang02. Yes, that's right. In fact, there are also things like unforeseen errors in the process of creation, so we adopt such things. . So, the idea is constantly changing from the initial idea. . So actually giving shape to ideas is very important for me.