31 Jul 2008

Masaki Fujihata at Cornerhouse, Manchester

For his first major UK solo show Masaki Fujihata's The Conquest of Imperfection will feature eight major installation works, created between 1995–2008. Fujihata uses interactive technology, virtual reality and networking to probe the fundamental questions of human perception and awareness. His installations pose big questions, such as why humans communicate, and what happens through the user's touch in interactive media work.

Masaki Fujihata has been working in the fields of computer graphics and animation since the early 1980s. In tandem with the dramatic developments achieved in digital technologies during the past three decades, he began pursuing their numerous possibilities for artistic expression. Highly acclaimed both in Japan and abroad, Fujihata's work embraces the unique perspective that reality is probably more imperfect than the virtual realm. Fujihata questions what reality is, how it is realised and how we should approach the new world that will be enabled by the media of the future.

While his work exhibits an intrinsically Japanese aesthetic, Fujihata also addresses the core issues that occupy media artists around the world. He has created pioneering work in all fields of digital media, including animation, computer graphics, interactivity, the internet, location based and distributed computing, nano-technology, data mining, inhabited information spaces, and GPS. His works are imbued with the special features unique to the newest technologies in interactive art, virtual reality and networking, but they probe fundamental questions of human perception and awareness, and ask the important underlying question, why do humans communicate?

Fujihata has created a new work especially for his Manchester exhibition. Unformed Symbols: Another Side (2008) continues the artists' longstanding investigation of perception and awareness.

Exhibition supported by the Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation, The Great Britain Sasakawa Foundation and the Japan Foundation and Palace Hotel – Principal Hayley Hotels and Conference Venues. Part of Japan – UK 2008 www.japanuk150.org