corr: asking your inputs about the Bunkacho project, the National Center for Media Arts

[Hideaki Fujiki]

Just a quick report. I attended the third hearing held by the  
Committee for the Cultural Agency's plan of the National Center for  
Media Arts on July 10. I felt that the plan should be abolished as  
far as the current committee conducts it. Though with no surprise,  
the committee is just the site where they confirm and reconfirm their  
sense of nationalism. They also have little concern about the needs  
of researchers, educators, and other users. Fortunately, the  
forthcoming election will likely result in the suspension of the  
plan. But I still believe that it was worth addressing our ideas at  
that opportunity. I am really grateful to some of you for giving me  
suggestions and advice.

Hideaki Fujiki











On 2009/07/07, at 10:35, Edan Corkill wrote:

>
> For those who are interested, I did a story last week about the  
> National Center for Media Arts "preparations committee," to whom  
> Professor Fujiki will give the talk on Friday.
>
> http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20090703a6.html
>
> Edan Corkill
>
> _______________________________________________________________
> Edan CORKILL
> Staff Writer
> Arts, Entertainment and Features Section
> The Japan Times
> 4-5-4 Shibaura, Minato-ku, Tokyo 108-8071
> _______________________________________________________________
> E-mail: e.corkill at japantimes.co.jp
> Tel: 03-3452-3599 Fax: 03-3453-5265
> http://www.japantimes.co.jp
> _______________________________________________________________
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> $B%$!<%G%s!&%3!<%-%k(B
> _______________________________________________________________
>
> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Hideaki Fujiki"  
> <hfuji at info.human.nagoya-u.ac.jp>
> To: <KineJapan at lists.acs.ohio-state.edu>
> Sent: Tuesday, July 07, 2009 10:14 AM
> Subject: Re: corr: asking your inputs about the Bunkacho project,  
> the National Center for Media Arts
>
>
> The Bunkacho will hold a hearing about the Center on Wednesday and
> Friday. Everyone can audit it with advance registration. Information
> is available here: http://www.bunka.go.jp/oshirase_kaigi/2009/
> kokurithumedeia_2.html. I will give a ten-minute talk on Friday.
>
> Hideaki
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On 2009/06/19, at 4:09, Bruce Baird wrote:
>
>> All,
>>
>> I realize that many people have already weighed in on this issue,   
>> and Fujiki-san himself has already replied to this list and may   
>> already have written his editorial, but I've been thinking about   
>> my  experiences at the Keio University Research Center for the  
>> Arts  and Arts Administration (including the Hijikata Tatsumi  
>> Archive  I've been utilizing).  In the late 90's, they got a  
>> bucket load of  money from monbusho to explore digital archiving  
>> and while they  have been quite hampered by the problem of  
>> copyright (some subjects  of their main collections of materials-- 
>> Takiguchi, Noguchi Isamu,  and Hijikata are only recently passed  
>> on), in principle the kinds  of strategies have been pretty  
>> interesting and helpful.  Taking a  hint from the searchability of  
>> Finnigans Wake for Joyce scholars,  they have goal of making all  
>> of someone's corpus of materials  searchable, so for example,  
>> while you wouldn't want to get a  Hijikata hit while searching for  
>> 'dog' in a library database, it  would be meaningful to be able to  
>> search for everytime Hijikata  used the word dog in all his  
>> essays, writings, notebooks, and etc,  in the same way that you  
>> might want to search across the entire  Joyce corpus for "brown  
>> mackintosh" or something like that. At the  present, you can't  
>> actually perform a search from outside the archive, and I am sure  
>> that has to do with both copyright and also probably Keio  
>> incentivizing the archive to earn some money in this  day of  
>> uncertain funding for universities.  However, along with  viewing  
>> capabilities in situ, digitalization and off-sight  searchability  
>> and accessibility should be part of the equation.
>>
>> Also, in a kind of parallel manner in the way that many museums  
>> now  tread lightly with restorations of art works because the  
>> history an  art work passed through is its own valuable story and  
>> not just the  original art work itself, they have had the meta  
>> goal of  incorporating into the archive the very work that people  
>> do on  these corpuses so the 'self awareness' of the archive is   
>> increasing.  The goal, however imperfectly realized, has been  
>> both  to provide researchers with the tools to pursue any kind of   
>> research they like (through the above searchability), and at the   
>> same time, to understand and track what people are searching and  
>> what key words are important as a way of possibly stimulating more  
>> research.    I suggest that Fujiki-san spend an afternoon at the   
>> Mita campus visiting with the archivists there to get hints for  
>> how  the media center might function.
>>
>> In addition, I think video games and all generations of gaming   
>> consoles should be available.  Video games are too much a part of   
>> this to ignore in favor of anime and manga as can be seen most   
>> obviously from the Pokemon and Final Fantasy franchises.
>>
>> Best,
>>
>> Bruce
>>
>>
>> Bruce Baird
>> Assistant Professor
>> Asian Languages and Literatures
>> University of Massachusetts Amherst
>> Buto, Japanese Theater, Intellectual History
>>
>> 717 Herter Hall
>> 161 Presidents Drive
>> University of Massachusetts Amherst
>> Amherst, MA 01003-9312
>> Phone: 413-577-4992
>> Fax: 413-545-4975
>> baird at asianlan.umass.edu
>>
>>
>>
>>
>