Technology and spirituality in Etsuko Ichihara's ludic media art. Issue 3 (2nd September 2022)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Sone, Yuji
• Is Part Of: International journal of performance arts and digital media. Volume 18:Issue 3(2022)
• Page Start: 303
• Page End: 315
• Publication Date: 2022-09-02
• Subjects: Media art -- spirituality -- animism -- playfulness -- Japan; Performance art -- Periodicals; Performance art -- Data processing -- Periodicals; Digital media -- Periodicals; Digital media; Performance art; Periodicals; 700.285
• DOI: 10.1080/14794713.2021.1940698
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 2040-0934

Abstract

ABSTRACT: Etsuko Ichihara is a media artist who utilises digital media and robotic technologies, exploring Japanese traditional beliefs of the spirit and the supernatural in her recent works. Ichihara repurposes paranormal and folk religious ideas concerning the figure of the shaman, an ogre-like demon that features in some Japanese festivals, and ritual offerings, but reinvents these traditional elements through technological mediation. I discuss Ichihara's distinctive engagement with a contemporised notion of spirituality in Japan. In particular, this essay argues that Ichihara's media art aims to connect Japanese people in order to create sociality and community. Ichihara appropriates Japanese animistic beliefs and tailors them for a mediated and technologised Japan, utilising what might be called a 'techno-spiritual Japanese-ness', that is, self-orientalising tropes that paradoxically generate the means for social relations.