Home / Events / Future Ideations Camp Vol.4|Understanding and Creatively Expressing Ecosystems as Data
Future Ideations Camp

Future Ideations Camp Vol.4|Understanding and Creatively Expressing Ecosystems as Data

2024.10.12(Sat)–16(Wed)
Civic Creative Base Tokyo [CCBT]
「生態系をデータとしてとらえる/表現する」と書かれたカラフルなビジュアル。日付は2024年10月12日から10月16日までで、講師やファシリテーターの名前が下部に列挙されている。抽象的な図形やイラストがビジュアル全体に散りばめられている。
Date & Time
October 12 (Sat) – October 16 (Wed), 2024
Venue
Civic Creative Base Tokyo [CCBT]
Capacity
Around 20
Admission
Free
Application Period
July 22 (Mon) – August 13 (Tue) , 2024

Results Exhibition: October 17 (Thu) – October 20 (Sun), 2024

Let’s think about future ecosystems! This five-day intensive workshop camp will generate new ideas for enriching ecosystems, including those that involve us. Participants will interpret the existence and behavior of living creatures (even microorganisms!) and their environments as data, and then use this to produce information and forms of creative expression.

Civic Creative Base Tokyo’s Future Ideations Camp is a series of intensive workshops bringing different kinds of people together to work collaboratively and creatively with art and digital technologies. Twenty selected participants take part in several days of lectures to acquire new ways of thinking, workshops for building skill sets, and collaborative group activities. During the camps, the general public are also able to attend talks and presentations of the results.

 The fourth iteration of Future Ideations Camp will deal with ecosystems, including ecosystems that involve the human race. An ecosystem is a system of complex, reciprocal relationships between living creatures (including humans) and their environment. Since ancient times, humans have integrated the benefits from these ecosystems into their lives, but the negative effects of our actions are today accelerating. Against this backdrop, gaining a deeper understanding of ecosystems not only gives us fresh perspectives on science, technology, art, and cultural activities, but also reveals new guiding principles for enriching all ecosystems, in which we also play a part. In this camp, participants will adopt hands-on approaches that take an overview of ecosystems and develop a renewed awareness of ecology in order to explore new proposals and ideas related to human activities and roles for society today and in the future.

The curriculum focuses on ecological themes, and features both research and praxis about obtaining, organizing, and interpreting data on living creatures and their surrounding environments. Advances in digital technology have made it more possible than ever to acquire and analyze data on ecosystems. In the workshops, participants will attempt to understand the existence of fauna that inhabit certain areas, including microorganisms, and their behavior as well as surrounding environments as data. In the group work, participants will use invisible and unorganized data on ecosystems as informational content for creative expression, serving as a way to think about future ecology.

Reference: Future Ideations Camp Vol.3|Co-creating Opportunities for Inclusive Encounters Workshop
Reference: Future Ideations Camp vol.1: Import *

Lecturers / Facilitators:

– Ikeda Takehide (PhD in physics and specializes in ecology and the study of animal behavior, Project Assistant Professor, Utsunomiya University)
– Ishikawa Yukako (urbanist, experience designer / Co-Director, for Cities / Director, Social Green Design / Director, watage)
– Ishibashi Tomoya (artist)
– Oron Catts (artist / co-founder and director of SymbioticA)
– Konno Keina (program, experience designer)
– Suzuki Haruo (Associate Professor, Faculty of Environment and Information Studies, Keio University)
– Suzuki Rumiko (National Institute of Genetics)
– Tsunoda Hajime (designer, engineer)
– Dorita (Takido Dorita) (artist, director, designer)
– Murakami Hisashi (Researcher)
– Yamabe Masaki (Data Visualization Artist, Specially Appointed Assistant Professor at Hitotsubashi University)

Program Director:

– Enomoto Teruya (scientist, researcher)
– Tsuda Kazutoshi (Researcher)

Outline

Dates: October 12 (Sat) – October 16 (Wed), 2024 11:00 am – 7:00 pm (subject to change)
Results Exhibition: October 17 (Thu) – October 20 (Sun), 2024
Briefing session for participants: August 31 (Sat), 2024 14:00 – 16:00
Venue: Civic Creative Base Tokyo [CCBT]

Program & Curriculum 

Day 0: Saturday, August 31, 2024
Intro: Camp vol. 4 Objective & Program Directors’ Welcome
Field research

Day 1: Saturday, October 12, 2024
Introduction
Participant self-introductions
Hands-on workshop (Lecturer: Suzuki Haruo)

Day 2: Sunday, October 13, 2024
Hands-on workshop (Lecturer: Yamabe Masaki)

Day 3: Monday, October 14, 2024
Hands-on workshop (Lecturer: Ikeda Takehide)

Day 4: Tuesday, October 15, 2024
Co-creating in groups
Interim presentations

Day 5: Wednesday, October 16, 2024
Co-creating in groups
Final presentations (Results Exhibition: October 17 (Thu) – October 20 (Sun), 2024)

Reference: Field research
Reference: Field research
Reference: Future Ideations Camp vol.1: Import *
Reference: Future Ideations Camp vol.1: Import *
Reference: Future Ideations Camp Vol.2 | setup(): Making New Rules with Blockchains
Reference: BioCamp: Gardens as ‘Biotechnik’

Applications

Application Period: July 23 (Tue) – August 13 (Tue) , 2024
Participant Numbers: Around 20

Participation Requirements:

 Be able to participate in the whole program during the session
 Have a proven track record of research or creative activities 
 Be able to apply the content of the workshop to their own future activities

Examples of Suitable Participants:
– Those who want to attempt new creative endeavors using digital technology and ecological observations and public data sets
– Those with an interest in the use of ecosystem information
– Artists and creatives who want to incorporate ecological data into their work in the future
– Those who want to take creative approaches to examining social and ethical dilemmas related to ecosystems
– Researchers and students interested in the use of ecosystem information and in collaborating with people from other fields


Selection Criteria:
In case of too many applications, selection will be made based on the application.


Result Notification:
The result will be notified through email on August 19th, 2024. (subject to change)

Application Process: 
Please apply via the application form. 
Alternatively, please send an email (ccbt@rekibun.or.jp) including the following items with “Future Ideations Camp Application” in the subject line.


– Full Name
– Email Address
– Date of Birth
– City ​​of Residence
– Occupation / Affiliation
– Areas of expertise
(Art & Contemporary Art, Design, Product Design, Project Development, Architect / Interior Design, Education, Public Administration, Biology, Chemistry, Humanities, Environmental Studies, Others)
– Reasons and expectations of your participation in this camp (200 words or less)
– Please indicate if you need any accessibility support. (Examples: Finger braille interpretation, Tactile sign language interpretation)
– State the link, if you have a portfolio, video materials, websites, or GitHub that introduces your initiatives.

黒い髪の男性が、壁に白い魚の絵を描いている。男性はメガネをかけていて、絵に集中している。背景には魚のシルエットがいくつか見える。

Ikeda Takehide

PhD in physics and specializes in ecology and the study of animal behavior, Project Assistant Professor, Utsunomiya University

Ikeda Takehide holds a PhD in physics and specializes in ecology and the study of animal behavior. Enamored with colorful creatures ever since his youth, he raises all kinds of animals. His visit to the Amazon on the pretext of researching tropical fish during his student days led to his involvement in biodiversity conservation projects in the region. He contributes to activities related to safeguarding indigenous culture in the Amazon and learning about the current state and cultural diversity of the people who have always lived there. Ikeda is interested in light and the coloration of living creatures, and is working to construct a virtual reality mode of zoology.

ショートヘアの女性が横を向いて立っている。女性は薄い緑色のジャケットを着ており、背景には大理石の壁と車が見える。

Ishikawa Yukako

urbanist, experience designer / Co-Director, for Cities / Director, Social Green Design / Director, watage

Aspiring to create hands-on ways to make full use of urban environments, Ishikawa Yukako develops small citizen-led initiatives in Tokyo, Cairo, Ho Chi Minh, and other cities. She is the co-director of for Cities, an urban experience design studio whose website functions as an online platform for urbanists around the world. She also runs Urbanist School, an educational project. Ishikawa launched watage, a community center in Kanda that runs urban design activities for young people. She is also the head of Dear Tree Project, a data platform for roadside trees.

https://linktr.ee/YukakoIshikawa

Ishibashi Tomoya

artist

Born in 1990, Ishibashi Tomoya studied biology at university. Applying the perspectives of contemporary science and technology, his practice homes in on the properties, structures, and history of things located between the natural and manmade, including goldfish, lacquer, and written characters. In 2015, he completed graduate studies in electrical engineering and bioscience at Waseda University. Since 2023, Ishibashi has been a doctoral student at the Institute of Advanced Media Arts and Sciences. His accolades include an Excellence Award in the Art Division of the 23rd Japan Media Arts Festival in 2021, the Wired Creative Hack Award Grand Prize in 2019, and the shortlist of the 25th Taro Okamoto Award for Contemporary Art in 2022.

https://www.shibashiishibashi.com/
青いシャツを着た男性が白い背景の前で微笑んで立っている。男性は短髪で、リラックスした表情をしている。

Enomoto Teruya

scientist, researcher

Enomoto Teruya is a scientist and researcher with a PhD in engineering. During his research in the life sciences and engineering fields, he became fascinated by life systems with holistic optimization and interested in designing social mechanisms in terms of the essence of living things, including natural ecosystems, life systems, and principles of behavior. As part of this, Enomoto makes connections across diverse disciplines and performs a dramaturge-like role. His activities include attempts to understand life from multiple perspectives through art projects, giving lectures at art universities to connect the fields of art and design with science, and participating in Open Bio, a citizen-led life sciences initiative. He is also involved in solving small problems in his community and advising a company about life sciences in order to connect the essence of life to social development.

背景に都市の風景が広がる中、笑顔でカメラに向かっている女性が写っています。彼女は黒いジャケットを着ており、風で髪が少し乱れている様子が見られます。背景には高層ビルや工事中の建物があり、都市の一角で撮影された写真であることがわかります。全体的に明るい雰囲気があり、女性の穏やかな笑顔が印象的です。

Elizabeth Hénaff

computational biologist, artist

Dr. Elizabeth Hénaff is a computational biologist with an art practice and has produced a body of work that ranges from scientific articles to artworks shown nationally and internationally. She leads the Laboratory for Living Interfaces where she investigates microbial metrics in urban environments with a focus on anthropogenic change, alongside students in design, engineering, and biology. Research directions include engineering of green wall infrastructure, remediation of Superfund sites, and the impact of street-level flooding on urban microbial diversity, and for this they build software, hardware and wetware. She holds an assistant professor position at the NYU Tandon school of Engineering’s Integrated Design and Media program, where she teaches courses in Biodesign.

Oron Catts

artist / co-founder and director of SymbioticA

Oron Catts is the co-founder and director of SymbioticA: The Centre of Excellence in Biological Arts, School of Human Sciences at the University of Western Australia. SymbioticA was awarded the inaugural Golden Nica for Hybrid Arts at Prix Ars Electronica in 2007, and the WA Premier’s Award in 2008. In 1996, he founded the Tissue Culture & Art Project with Ionat Zurr. As part of this project, they were the first to grow and eat cultured meat, and produced Victimless Leather in 2004, growing tissue into a leather without hurting animals. Catts was a Professor at Large in Contestable Design at the Royal College for the Arts, a visiting scholar at the Department of Art and Art History, Stanford University, and a visiting professor at the School of Art, Design and Architecture in Aalto University, Helsinki. Catts has curated thirteen exhibitions and published several books and more than a hundred book chapters and journal articles. His art projects have featured in venues such New York’s Museum of Modern Art, Centre Pompidou, Mori Art Museum, Science Gallery London and Dublin, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Ars Electronica, and National Art Museum of China.

若い女性がカメラに向かって微笑んでいる。彼女は黒いタートルネックを着ており、髪はすっきりとしたスタイルにまとめられている。背景はぼかされていて、温かみのある色調になっている。

Konno Keina

Program and experience designer

Konno Keina studied human-computer interaction at the Keio University Faculty of Environment and Information Studies. Alongside her studies, she formed the group Otome Dengeibu with her peers and held numerous workshops and events creating the various kinds of things they wanted to make. From April 2013 to September 2024, she worked at Yamaguchi Center for Arts and Media as a video and device engineer as well as overseeing program and experience design. She is involved in producing exhibits and planning public programs. Konno is interested in communication and how media serves as an interface for that.

短髪の男性が、室内で小さな箱を持っている。男性は黒いポロシャツを着ており、背景には天井のエアコンと照明が見える。箱には「Tokyo, Japan-4」と書かれたラベルが貼られている。

Suzuki Haruo

Associate Professor, Faculty of Environment and Information Studies, Keio University

Dr. Suzuki holds appointments in the Faculty of Environment and Information Studies and Institute for Advanced Biosciences at Keio University. His research focuses on microbial genomics and reproducible bioinformatics. He has been working on statistical analyses of synonymous codon usage to understand microbial lifestyles, predicting host ranges of drug resistance plasmids based on genomic signature, and comparative genomic analyses of bacteria with different metabolic capacity, host specificity and pathogenicity. The goal of his research is to characterise microbial diversity and its medical, agricultural and industrial applications.

Suzuki Rumiko

Project Associate Professor, Biological Networks Laboratory, National Institute of Genetics

Suzuki Rumiko is a specialist in population and evolutionary genetics. From 2010 to 2019, she conducted research at the Oita University Faculty of Medicine, estimating prehistoric human migrations as indicated by Helicobacter pylori, a bacterium that infects the human stomach. During this time, she also served as a hot springs master in Beppu. In 2019, she joined the National Institute of Genetics in Mishima, Shizuoka Prefecture, taking part in the Yaponesian Project, which comprehensively studies human populations, cultivated plants, livestock, languages, and the archaeology of the Japanese archipelago, and investigates regional variations from modern Japanese genomes. Suzuki currently continues her research on Helicobacter pylori alongside analysis of environmental DNA.

Tsuda Kazutoshi

Researcher

Born in 1981 in the village of Shinjo, Okayama Prefecture, Tsuda Kazutoshi’s research interests include issues about the environment, resources, and sustainability, which he explores across disciplines, centering on engineering and design. With a particular focus on the applications of digital fabrication, personal biotechnology, and circular design, he develops related workshops and projects in collaboration with various artists, designers, and researchers, endeavoring to share these widely with others in society. Currently, Tsuda is an instructor at Kyoto Institute of Technology’s Center for the Possible Futures and Chief Researcher in Bio-Research at Yamaguchi Center for Arts and Media.

ヘッドホンを着けた若い男性が、歪んだ効果がかかった写真で写っている。背景には本棚があり、男性のシャツには赤い文字がデザインされている。

Tsunoda Hajime

designer, engineer

Born in 2001, Tsunoda Hajime works in graphic and audiovisual design as well as software, exploring the liminal space between computational expression and graphic design. He is a member of the Electronic Music Society.

女性が大きな白いフクロウと一緒に写っている。女性は黒いコートを着て、微笑んでカメラを見ている。背景には緑の植物が見える。

Dorita (Takido Dorita)

artist, director, designer

Dorita’s practice aspires to build new relationships between humans and living creatures, and create experiences that combine different functions and sensations to deviate from conventional feelings. Her work The power of muscle with plants. explored the evolution of robotics, living creatures, and plants by fitting flora with artificial muscles. Her film The Sighs of Eels about a person swimming with a robotic eel at the leptocephalus larval stage is now screening at Tokyo International Cruise Terminal. She is currently completing a master’s degree at the University of Tokyo, searching for approaches between praxis and research. Dorita’s major awards include the Ars Electronica & STARTS Prize for Bug’s Beat, which enables humans to perceive the footsteps of an insect through sound and vibration, and a New Face Award in the Entertainment Division of the Japan Media Arts Festival.

https://dorita.jp/

Nakamura Keiko

doctor of science / Honorary Director, JT Biohistory Research Hall

Born in 1936 in Tokyo, Nakamura Keiko earned a degree in chemistry from the University of Tokyo, where she then completed a PhD in biochemistry. Her career includes stints as manager at the Mitsubishi Kasei Institute of Life Sciences, lecturer at Waseda University, visiting professor at the University of Tokyo, and a lecturer at a graduate school affiliated with Osaka University. Nakamura conceives biohistory with a vitalist view of the world rooted in the core fact that human beings are living creatures. In 1993, she founded JT Biohistory Research Hall, becoming its director in 2002, and is currently honorary director. Her many publications include A Scientist Is a Human Being (Iwanami Shinsho), Is Science OK Like This? (Chikuma Q Books), Nakamura Keiko Collected Writings (8 volumes, Fujiwara Shoten), and Where Did Humans Go Wrong? (Chuko Shinsho La Clef).

男性がカメラに向かってまっすぐに見つめている。彼はライトブルーの柄シャツを着ており、背景は白い壁になっている。髪は肩までの長さで、自然なスタイルにまとまっている。

Murakami Hisashi

Researcher

Murakami Hisashi earned his PhD in physics from Kobe University in 2015. After stints as a postdoctoral researcher at the Waseda University School of Science and Engineering, assistant professor at the Kanagawa University Faculty of Engineering, and at the University of Tokyo Research Center for Advanced Science and Technology, he took up his current post as a professor in human science at the Kyoto Institute of Technology Department of Information Science in 2021. Murakami does research on the Mictyris brevidactylus crab, Austruca perplexa fiddler crab, sweetfish, and human beings, conducting experiments and building computation models on herd behavior, exploratory behavior, and navigation.

短髪の男性がカメラに向かって微笑んでいる。男性は薄紫色のシャツを着ており、背景はぼかされたグレーの壁になっている。

Yamabe Masaki

Data Visualization Artist, Specially Appointed Assistant Professor at Hitotsubashi University

Dr. Masaki Yamabe is a data visualization artist and researcher. His background includes two decades of experience in information design and digital media design before obtaining a PhD from Keio University in 2023. His research investigates data visualization to communicate complex information to non-expert audiences effectively. He has collaborated on numerous data visualization projects, creating installations that extract narratives from large, intricate data sets. These works have been featured in various media, including TV programs by NHK, Japan’s public broadcaster, and exhibitions at the National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation in Japan.

Organizer
Tokyo Metropolitan Government, Civic Creative Base Tokyo [CCBT] (Arts Council Tokyo, Tokyo Metropolitan Foundation for History and Culture)