RCIC

Research Center for Industrial Culture

Kyo Akabane

Focusing on interaction design, Akabane researches creative work made with technology. He develops workshops that deal with media creation, and researches archival methods for those workshops. His main activities are “Pina” (Ag Ltd.), “ex-Workshop”（Agency for Cultural Affairs Project to Support the Nurturing of Media Art Creators) and “Spatiotemporal archive for interactive art that uses 3D scanning technology” (Grant-in-Aid for challenging Exploratory Research).

Masami Hirabayashi

Born in Nagano Prefecture in 1964, Masami Hirabayashi is the sponsor of the NxPC.Lab. His research fields are communication systems and real-world interface interaction. Beginning with web structural analysis and positional-information-based research/works, he has recently been working to develop systems to enhance musical experiences. Building on his experience at countless club events, he has been developing his research through practical application at club events under the name NxPC.Lab.

Shinjiro Maeda

Born in Osaka in 1969. Maeda presents his work, which spans the categories of video, media art and documentary, at film festivals and exhibitions like the Image Forum Festival, the Yebisu International Festival for Art and Alternative Visions, and the Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival. He actively plans exhibitions, collaborating with artists from theater, art and other fields. He has been supervising director of the DVD label SOL CHORD since 2005. His web movie project “BETWEEN YESTERDAY & TOMORROW” won the Excellence Award in the Art Division of the Japan Media Arts Festival 2012. Maeda also won the 20th Keizo Saji Award (Suntory Foundation for the Arts) for the performance in which he directed the live stream, “MUSICA CRAS GIFU 2020 Masahiro Miwa Festival -Purified Night-” which was performed without an audience.

Satoshi Fukushima

He was born in 1977. A Japanese composer. He received his M.F.A. in Media Expression from the Institute of Advanced Media Arts and Sciences (IAMAS). Since 2002, he has been creating compositions based on real-time computer processing and interactive relationships with performers.
He is also a member of the band Mimiz, which experiments with improvisation and original computer-based sessions. In 2008, he began to actively compose chamber music series with Junichi Hamaji at a pace of one song per month. Among them, "an object of metamorphose", an exchange-type collaborative composition, was started on New Year's Day in 2009 and is still in progress. Some of the major awards he's received are the 2014 Japan Media Arts Festival, Excellence Award in the Art Division and an Honorable mention in the 2017 Ryuichi Sakamoto Installation Music Contest. In the RCIC, he is mainly in charge of "cultural activities" and manages, plans and assists in hosting cultural events by IAMAS for society to make an impact.

Junko Takamori

She was born in 1984 in Hyogo Prefecture, Kobe, Japan. She has been researching through action research methods from a group dynamic perspective how to create a space for sharing personal experiences of disasters. Her recent works include “A 10 year memoir - writing, reading, editing one’s personal experience with earthquake disasters'' (Coauthor, Ikinobiru Books, 2022), “Post-earthquake disaster autoethnography ‘the Group for Continuous Documentation of the Great Hanshin Earthquake’”(Sole author, Akashi Bookshop, 2023). In 2014, She received the Lue Culture Prize (Press & Publishing Section). In the RCIC, She is in charge of collaborative research with industry, schools, and government, investigation and reporting of collaborations, and management of collaborative projects for graduates. These include the “IAMAS Graduate Interviews' ' report that interviews graduate students and the “IAMAS RCIC Annual Report”.

Shoko Ito

Born in 1983 in Gifu prefecture. Her specialty is informational design. For the RCIC she is in charge of the PR relations for IAMAS. She is involved in the university websites plan creation, progress, etc. She is also in the middle of working as a freelance design director relating to graphic design and the web. In her glory days she used being left-handed to her advantage and played the southpaw position in baseball.

Shota Shiozumi

Born in Fukuoka, 1998. Creates pieces and artworks that pivot around media art such as videos and musical compositions.
In the RCIC, he gives advice to students in the Innovation Workshop relating to their works and provides technological support.
As his main accolade, his work BMX Graffiti has earned the FY 2023 Project to Support Emerging Media Arts Creators Domestic Creators Presentation Program, amongst others.