The First International Conference on Culture and Computing
(Culture and Computing 2010): Special Event Feb.23

Special Event: Panel "Cultural Computing with Meister, and Shinto Priest in Kyoto" (simultaneous interpretation)

Organized by

IFIP TC14 Entertainment Computing
Society for Art and Science

Content

Now we are connected throughout the world by the Internet. Together with this, however, there is a danger that cultures that have been closely connected to each individual race and local culture are flattened. It has been said by philosophers that we cannot get rid of our own culture. Keeping this in mind We should consider what culture mean in Internet era.

Here we want to propose a new methodology to clarify the meaning of culture using technologies and also promote the progress of technologies using culture. We are in the era in which the role of computers are not only to carry out data processing but also to support human memory, thinking, and even emotion. By utilizing computers it would be possible for us to create media art and cultural media by which computers can interactively support these human activities. By extracting models and basic characteristics behind each culture and applying them to communications, we could develop new communication methods that globally connects people filling the gap of cultural differences. We call this new methodology as Cultural Computing.

Especially we are interested in Cultural Computing treating Japanese culture as a specific example. For example we are going treat the following topics that have not been considered as targets of computing. Easy changing weather, season and nature in Japan. Also feeling of impermanence and specific sensitivity toward beauty reflecting Japanese nature relationship between Japanese culture and Asian culture structure of culture based on the mixture of Buddhism and Shintoism specific culture such as Waka, Haiku and Noh utilizing Japanese language specific design of Japanese culture that appear as Mon, Ori, Noh, Kabuki, etc.

We invite several famous Japanese craftmen and Shinto priest. Based on the discussion among them, media artists, and engineers/scientists, we would focus what kind of Cultural Computing we could achieve.

nishijin_tudureori