新しいメディアとしてのコンピュータスペース(1) (Computer space as a new medium (1))

Notes

From the 端山貢明アーカイブ (Hayama Kōmei Archive), item 9962 in the コンピュータアート category, registered 2022-10-04: https://d-commons.net/hayama/?c=&p=9962. Published by the 端山貢明アーカイブプロジェクト (Hayama Kōmei Archive Project), directed by 前川道博 (Michihiro Maekawa) of Nagano University, on the D-Commons platform, and licensed CC BY (表示). The source documents come from the 端山文庫, the papers kept in Hayama's laboratory at Tohoku University of Art and Design, digitised by the project with the agreement of his family; his autograph scores were given to the University History Archives of the Tokyo University of the Arts in 2026. Source: 端山貢明「新しいメディアとしてのコンピュータスペース――秋のコンピュータ・アート展を前にして――」『コンピュートピア』(Computopia) 1973年8月号, pp. 41–43. Scanned from a photocopy in the 端山文庫.. Dated: Published August 1973, ahead of the exhibition of 5–21 October 1973.. The archive publishes this item as 4 separate page scans rather than as a PDF; the download here was assembled from those scans in page order, each taken at the higher of the two resolutions the archive serves. The first of three articles Hayama wrote for Computopia ahead of the Computer Art Exhibition at the Sony Building, 5–21 October 1973. He recalls the magazine's Information Week issue of the previous October, with reportage illustrated by Isaka Katsuji, and notes that this year the show has MITI backing and is larger. He then argues that computer art has outgrown the narrow field it began in: it has stopped existing as a part of art and now appears as an application of computer space as a new medium, the computer having shifted from calculator and data processor to medium and system. Early computer art, he writes, was oriented to hardware or to theory — Markov chains, information theory — and produced masterpieces such as James Whitney's Lapis. What follows is a second phase. The first was hardware-bound and presented self-completed information in one direction; the second is interactive, admits the free participation of the receiver, and is realised not as objects but as a space with quality. This is the main theme of the coming exhibition: not an exhibition of solid works but "状態としての展示" (exhibition as a state), interacting live with every visitor, its sound, light, colour, image and other information varying in real time. He sets this against the record: Cybernetic Serendipity, London 1968, whose Japanese participants were Tsuchiya Haruki and Kōmura Masao of the Computer Technique Group, which he calls a monumental event closing the first phase; and this year's 73NCC in New York and CIRCUIT in Birmingham, against which he claims the Tokyo attempt may be the world's first of this spatial kind. The article closes on media as extensions of human ability — ship, train, car, aeroplane, telescope, telegraph — and on the computer as the thing that freed the presentation of information, music included, from the structure of time. He dates his own thinking about such spatial presentation to around 1964, made feasible since by the development of input and output devices. Contents as the document gives them: コンピューターアートの現代的意義 (the contemporary significance of computer art) · インターラクティブな空間 (interactive space). People named: 端山貢明 (Hayama Kōmei), 井坂克二 (Isaka Katsuji), ジェイムス・ホイトニー (James Whitney), 槌尾治紀 (printed thus; Tsuchiya Haruki of the Computer Technique Group), 幸村真佐男 (Kōmura Masao). Noted: The scan is of a photocopy and parts of the text are faint; the archive itself warns that the copy is hard to read. The CTG member is printed as 槌尾治紀; the name is almost certainly 槌屋治紀 (Tsuchiya Haruki), a misprint in the magazine rather than a misreading. The display named on the last page is given as "UNIVAC社のADAGE（リフレッシュタイプ）"; Adage was a separate manufacturer, so the attribution to Univac appears to be the author's error. The exhibition names 73NCC and CIRCUIT are transcribed as printed and have not been verified.