“O[én] (Internet Version)” by Motoshi Chikamori, Tomo’o Shimomura

Title:

O[én] (Internet Version)

Artist(s) and People Involved:

Exhibiting Artist(s):

Motoshi Chikamori
Tomo’o Shimomura

Symposium:

ISEA2002: 11th International Symposium on Electronic Art

Medium:

Interactive internet art

Artist Statement:

The world is surely a ‘circle’. (In Japanese ‘en’.) The universe, as well as the structure of the molecule, consists of circles and spheres. So, one wonders, what is the world made of? And the answers are endless. Everything that one can imagine helps to form the world. Choosing two among them and setting them side by side, one can glimpse a certain aspect of the world.

In the net-space “O[én]”, there is the small circular world. Visitors who enter the internet site can at first create their own original ‘Shapes’ to make semicircles transform at the <‘Shape’ Creator>. When they send the ‘Shapes’ to the <O[én] world> based on IP address of the sender, every ‘Shapes’ make couples as ‘perfect circles’ with the other. Each couple has a peculiarity of behaviour and a sound according to the color and shape of the ‘circle’ and IP address of the visitors. It looks like a creature produced by two senses. When a new ‘Shape’ of a new visitor join in the , the couples are recombined.

At <0[én] Communicator>, the each two owners of the each couples which are combined according to certain rules can communicate with the partner. It is the secret small communication space only for the couple who knows the partner through the ‘Shape’, but never known even about its name, age and sex. However you have to take care, since sometimes the partner will be changed. We can always peep this small changing in every minute, and besides, we can also try to see every possibility in the combinations of couples at <‘Partner1 Simulator>. Every ‘Shapes’ which sent to the would be in the catalog on this internet site, and they are put together as if the scientists make genetic recombination. Visitors are thus able to find the ‘perfect circles’ for themselves by experimenting with different combinations inside the vast world of the Internet.

Plato believed that human beings were originally spherical in shape. But their power was too great as spheres, so the gods sliced them in two to create human beings as they are today. Hemispherical humanity has been in search of its other half ever since.