All projects by Seiko Mikami involve human perception. Perception is highly significant, yet also a very complex and wide subject area. Moreover, we still don't understand our body and its functions very well. In order to approach these issues, Mikami decided to disassemble the individual senses: seeing, hearing, the sense of touch, gravity, etc., advancing each sense separately through different interfaces. The point of each project is to create an 'interface' set to one sense of perception by elaborating a particular sensory mechanism. Mikami's entire project is motivated by the conviction that something like what we call 'interface' in the context of computer technology, already exists within us. Mikami's projects make the audience experience their own state of perceptions. The interfaces designed for her projects function as extensions of what we already have--a network that mediates our subjectivity, that synthesizes what we perceive and the world that is perceived. Mikami explores the 'in-between' or 'inter-medium' of the information interchange, through perception, between the body and the surrounding space. She audifies and visualises what is not conventionally the object of those sense. Thus her key proposition is: "the eye is not merely a thing that sees and the ear is not merely a thing that hears; it is possible for the ear to see, for the nose to hear, and for the eye to touch."
Seiko Mikami (JP) is an artist who teaches Information Art at Tama Art University, Tokyo. Most of her works are interactive media art installations incorporating human perception, including the eye tracking project "Molecular Informatics" at Canon ARTLAB (Tokyo 1996), about the acoustic sense and the living body sound at NTT InterCommunication Center's permanent collection (Tokyo 1997), "Gravicells" on the theme of gravity called the 6th consciousness in Yamaguchi Center for Arts and Media (Japan 2004). She has participated in festivals and exhibitions all over the world, incl. DEAF, Ars Electronica, and transmediale (2002, 2005). Her latest work was recently presented at TESLA during transmediale.07. Seiko was the artist in residence at TESLA from December till February 2007.
