Relay Column: Adventures in the Age of Information (Tenma Matsunaga)

On a hot summer day, I happened to pass by an art exhibition after work and decided to drop in. The National Art Center's "Keiichi Tanaami: Adventures in Memory" exhibition. Just a few days prior, I heard that the artist had passed away, which felt like a significant timing. The exhibition turned out to be fantastic, resonating with my often-overstimulated sensibility due to the excessive output of information. It was a world of artworks that Tanaami had continuously created throughout his life, sometimes embodying the Buddhist nirvana with a seated figure or depicting the psychedelic, hippie ideal world filled with flying goldfish. It felt like a journey, bringing a sense of drive and immersion, not just showcasing individual pieces, but constructing a grand, cohesive universe over a lifetime. Starting his career as a commercial designer, he states that the fundamentals of creation lie in "design" and "editing." The title of the exhibition, "Adventures in Memory," likely refers to the adventurous act of recording by copy-pasting and editing one's own memories. Tanaami collaged his memories and images across various media, not only painting but also graphics, sculpture, animation, and installation, to create a vast body of work.

In an era where fashion designers, graphic designers, photographers, videographers, painters, and even musicians create using computers, even amateurs can cut and paste subjects with a long press on their smartphones. Creation has become more consciously tied to "design" and "editing" than ever before. Nowadays, young people starting music often don’t pick up a guitar first but begin by using a computer, specifically DTM software, as their initiation into creation. Terms like DTMer (Desk Top Music) have awkwardly emerged, just as we have guitarist and keyboardist. DTM software typically features the same screen layout: tracks arranged vertically, with files for vocals, guitar, rhythm, and other instruments lined up accordingly. By the way, video editing software is also structured around tracks, where the higher the track, the more layered the visual. Although audio and visual tracks are distinguished in video software, it seems easy for creators who have started with one medium to grasp this screen structure. Furthermore, for still images—photos or paintings—there are no tracks, only layers, which are meticulously edited by stacking these layers like geological layers. This editorial perspective, previously understood only by a limited number of creators about a decade ago, is now a commonplace understanding for many who carry smartphones or tablets.

I feel that the next focus of contemporary creators, who have become arbitrary in their approach to "design" and "editing," is the "amount of information" within the work itself. We live in an age of information overload. Instead of cost-effectiveness, time-effectiveness is emphasized, and in a time when video and article creation prioritizes how long viewers continue to look at their screens rather than how to monetize, excessive amounts of information lead to chaotic reflections of text and colors, making it difficult to convey messages (just as cranking up the volume of all instruments in a mix results in mere noise). Therefore, unnecessary information must be stripped away, and the words, phrases, and icons we truly wish to convey should be placed in their appropriate locations. By refining the essential information and conveying it directly, might there be an underlying sense of "being stylish"? After years of creative work, I've come to feel this way. In an era where sounds and lights are swiped at TikTok speeds, what captures our attention often has an appropriate amount of information. Speaking, somewhat sidelong, about my expert field of music, the number of sounds (tracks) in songs that can be grasped at a glance has been steadily decreasing in the smartphone era, creating a sensation of refinement. The shock when Billie Eilish emerged a few years back was largely due to the simplicity of her music, which hardly emphasizes rhythm and progresses primarily with voice and bass, seemed to represent an appropriate amount of information for transmission through a smartphone's small speaker. K-POP has also been enjoying creating space in tracks recently, making the information quite fitting. However, the level of care given to each sound is undoubtedly extraordinary.

As I write this, I find myself questioning whether the appropriate amount of information in all art pieces is indeed an indicator of their quality. By no means is this the case. The band I am part of, Urbangarde, has celebrated its 17th anniversary, packing in excessive homage and information since its debut, layering sounds and words to the brink of explosion. As I have built a career as a professional musician, I have begun to understand the nuances of appropriate information, but I still find myself wanting to sometimes trust the intensity that comes from pushing the limits. The state of ecstatic over-compression of information, just before it blows a fuse, can perhaps be best described with the somewhat unconventional word "emo." Yet, by packaging it with the three letters of "emo," many emotions might be overlooked. Furthermore, the coarse black and white noises filled with words (information) can at times create value equal to that of simple black or white bodies—this results in branding. From a distance, they might appear nearly identical. What we may witness is simplicity derived from complexity. Just as tattered and rich punk fashion can underlie a simple ideology, perhaps that too can become "stylish" and fashionable.

Humans are also an aggregate of information, and life can also be quantified. Recently, AI has made it possible to reproduce this efficiently in terms of cost and time, but are works balanced out by AI "well-made" yet "interesting"? Perhaps interest is born from the chaotic reflection of information, intensity generated from misconceptions and excessive self-awareness. Just as the life experiences of a songwriter contribute to those lines written in an hour, can AI fully leverage the archive of knowledge built up by humanity for creative output? Ultimately, if the people instructing the AI lack some form of intensity themselves, I feel it may not aid in the act of creation. Just like pens and scissors, we have computers, the internet, and AI. The fundamental principle required to actively utilize these tools without being dominated by them, or philosophy, can be articulated as "being stylish" or "raising a middle finger to being stylish (which ultimately equates to the former)." To put it more simply, it can be framed as follows: "Be chic."