Artists: Norimichi Hirakawa, Tomoya Watanabe
Curator: Yukiko Shikata

Container, a closed module to ship "something" by containing in it, is the product of the modern transportation system: something to be scheduled and something to head to the destination at each scheduledtime. Both transportation system and container are the product of standardization and based on the mission of "noise-proof". But in the Container Culture the container is separated from its original context. Placed on the ground, unable to move, it is in suspended or "drift condition" and meaning and hence open to visitors for participation.

DriftScape was conceived by thinking of this drifting aspect of the container through the poetic, dynamic intervention of two works by emerging Japanese artists, Norimichi Hirakawa and Tomoya Watanabe. Each work processes the enormous amount of information available in daily life, in particular broadcast TV and the Internet, and modifies them in real time into abstract, dynamic environments.

Watanabe uses the analog broadcast from local TV stations in IAMTVTUNERINTERFACE, while with DriftNet Hirakawa uses "informatioin flotsam" from the World Wide Web by surfing their links with an information agent. By using different media dominant in different decades, together the works make visitors physically drift in the vast sea of information as a trajectory of a changing technological environment. Visitors can move around freely in the works, but they soon realize that they too are drifting and are ultimately driven by the dynamic flows of information.