IDPW × Yasuhiro Tsuchiya: Part 1 "The 'Feel' Transmitted via the Internet Appeared at the Internet Black Market"

This edition of "One-Click Radius" features an interview by Yasuhiro Tsuchiya with members of IDPW ( http://idpw.org/ ), who operate under the theme "A Place Where Networks Descend" and call themselves "a secret society on the internet that has existed for 100 years." We delve into the mystery of IDPW, known for unique internet-themed activities like the controversial "I Don't Care Button" and the flea market "Internet Black Market." Since members Exonemo (Yae Akaiwa and Kensuke Senbo) reside in Fukuoka, Tomoya Watanabe in Yamaguchi, and Toshiya Hagiwara in Tokyo, we conducted the interview via Google Hangouts.

We started having parties about once a month, trying to connect the venue with the internet and do something

Tsuchiya: How did IDPW even start in the first place?

Akaishi: We (Exonemo) moved to Fukuoka in 2011. We thought it would be great to have a base for our activities, so we looked around and found this 100-square-meter warehouse-like space. We reached out to people living in Tokyo and other places, thinking, "What if we could do something connecting this physical space with the internet?" That's how IDPW started.

Tsuchiya: So the space came first?

Akaishi: Exactly. The building itself was called FUCA, which also had artist residencies and event spaces. We ended up using the second floor for IDPW. Even before that was finalized, I'd been talking with Hagiwara and Watanabe about "wanting to do something," so I reached out to them. We started by holding parties about once a month.

Tsuchiya: What are the roles of each IDPW member?

Chifu: Since it's not work, everyone gets involved based on their own interests. It's not like we have completely defined roles.

Tsuchiya: So Exonimo is still at the center?

Hagiwara: If you call it the center, then yes. While the focus shifts from time to time, I think Exonemo is still at the core of IDPW.

Chihiro: I guess I have a role as the one who started it, but it's pretty much just going with the flow.

Akaishi: How many people are in IDPW now, exactly? I don't really keep track.

Chibusa: About ten people, I think. The ones deeply involved are five or six. In terms of the roles of the members here today, Nabetan (Watanabe) is in charge of the knowledge repository. Plus, he's the Homepage Builder user and Web 1.0 specialist (laughs).

Tsuchiya: Homepage Builder! That brings back memories. The IDPW site ( http://idpw.org/ ) definitely has that Web 1.0 vibe (laughs).

Watanabe: I have Homepage Builder...

Chihiro: What version was it again?

Watanabe: 6.5. Homepage Builder's golden age was around versions 6 to 7.

Tsuchiya: (Looking at the IDPW homepage source) Ah, really! It actually has the Homepage Builder meta tags! (laughs).

Hagiwara: And then I've further arranged it to give it a modern web feel.

Tsuchiya: It's a hybrid feel I haven't seen much (laughs). If Watanabe-san is the drawer and Homepage Builder user, what about Hagiwara-san?

Akaishi: When it comes to Hagiwara-kun, it's gotta be the "Who cares! Button" (*1), right? When was that again?

Watanabe: Around September 2012. During one of IDPW's regular meetings, Hagiwara-kun said, "I made this 'Who Cares!' button—could we distribute it from IDPW?" Then everyone was like, "It'd be cool if we started releasing apps like this as IDPW going forward," so we created a section on the homepage called IDPW Porto ( http://idpw.org/porto/ ). So far, we've only released the "Who Cares! Button," though.

Hagiwara: Also, Chifusa-san was working on a blindfold app for Google Hangouts...

Chihiro: This is a simple app for Google Hangouts called MEKAKUSHI. I think I'll release that too.

Tsuchiya: Oh! It automatically blinds people! This is suspicious (laughs).

 

When you eat with your hands, the channel switches with a clang.

Tsuchiya: As part of IDPW's activities, we started holding parties about once a month. Looking at past party records on the site, the first one says "featuring hands." This seems to be a party where you eat with your hands. What led to this concept?

Akaishi: We figured if we didn't start the very first event with a bit of a goofy vibe, everyone would just get too serious. We wanted to show it's okay to go a little overboard like this (laughs).

Chihiro: As for eating with your hands, there was a period when it was popular at my house.

Akaishi: Exactly. We had a phase where we'd regularly eat regular Japanese meals—like set meals—deliberately with our hands.

Tsuchiya: Not curry or anything, but set meals—with our hands.

Akaishi: Exactly. Eating with your hands feels like a channel switch—it's incredibly refreshing. I wanted everyone to experience that. People kept asking, "Why hands?"...

Chihō: Hagiwara-kun, could you explain that part? (laughs)

Hagiwara: Until now, we accessed content on the internet through input devices like mice and keyboards. But in the smartphone era, we started touching the screen directly to interact with content, right? So I thought, isn't touching the side dishes—the content—directly the modern way to eat? (laughs).

When you actually eat with your hands, you get this feeling like you're doing something naughty, and the way you perceive heat is different too. It's not just about texture; there's tactility involved...

Tsuchiya: That makes a weird kind of sense (laugh). Physicality is important!

Akaishi: Exactly! We really need to train our hands!

"featuring hands" in action

 

Watanabe: The internet is fundamentally a visual medium, but it might expand into touch and taste in the future. In that sense, it's better to train now.

Tsuchiya: It's interesting how IDPW's internet-like activities start from such an extreme physical place—like "eating with your hands."

 

Are you dancing samba while using the internet, or using the internet while dancing samba?

Tsuchiya: And the second party... it says "Samba Class" here (laughs).

Hagiwara: This was incredibly fun!

Watanabe: Even looking at a hundred years of history, I think it was a pretty epoch-making event.

Chifu: Yeah. This really set the direction for IDPW.

Akaishi: Well, one of the IDPW members just suddenly said, "Samba!"

Chifu: Out of the blue, "I really want to dance samba!" (laughs). So we decided to do a samba class, but no one could dance samba and we didn't have an instructor, so we decided to look for one online during the event itself.

Earlier, at an IDPW opening party, we left a Google Hangout open, and random foreigners kept joining and starting chats. Plus, our party venue was noisy, so we ended up getting kicked out every 30 minutes. That experience was so funny, we decided to make it an event where we'd rely on people jumping into an open Google Hangout to find a samba teacher on the fly (laughs).

Tsuchiya: So the organizer got kicked out? (laughs) Did a samba teacher show up in the end?

Chihiro: No samba teacher showed up, but tons of samba-like people did (laugh).

Watanabe: Yeah, yeah! A foreigner who could play samba-like tunes on guitar barged in, and we ended up dancing to his guitar.

Tsuchiya: Since the IDPW side was the party venue, everyone was dancing and having a blast, but the foreigner connected via Hangouts was just in their room, right?

Chihiro: Exactly. The people on the other end of the connection were probably alone in their rooms (laugh).

Hagiwara: So the temperature difference was huge.

Chihō: At that moment, Nabetan said something like, "My chakras opened," right?

Watanabe: Yeah. I think this event achieved something special, like connecting dance and the internet in parallel. Actually experiencing that kind of behavior opened my awareness to, well, the physical state of being when you're on the internet, I guess.

Tsuchiya: If the connection drops midway, the music stops too, right? If there's lag, the rhythm gets thrown off, and the dance floor gets pulled along with it. That dependency on the connection status makes it unclear whether you're being danced by the internet or dancing while using the internet – that ambiguity seems interesting.

Watanabe: Exactly, it felt like the dance floor itself had become internet-ified. At the venue, we projected the Hangouts screen onto a large screen via projector, which also contributed to this sense of the internet and physical space being seamlessly connected. Fundamentally, the act of using the internet isn't something that's complete just by looking at a screen and listening intently to the sound coming from speakers. It's more of a holistic, multi-sensory experience. I feel like this event gave me a kind of conviction about that.

"Samba Class" promotional image

 

Chihiro: After that, there was a party called "Worldwide Beer Garden," where people in various locations connected online to drink beer together, aiming to create the world's largest beer garden. Then there was "K-RAW," a party held on Respect for the Aged Day where we used earplugs, weights, and goggles, filled the space with smoke, and intentionally blurred the projector images. The whole space was designed to let participants experience the physical sensations of an elderly person, as a way to honor the elderly. Then in November 2012, we held the "Internet Black Market."

 

Just walking around there, your entire field of vision looks like the internet.

Tsuchiya: What was the original concept behind the Internet Black Market, and how did it come about?

Chihiro: There was an art event called Trans Arts Tokyo. Gabin Ito (※2) had a space there and suggested, "Why don't you guys do an installation or something at IDPW?"

Akaishi: There's this community called "Dorkbots" ( http://www.dorkbot.org/ ) – people who do weird stuff with electronics – with chapters all over the world. I'd previously organized the Tokyo chapter, "Dorkbots Tokyo." We did a flea market as part of that event, and it was really lively and fun. That's where the idea came from – thinking an internet version would definitely be interesting too.

Chihiro: Earlier, an iPhone app we developed at Exonimo got rejected by the App Store review process. We talked about how, even if we couldn't sell it on the App Store, we could sell it by meeting people directly, plugging in a cable, and installing it. I think everyone feels that the internet has become less free and more restrictive lately. This project kind of solidified as a way to deal with that in a totally unexpected way. The concept itself is simple: "Let's buy and sell things related to the internet." So we just reached out to people who seemed like they'd do something interesting, and what actually came out of it was a surprise on the day.

Tsuchiya: Unfortunately, I couldn't make it to the first Internet Black Market, but I'd heard about it. Before the event, I had no idea what it would be like. But reading reports, I saw that all the vendors were offering "internet-like things" based on their own interpretations, and I thought that was really interesting.

Chihiro: Like how the "Internet Uncle" performer in a full-body suit became a hit with his "Real-Life Retweet" act, where he'd loudly repeat whatever people said around him (laughs). I was amazed at how everyone interpreted the context in their own way and brought items based on that.

Akaishi: I also noticed a generational difference in what people sold. Our older generation tends to think of selling applications or "tangible things," but the younger folks were selling conversations or handshakes – "intangible things." I found that contrast really interesting.

Scene from the Internet Black Market

 

Tsuchiya: Speaking of tangible and intangible things, the set Watanabe-san sold—a rock collected in Yamaguchi Prefecture paired with its scanned 3D data (※3)—really got people talking.

Watanabe: That's right. I vaguely thought rocks might sell, so I picked up stones from in front of houses that seemed least likely to be treasured, sold them as a set with their 3D data, and everything sold out within about 20 minutes of starting. Rocks might seem unrelated to the internet, but I actually sold them based on the logic that "they don't exist online, so I'll sell them with data."

Also, at the Internet Black Market, even without a smartphone or computer in hand, you felt like you were on the internet. What I mean is, the venue itself had become internetified. You used your own body as a real browser to browse the venue as a real internet. Basically, just walking around there made your entire field of vision feel like it was on the internet.

Akaishi: Exactly. That "feeling" of being online manifested right there at the Internet Black Market. Like, there was this guy doing impersonations on request. Watching him, even though he was just doing impressions, it felt like watching a super high-resolution YouTube video. It was just my mind going online (laughs).

Watanabe: Exactly, it's a real browser, literally.

Hagiwara: I felt that "high resolution" too. It's like, while looking at the goods and thinking "how is this related to the internet?", it reminds me of browsing or surfing the internet back in the day.

Tsuchiya: Nowadays, precisely because everything exists online, paradoxically, everything starts to look internet-like... Through IDPW's activities like the Internet Black Market, everyone unanimously says, "That's so internet-like." But what exactly is the essence of this "internet-ness"?

Watanabe: In a way, maybe that's why we sought it out and held the Internet Black Market in Berlin. Doing it overseas showed some similarities to Japan, and some differences. But the answer to "What is the internet?" still isn't clear.

( To be continued)

(※1) "I Don't Care! Button": A Google Chrome app that clicks all "Like!" buttons on facebook.com at once. Winner of the New Artist Award in the Entertainment Division at the 16th (2012) Japan Media Arts Festival.

(※2) Gabin Ito: Editor. After editing the magazine 'Login', he founded Bostok Inc. in 1993. His activities center around editing, writing, CG production, video production, TV program planning, and game software development. Professor in the Design Course, Department of Fine Arts, Joshibi University of Art and Design Junior College.

(※3) Set of scanned rock 3D data: Sold a set of rocks collected in Yamaguchi Prefecture and their 3D data at market price, selling out completely.

 

Exonimo(Akaishi Yae, Senbo Kensuke)
(IDPW Name: Sister Abalone, Last Fish)
An art unit that hacks into various media with anger, laughter, and text editors. Founded online in 1996 by Yae Akaiwa and Kensuke Chibusa. Since 2000, they have expanded their practice into installations, live performances, event production, and community organizing. Flexibly traversing digital and analog realms, the networked world and the physical world, they have undertaken numerous experimental projects characterized by humorous approaches and fresh perspectives. They are active in exhibitions and festivals both domestically and internationally. In 2006, The Road Movie won the Golden Nica in the Net Vision category at Ars Electronica. In 2010, ANTIBOT T-SHIRTS received the RGB Award at the Tokyo TDC Awards. In 2013, the iPhone app "Joiner" and two other works were acquired by the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography. Full member of IDPW.

Toshiya Hagiwara
(IDPW Name: Gray Sea Star)
Web designer. Founded Semi-Serif in 2012 after working at Semi-Transparent Design. Active primarily in web design and net art, while also working with the design and editing collective Cooktoo and as flapper3. CBCNET Editor. Received the New Artist Award in the Entertainment Division at the 16th Japan Media Arts Festival as a full member of IDPW.

Tomoya Watanabe
(IDPW Name: Tomorrow Shark)
Born in 1984. Using self-developed software based on media technologies like computers and television, he creates performances, installations, and video works. Major exhibitions include "Central East Tokyo" (2007–2009, Bakuro-Yokoyama area, Tokyo), "scopic measure #07" (2008, Yamaguchi Center for Arts and Media), and "redundant web" (2010, online). Since 2010, he has serialized the essay "Omoide Yokocho Information Science and Art Academy" with Akihiko Taniguchi on CBCNET. Major awards include the Excellence Prize at the 2nd Keikyu Kamata Debut Novel Literary Award and the Good Design Award.