At the Sanja Matsuri festival last weekend in Asakusa, the residents of that old Tokyo town were re-enacting community-building rituals that they have enjoyed since the Edo Period (1603-1867). Meanwhile, across town in Nakaochiai, two artists who met in San Francisco, Crust and Dirt, were creating their own new ways of bringing people together with the exhibition "Inter-dimensional Trading Table" at the Nakaochiai Gallery.
One week before, Crust and Dirt — Oliver Halsman Rosenberg of New York and Clint Taniguchi from Hawaii, who now resides in Tokyo — had made an appearance at the Apple Store in Shibuya with their Instant Drawing Machine. The IDM, which they have deployed before, uses a simple concept to unite strangers across the world. With Rosenberg and Taniguchi manning a laptop in one city, a partner in crime sets up a terminal in a public space in another city, with the simple instructions attached for any viewer to enter a dream they have had. After entering the dream, across the globe, the two artists illustrate the dream as the viewer watches at a distance. Taniguchi says that while the idea is easy to grasp, once someone starts to participate in the setup, their excitement at what is unfolding becomes contagious.
IDM is a powerful way of making the technology now available truly magical. Rather than just representing backend hardware or the soft and fuzzy claims of marketing departments about "connecting" to the world, IDM injects the fantastical with its appeal to having your subconscious made manifest by a distant stranger. Enter a request shaped on the quirks of your character in Sydney, get an artistic, electronic reply from Tokyo, San Fran or elsewhere.