This week the Yalies went out and did something cultural- hurrah! After our morning class on Wednesday, we headed to Shinjuku to eat at 新便横丁 (Shomben Yokocho), also known as "Piss Alley" because of the lack of bathrooms (I definitely saw one when we walked through the alley, but it looked quite new). Though the name is a definite turn-off, it's a tourist place worth hitting up at least once if only to check out its historical sketchiness... it's a frequent haunt of drunk salarymen and one of the few parts of Tokyo that still has that authentic, off-the-beaten-track(ish) dingy feel. We went during the day so missed out on a lot of the nighttime character, but I didn't mind getting a chance to eat some 焼き鳥.
After that, we went walked west of the station to get to NTT's InterCommunication Center. It's a multimedia museum housed in the Tokyo Opera City Tower. We went to see an exhibit called "Light InSight" that I had heard about in Metropolis. Some of the pieces included:
-a candle inside an old-fashioned tv
-a strobe light that would emit light in such a way that you would see the word 'light' when you blinked
-drawings made up of the artist's eye movements
Rad, no?
While I attributed my original inclination to going because I like shiny objects (who doesn't?), I have to admit I was also partially drawn in by a picture of one of the installations from the exhibit.
It's a piece by Mischa Kuball called space-speech-speed. If you look closely, the mirror balls give off a light pattern that is not unlike the electron cloud of a 2p orbital that I became painfully familiar with through orgo.
photo by Keizo Kioku from Metropolis
I really enjoyed the exhibit and walking around the ICCenter itself, probably because it's more like an interactive science museum than some abstract, avant garde space for video installations. On it's homepage, the Center says it "aims to become a network that links artists and scientists worldwide." Indeed.
