As face-to-face classes increased during the first half of this academic year, the “University of Tokyo iii Exhibition Extra 2022/Emulsion” was also held on-site for the first time in three years from July 1st to July 4th. On the afternoon of June 30th, a day before the opening of the exhibition, a group of students were seen adjusting their works to be exhibited at the Open Studio in the main building of the Interfaculty Initiative in Information Studies, while students in charge of setting up the venue were cutting a rug on the floor as part of the decoration. It was refreshing to see students busily preparing for the event.

The students participating in the iii Exhibition from both GSII and beyond are responsible not only for creating the artworks, but also for all other tasks to actualize and run the event, including building the website, designing and setting up the venue, accounting and public relations.

During the past two years, the annual exhibition, which is part of a class and takes place twice a year, has been held on the Internet, providing students an opportunity to challenge themselves to realize the event and create artworks in an online environment. This time around, however, bringing the exhibition back on site had its own challenges, including taking measures against infection. According to Toki Sugino, a first-year student in the Graduate School of Engineering and one of the producers of iii Exhibition Extra 2022, and Norika Nakazawa, a first-year master’s course student at GSII in charge of public relations of the exhibition, because the artworks were to be exhibited in a physical space, most students decided to create artworks that are interactive with the audience. At the same time, they said, there were issues that were also unique to on-site events, such as where and how to place the works and giving consideration to the lighting. Having read the archived reports of exhibitions held before the pandemic, the student producers kept an eye on the overall progress, while the participating students shared ideas and exchanged opinions via Slack and other means. They also met weekly in class to shape their works while receiving feedback from the supervising professors.

On the first day of the exhibition, as their works were seen by the audience for the first time, some of the participating students said they were pleasantly surprised to notice how the audience viewed and interacted with their works in ways they had not expected. Such experience at the iii Exhibition Extra will be applied in the main iii Exhibition scheduled for November, which is the final goal of this exhibition program.

Text: Setsuko Kamiya (Project assistant professor)
English proofreading: David Buist (Project senior specialist)