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August 31, 2005
Dumb Type & Nibroll
Japanese art collective, Nibroll
Last night I skimmed through two dvd's I purchased in Tokyo. The first, Memorandum, is the third video release from the Kyoto-based performance art group, Dumb Type. Dumb Type, to be perfectly forthright, has changed my life. It was during my time at the MIT Media Lab observing intersections among art and technology that I realized there lacked a presence, personality, and physicality in the digital. I moved from programming screens toward the other extreme in performance. I decided to experiment with my body and do things live. I dropped graphic design from a double major to focus on interrelated media. If anything, the switch was a relief to a developing carpel tunnel. I would soon integrate performance and installation books on Tatsumi Hijikata, Marina Abromovic, and Dumb Type with the writings of John Maeda and Bruce Mau. I would also begin attending experimental sound performances in Boston. My ear has since been spoiled to the joyful subtleties of sine wave generated tones.
Dumb Type and Nibroll are artist collectives. The works of each group is the result of a collaboration between a wide range of creatives from set designers, choreographers, fashion designers, video and media artists, sound artists to architects, writers and painters. As a result, the work is difficult to categorize. Dumb Type emerged in the eighties and Nibroll during the last several years. Each group has been flexible and decentralized. Ryoji Ikeda and Alfred Birmbaum of Dumb Type continue their individual careers as sound artist and writer, respectively. Off-Nibroll is a Nibroll spinoff collaboration between Nibroll's choreographer Yanaihara Mikuni, imagery specialist Takahashi Keisuke and Australian choreographer Jo Lloyd. Nibroll produces media and also has a fashion line and store.
Dumb Type allowed me to break from what I was doing while integrating what I had learned (typography, composition, framing) into what I wanted to do. They continue to inspire me. The influence of Dumb Type is also clear in Nibroll, yet Nibroll has extended into so many different areas of creative production with an agility and quick turn-around that Dumb Type has not been able to realize. Both demonstrate what art can be if the right personalities get together and work for something. They take the experimental spirit of Warhol's New York factory of the sixties without inflated ego (that would be juggernaut Takashi Murakami's Tokyo art production factory of this decade).
For further reading
• Dumb Type
• Nibroll
• Off Nibroll
• Studio for Interrelated Media
• AttackTheatre
Posted by rst at August 31, 2005 05:52 PM
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