Akihisa Iwaki
Art Style, Art & Culture International Magazine 12 1 41 - 73 2023年09月
[招待有り] Traditionally, art works have been created for human beings. In this milieu, an interdisciplinary project titled “Art × Science in Kyoto City Zoo: Sensing the Feelings of a Chimpanzee Through Art” (first period, 2018-2019; second period, 2019-2020; and third period, 2020-2022), is one of the challenging projects that presupposes a nonhuman audience. From the second period of this project, “Interactive Art and Environmental Enrichment”—two relatively new research fields in human history—collaboration began with a new twist to the project. Although the original project started with the question, “What do chimpanzees feel about human art?” it would be better to say that the main focus of the project changed to “What can human artists create for chimpanzees?” from the second period. It is estimated that the divergence between human and chimpanzee occurred more than 5 million years ago. If sensibility is the faculty of receptivity of external/internal stimuli, then how is sensibility different among species? According to Henri Bergson’s argument about intelligence and instinct in his work Creative Evolution (1907), can it be assumed that sensibility also diverged and evolved from a common ancestor? Do segments or linkages of perceptionaffection-action that are targeted by interactive art play a common role in human beings and chimpanzees? How about interaction based on sexual selection? From the perspective of environmental enrichment, can human artists’ creativity contribute in some way to enrich other species in the zoo? The research and interactive art exhibitions for chimpanzees at Kyoto City Zoo, organized collaboratively by artists (second period, Kazuki Hitoosa; third period, Ryoko Aoki + Zon Ito), scientists, and engineers, guided us through the various questions. The aim of this study is to take first step toward a more than human aestheticskanseigaku while learning from the project.