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Toshio Iwai Composition on the Table 1998/99 23 April - 20 June 1999 Toshio Iwai was born in Kira-town, Aichi Prefecture, Japan in 1962. He started to create experimental animations from 1981 as a visual artist after entering into the Art and Design Course, University of Tsukuba. While producing works in films and videos, he found a new possibility in pre-cinema toys such as flip-book and zoetrope, and then moved to construct works fully utilizing computers. Before graduation, he won a gold prize of High Technology Art Exhibition in 1985 for installation work "Time Stratum" series and a grand prize of 17th Contemporary Japanese Art Exhibition as a youngest winner. In 1987 he received MA degree in Plastic Art and Mixed Media from University of Tsukuba, and has been publishing various artwork that allowed people to participate in and attracted people's eye. Especially, as a representative of Japan, he submitted his artwork to a number of world exhibitions including Seville EXPO'92 in Spain, Antwerp EC Japan Fest '93 in Belgium, Biennale d'art contemporain de Lyon 95 in France, Mediascape Exhibition at the Guggenheim Museum SoHo in New York, and Sculpture Garden at G7 Summit, Lyon, France. While acting as a media artist, he has come to be known as a leading figure of CG system and character design for TV programs such as "EinsteinTV" and "UgoUgoLhuga". Also his activities have covered production of game software. In 1996 he released a CD-ROM software "SIMTUNES" for Windows in USA. He sometimes shifts the base of artistic activities in other countries; stayed as an artist-in-residence in the Exploratorium in San Francisco from 1991 to 92 and ZKM of Karlsruhe in Germany from 1994 to 95. For years, he has been paying great attention to the combination of images and music. As a remarkable result of it, a collaboration performance with Ryuichi Sakamoto was presented at Art Tower Mito in 1996. In 1997 it was awarded the Golden Nica for Interactive Art category at Ars Electronica Festival, Linz, Austria. Currently, Iwai is with Mixed Reality Systems Laboratory in Yokohama, Japan as an artist-in-residence where he is investigating with and creating artwork on mixed reality. Link: http://www.iamas.ac.jp/~iwai/ email: Axel Wirths, Kurator

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