What Is Media Art? From Nam June Paik to Ryoji Ikeda and teamLab: Its History and Where to See It

Media art is a term used for art that takes technologies such as television, video, computers and sensors as its materials of expression. At NTT InterCommunication Center (ICC) in Nishi-Shinjuku, Tokyo, a long-term exhibition ran until Sunday, November 8. At the Yamaguchi Center for Arts and Media (YCAM), a new exhibition made with Otomo Yoshihide continues until Monday, March 1, 2027. This article traces the field’s development, from Nam June Paik’s video art through centers in Japan and abroad to Ryoji Ikeda and teamLab, and sets out where works can be seen in Japan.

2026 marks 20 years since the death of Paik (1932–2006). In Tokyo, the Watari Museum of Contemporary Art (Watari-um) is holding “Nam June Paik: Jugemu — 20 Years After His Death.” In September, Ryoji Ikeda received the Nam June Paik Award, presented by the Nam June Paik Art Center in South Korea.

From Saturday, October 31, the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa, in Ishikawa Prefecture, holds a special exhibition asking how works, including media art and installations, can be passed on to the future. The museum notes that passing on works involves uncertainties such as the aging of materials and the obsolescence of equipment. Art born together with technology is now also being asked how it can “remain.”

What is media art? Video, computers and interactivity

The leading centers in this field each describe their activities in their own words. ICC, which opened in 1997, says it has introduced “media art” works using cutting-edge technologies such as virtual reality and interactive technology. YCAM, opened in 2003, says it centers on exploring new forms of expression using media technology, while also examining the relationship between media technology and society.

The forms are wide-ranging. This article focuses mainly on video art, works that create images and sound with computers, works that change in response to the movement or participation of viewers, and installations that create spaces with images and sound. The Austrian international competition “Prix Ars Electronica” began in 1987. Its first call for entries covered three categories: computer animation, computer music and computer graphics.

“Media arts” as used in Japanese government policy is an even broader framework. The Japan Media Arts Festival honored works in four divisions: art, entertainment, animation and manga. According to the Agency for Cultural Affairs’ history, the Basic Act on the Promotion of Culture and the Arts, enacted in 2001, included the promotion of media arts.

Nam June Paik and the beginnings of video art

Tate Modern in the UK held a Paik retrospective in 2019–2020. According to the museum, he was also the person who coined the phrase “electronic superhighway,” and he lived and worked in Japan, Germany and the United States.

An announcement issued in August 2026 by The Chain Museum in connection with the Watari-um exhibition describes his career in more detail. Paik was born in Seoul on July 20, 1932, and studied aesthetics in Japan and music in Germany. He joined the Fluxus movement in 1961 and began incorporating television and video into art in 1963. The announcement positions this as the founding of “media art.”

His ties to Japan were also deep. In 1978 he held the solo exhibition “Tribute to John Cage” at Galerie Watari, the predecessor of the Watari-um, and went on to hold more exhibitions at the gallery. In 1993 he won the Golden Lion at the 45th Venice Biennale, representing the German Pavilion, and in the same year held a solo exhibition of new work, “Paik’s Theory of the Earth,” at the Watari-um. He died at his home in Miami on January 29, 2006 (same announcement).

Tate’s retrospective, organized jointly with the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, presented more than 200 works from some 50 years of activity, ranging from robots made from old television screens to the room-filling installation “Sistine Chapel” (1993). It also covered his collaborations with cellist Charlotte Moorman and his exchanges with John Cage, Merce Cunningham, Joseph Beuys and others.

The Nam June Paik Art Center is located in Yongin, Gyeonggi Province, South Korea. Its Nam June Paik Award is a 2024 reorganization and renaming of the “Nam June Paik Art Center Prize,” awarded from 2009 to 2021. A winner is chosen every two years and holds a solo exhibition the following year (the center’s announcement on e-flux).

Ars Electronica and international awards, up to Ryoji Ikeda’s prize

Ars Electronica in Linz, Austria, is an institution that has dealt with digital change and its impact on society since 1979. According to its history, it was conceived by Hannes Leopoldseder, then director of the public broadcaster in Upper Austria, who persuaded Linz Mayor Franz Hillinger to bring the city on board as co-organizer. The first festival was held in 1979.

In 1987 the international competition “Prix Ars Electronica” began, drawing 715 entries from 15 countries in its first year. In 1996 the exhibition facility Ars Electronica Center opened, and the “Futurelab,” where teams of artists and scientists research the future, was also born. The center expanded and reopened in 2009, when Linz was a European Capital of Culture.

The organizers describe the Prix Ars Electronica as the longest-running media art competition in the world. Prize money is up to €10,000 per category. The 2026 results are covered in our roundup of major awards in art, design and spatial production. Among international awards for art and technology, the Lumen Prize is also scheduled to announce its winners in November 2026.

One Japanese artist to have received this prize is Ryoji Ikeda. According to the biography on his official website, he was born in Gifu in 1966 and is based in Paris and Kyoto. As an electronic music composer and visual artist, he approaches the essential characteristics of sound itself and of the visual as light with mathematical precision and aesthetics. In 2014 he received the “Prix Ars Electronica Collide@CERN.”

His main series include “datamatics” (2006–), “test pattern” (2008–) and “superposition” (2012–). In 2009 he held the solo exhibition “+/- [the infinite between 0 and 1]” at the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo, and in 2018 he presented “continuum” at the Centre Pompidou in Paris (same source).

In September 2026 he received the 9th Nam June Paik Prize. Juror Sabine Himmelsbach said that by integrating sound, data, mathematics, computation and immersive installations, he had fundamentally reshaped the aesthetic language of media art, and that he had extended Paik’s experimental legacy into the age of data and algorithms. The prize is 50 million won, and he is scheduled to hold a solo exhibition at the center in 2027 (our article on Ryoji Ikeda winning the Nam June Paik Award).

Developments in Japan: From Video Hiroba to ICC, YCAM and teamLab

Video art in Japan also spread as artists themselves created places to present and screen work. According to the record of the 12th Japan Media Arts Festival Special Achievement Award, Fujiko Nakaya formed “Video Hiroba” with Katsuhiro Yamaguchi and others in 1972, exploring the possibilities of media ecology through video. In 1966 she had also become a member of the art and technology group “Experiments in Art and Technology (E.A.T.).”

In 1980 Nakaya opened the video gallery SCAN in Harajuku, promoting screenings of video works, the development of young artists and international exchange. In 1987, 1989 and 1992 she organized the International Video Television Festival at Spiral in Aoyama. The award citation notes that SCAN introduced works from Japan and abroad as “the only gallery in Japan specializing in video art,” and from 1981 also organized open-call exhibitions; many video artists, it says, got their start there.

Works from this era can still be seen in museums. Until Sunday, November 29, the Takamatsu Art Museum is holding an exhibition that traces the history and development of contemporary art in Japan around the keyword “moving,” centered on its collection. The exhibits include Katsuhiro Yamaguchi’s “Kiss” (1968, museum collection).

The Tokyo Photographic Art Museum acquired works by experimental film and video artist Mako Idemitsu (born 1940) in fiscal 2016 and 2017, and held her first large-scale retrospective from June to September 2026 (Tokyo Metropolitan Foundation for History and Culture announcement).

Centers for research and production also emerged. ICC was conceived as a project commemorating the 100th anniversary of telephone service in Japan (1990) and, after preliminary activities from 1991, opened on April 19, 1997, in Tokyo Opera City Tower. Operated by NTT East, it aims to encourage dialogue between science and technology and arts and culture under the theme of “communication.” It also has the video archive “HIVE,” where visitors can view video art works in its collection, interviews with artists and scientists, and records of past exhibitions.

On November 1, 2003, YCAM opened in Yamaguchi City. In addition to exhibition spaces, it houses a cinema, a library and workshop spaces. Its research and development arm, “YCAM InterLab,” consists of about 20 resident staff, including curators, educators, engineers and designers. It handles everything from research and experiments to artwork production and the development of software and hardware, and many of the works it has produced tour cultural facilities and festivals in Japan and abroad.

As a national program, the Japan Media Arts Festival was held from fiscal 1997 to its 25th edition in fiscal 2022. The 24th edition in fiscal 2021 received 3,693 entries (1,715 of them from overseas). The Agency for Cultural Affairs says the festival ended in fiscal 2022 and that, building on 25 years of achievements, it will pursue human resource development and archiving and prepare for a new international festival.

In 2001 the art collective teamLab began its activities. It describes itself as an international interdisciplinary collective exploring the intersection of art, science, technology and the natural world, made up of artists, programmers, engineers, CG animators, mathematicians, architects and others. Its venues in Japan are compiled in our guide to teamLab venues. Overseas, in June 2026, DATALAND, a “museum of AI arts” co-founded by Refik Anadol and others, opened in Los Angeles.

Editor’s perspective

Media art lives side by side with the problem of the equipment that supports the works growing obsolete. In its last special exhibition before closing for renovation, the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa, presents the processes of research, restoration, equipment replacement, re-staging and documentation as part of the exhibition. ICC’s public video archive and the Agency for Cultural Affairs’ commitment to archiving after the end of the Media Arts Festival also show the weight of the work of documenting and preserving.

ICC’s long-term exhibition “ICC Annual 2026: To Leave / To Remain / To Receive” starts from the present, in which technologies such as generative AI produce and circulate information at unprecedented speed and scale. It asks whether the very framework of what is recorded and how it is shared may be changing. In the same year as an exhibition looking back on Paik 20 years after his death, there are exhibitions questioning the nature of records. It is an opportunity to consider the relationship between technology and expression on a timescale of more than half a century.

Main venues where media art can be seen in Japan

Here are the main venues where visitors can encounter media art through permanent displays or long-term exhibitions. Opening hours and prices are listed only where they could be confirmed in official announcements as of October 21, 2026.

NTT InterCommunication Center (ICC) (Nishi-Shinjuku, Tokyo)

Since fiscal 2022, ICC has held the long-term exhibition “ICC Annual,” which takes up diverse expressions of today’s media environment, including media art works. It carries on the concept of the “Open Space” exhibition, held from fiscal 2006 to fiscal 2021. The 2026 participants are eight artists and groups: Wu Chi-Yu, Young Eun Kim, Ryo Kobayashi, SUGAI KEN, suzueri + Satoshi Higa, Rei Hayama, Rosa Menkman and Yasuhiro Morinaga.

Now showing: ICC Annual 2026: To Leave / To Remain / To Receive (Saturday, June 20 – Sunday, November 8, 2026, Gallery B)
Hours: 11:00–18:00 (last entry 30 minutes before closing)
Closed: Mondays (the following day if Monday is a national or substitute holiday)
Admission: General ¥800, university students ¥600 (¥700 and ¥500 for groups of 15 or more). Experiencing the anechoic room work costs ¥200. Free for those aged 65 and over, high school students and younger, holders of a disability certificate plus one companion, and Grutto Pass holders
Address: 4F Tokyo Opera City Tower, 3-20-2 Nishi-Shinjuku, Shinjuku City, Tokyo
Access: 2-minute walk from the east exit of Hatsudai Station on the Keio New Line
Official website: https://www.ntticc.or.jp/ja/

Yamaguchi Center for Arts and Media (YCAM) (Yamaguchi City)

An art center in a building designed by Arata Isozaki, with exhibition spaces, a cinema and a library. It is currently holding an exhibition of new works created by musician Otomo Yoshihide, YCAM and five artists on the theme of “improvisation.” The exhibition is open 10:00–19:00, and some works, such as an outdoor sound installation, can be seen free of charge (our article on the new Otomo Yoshihide × YCAM exhibition).

Hours: 10:00–20:00 (until 22:00 during events)
Closed: Tuesdays (the following day if Tuesday is a holiday), the New Year holidays and temporary closures
Admission: Free. The new Otomo Yoshihide × YCAM exhibition (until Monday, March 1, 2027) costs ¥1,000 for general visitors, ¥500 for Yamaguchi residents and those 29 and under, and is free for “any” members and those 18 and under
Address: 7-7 Nakazonocho, Yamaguchi City, Yamaguchi Prefecture
Official website: https://www.ycam.jp/

In addition, the Watari-um’s “Nam June Paik: Jugemu — 20 Years After His Death” is listed among the participating venues of Art Week Tokyo, from Wednesday, November 4 to Sunday, November 8. At the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa, the special exhibition “From Today to Tomorrow: Passing On Artworks” runs until Sunday, April 18, 2027, presenting works by Yuko Mohri, Rhizomatiks and others along with the processes of conserving and restoring them. Yuko Mohri’s solo exhibition can be seen at the Yokohama Museum of Art in “Yuko Mohri: Recompose” until November 23.

*Information as of October 21, 2026. Please check the official websites for the latest information.

Frequently asked questions

Do media art and “media arts” mean the same thing?

No. The Japan Media Arts Festival honored works in four divisions: art, entertainment, animation and manga. “Media arts” is a framework that also includes animation and manga. ICC, on the other hand, introduces works using technologies such as virtual reality and interactive technology as “media art.”

Is the Japan Media Arts Festival no longer held?

The Agency for Cultural Affairs says it ended in fiscal 2022 (Reiwa 4). Going forward, it will pursue human resource development and archiving and prepare for a new international festival. Past award-winning works are available in the archive on the agency’s website.

Are there venues that can be visited for free?

YCAM is free to enter, and some works in the new exhibition with Otomo Yoshihide, such as the outdoor sound installation, are free. ICC’s “ICC Annual 2026” is paid, but free for high school students and younger and those aged 65 and over. The kids’ program that ICC held during the 2026 summer holidays was also free.

*Top image: Nam June Paik, “New Candle,” 1993 (candles, candlesticks, one camera, four video projectors) (from The Chain Museum’s press release)

*This article was compiled by the TOKYO ART SPHERE editorial team based on official announcements and public materials from each institution and organizer (as of October 21, 2026).

Text: TOKYO ART SPHERE Editorial Team