“Media exprimo” is an interdisciplinary research project on information platform design for people's alternative media narratives.
Japan's information society has enjoyed an affluent diffusion of internet, mobile media, and other digital media from mid 1990s. Recently, many people use digital media to generate and exchange various and numerous narratives and visual expressions in the form of Blogs and Social Network Services. In contrast to numerous “private” communications and various “commercial” services, there has been little space for “public” communications via digital media in Japan. Japanese people's media narratives have been dominated by private and commercial communications.
The purpose of “media exprimo” is to develop a new technological and cultural platform system empowering people to engage in public communications in a historically regimented society of Japan. In this project, researchers in information design, interface and network engineering, knowledge support system, and socio-media studies will collaborate to apply a new methodology called “critical media practice.”
“Media Exprimo” is a contract research of CREST (Core Research for Evolutional Science and Technology), Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST) for five and half year from October 2006. This is one of the research teams of “Foundation of Technology Supporting the Creation of Digital Media Contents” set by JST in 2004. The formal title of “media exprimo” is “Platform Design for Emerging 'People's Art'.”