“Media Arts Cities of the Future” Collaborative Project — “SAPPORO 2122 feat. UCCN and TAPPY”

Announcing the results of the “Media Arts Cities of the Future” Collaborative Project

In 2022, the City of Sapporo ran “Creative Knock 2022”, a series of CG production workshops for beginners. A local enterprise then incorporated CG motifs designed by the participants into landscape frames of the future Sapporo, based on what they thought would still be in the city in 100 years. And so, the feature “SAPPORO 2122” was born.

Based on this workshop, the city of Sapporo conducted the collaborative “Media Arts Cities of the Future” project with the other UCCN media arts cities in celebration of its induction into the network ten years ago. The city of Sapporo asked each participating city to provide photos representing “What you want to leave for your city 100 years from now.” These photos were incorporated into the “SAPPORO 2122” to showcase how each city promotes itself in Sapporo 100 years from now.

Including Sapporo, 18 Media Arts Cities have participated in this project: Austin, Braga, Changsha, Enghien-les-Bains, Guadalajara, Gwangju, Hamar, Karlsruhe, Košice, Linz, Modena, Namur, Viborg, Santiago de Cali, Tbilisi, Toronto, and York.

The city of Sapporo created a behind-the-scenes video not only to explain the background behind the final product but also to include remarks from four media arts cities: Viborg, Guadalajara, York, and Braga. This process video as well as the final product premiered at the 2023 UCCN media arts cluster meeting held in Santiago de Cali and have been uploaded to the Sapporo Media Arts YouTube channel. It is currently being displayed on a large screen at the Chikaho Kita 2-jo space within the heart of Sapporo.

• “SAPPORO 2122 feat. UCCN and TAPPY” CG Video
• “Behind-the-Scenes: SAPPORO 2122 feat. UCCN and TAPPY” Video
• Sapporo Homepage Announcement Article

Additionally, the CG video was exhibited as a part of the 2024 rendition of the Sapporo Parallel Museum. The Sapporo Parallel Museum is part of a project to create a bustling new urban center and to promote Sapporo (UNESCO Creative City since Nov 2013) to the world as a hub of media arts. Faced with the COVID-19 pandemic, the initiative began in 2021, aiming to reaffirm the value of art by looking at the uncertain present from multiple perspectives. Accessible from anywhere in the world, it shows work not only onsite at physical locations around central Sapporo Ekimae Street, but also online, where the pieces are specially dedicated to the virtual space.

Our motivations…

International travel has faced various restrictions due to coronavirus, and while these are now being eased, the world is yet to fully recover. There is still an increased need for online media that can be easily accessed globally.

The UNESCO Constitution states that we should ensure our heritage is conserved for the future by initiating methods of international cooperation. We feel it would be really meaningful for us to deliver a message on cultural well-being by showing our efforts to leave behind a better future for the next generation. Hopefully, we, the Media Arts Cities, have provoked a positive ripple effect abroad.