12 years ago, the world was on the brink of change.

It was the birth of the World Wide Web. On August 22, 1995, at the stroke of midnight, the first flat-rate communication service, “Telehodai,” began, and people sacrificed their sleep to embark on nightly journeys into the digital sea from the gateway called a modem. I, two years behind everyone else, established my own website in 1997. In 1998, I began streaming my original compositions. As we communicated in the digital world, the line between what was real and what was imagined blurred. In the meantime, the real world became increasingly chaotic amidst rapid societal changes. Although the future was right here—travelers in the digital sea, we all must have thought so. Waking with the sunset and sleeping with the sunrise became commonplace. The time illuminated by the moon’s light was our reality. Yes, everyone was mistaken. This world is the true reality of the future—a new way of life for a humanity breaking free from the monotony of everyday life.

Today, at this event booth in Ariake, our “syn-the-sys” concept is being unveiled, born in that very moment.

It’s not about the trivialities like ubiquity or virtual spaces like Second Life, which are currently revolutionizing reality. We are utterly tired of the way humanity has lived until now. The future of reality will see declining birth rates and dwindling populations in both people and cities. Frankly, aren’t we all just exhausted? Don’t we all want to see a new world soon? I secretly continued to think that maybe that’s the real new hope. And the answer to that is “syn-the-sys” concept.

Today, November 17, 2007, let’s meet in the digital sea and enjoy the works and spaces born from the chance resonance of our writing, painting, and musical talents, each of us having walked entirely different paths in life. At this booth, we have demonstrations of automatism techniques for unconscious drawing and an unusual sonic space with two unique vacuum tube amplifiers. We have also prepared limited editions of explanatory books and compilation CDs detailing our worldview and works, with 100 copies each available for the first two days.

After 10 years of making the digital sea our home, if you ask me “What do you think now?” I deliberately want to deny this concept. We did not create “syn-the-sys” concept to attempt a global revolution or out of hatred for the society that pushed us into a corner. We were simply—deeply—bored.