Pixels meet street art in the annual Shibuya Pixel Art event, which is now celebrating its seventh year in 2023. In previous years, the event would be held over two days at a small handful of venues, but this will no longer be the case as the festival gears up to host its biggest edition yet.
This year, the festival spreads its digital canvas across two weeks and nine distinct venues in Shibuya, including the Adidas flagship store in Harajuku, Miyashita Park, and the Fujifilm Wonder Photo Shop. An impressive roster of 70 artists will be showcased, with notable names like Eiki Okuda, Joo Jaebum, Ban8ku and Shinji Murakami.
Embracing the theme 'Hakko', the event delves into the dual Japanese concepts of luminescence and fermentation. In this digital age, as pixels – the minutest unit of light on screen – morph in meaning due to evolving high-resolution technology, artists like Snow and Murakami challenge and extend these boundaries, seeking more than just traditional pixel art forms.
The metaphor of fermentation, invoking processes spurred by tiny organisms, contrasts the beneficial with the detrimental. In this context, if we imagine microbes as 'pixels' and their behaviours as expressions, then pixel art interpretations may shift. It’s an unmissable opportunity to explore the nostalgic yet ever-evolving nature of digital pixel art in one of the fastest-evolving hubs of Tokyo.