SCARTS×SIAF Lab. Exhibition for Winter 2023Snow, and any things around it

The City of Sapporo's Snow Management Office is promoting automated daily vehicle operation reports by installing GPS loggers on snowplows to reduce the documentation workload of snow removal workers. The series began in 2018 as an experiment to visualize Sapporo in winter through the location logs of snowplows with GPS. Snow removal is a crucial urban function in Sapporo, but because it is generally carried out during the night, we do not know the scale of snow removal work citywide.
This time, we will focus on the four periods of heavy snowfall last season and observe fluctuations in the amount of operation of approximately 700 snowplows. With close observation, formations of snowplows moving back and forth along main roads may reveal themselves. Perhaps different varieties of snowplow could be distinguished by their movements.
Exhibited alongside the video will be a document entitled “Heavy Snowfall and Snow Damage in the Sapporo Metropolitan Area during 2021–2022 Winter (Part 3)”. This article appeared in No. 41 (2022) of “Seppyo (Snow and Ice)”, a journal published six times a year by the Japanese Society of Snow and Ice, since 1939. The video shows a sped-up visualization of the location of snowplows during the period covered by this article. Although the article states that it could not be concluded whether the four snow storms of last season were caused by climate change, Sapporo's snow storms, which were governed by wind direction, were among the most likely to occur in a changing climate.

Reference: “Annual Report on Snow and Ice Studies in Hokkaido” No.41, p13-16（2022）
Cooperation: Sapporo City Snow Management Office

Snow that cannot be piled up on the roadside is loaded into dump trucks to be taken to snow dumping sites. The video exhibition allows viewers to manipulate time as they observe the generally inaccessible inner workings of a snow dumping site.
A snow dumping site in the Fukui area, where snow is dropped from higher ground to fill the valley, was photographed once every three minutes, 24 hours a day, for 194 days between December 14, 2021 and June 25, 2022. This culminated in approximately 70,000 images (*1). The total planned delivery volume for all snow dumping sites set up by the City of Sapporo amounts to approximately 19 million cubic meters per year (equivalent to approximately 1.35 million 10-ton dump trucks). At first glance, the eye tends to focus on the dynamic movements of heavy equipment, however, the safe and efficient snow accumulation process is not only systematic, but also carefully planned and refined, based on an understanding of the characteristics of the snow and the terrain.

(*1) Total number of images acquired. There may be cases where an image could not be acquired for some reason.
Cooperation: Hokuyo Kogyo Co., Ltd, and Hokkaido Road Maintenance Co., Ltd., and Sano Specific Joint Venture

Every winter, social media posts proclaiming that “blizzards in Hokkaido are incomparably more severe than those in Honshu” go viral, along with photos of blizzards taken by Hokkaido residents. Whiteouts, in which the wind blowing snow from the ground obstructs visibility, are common in Hokkaido, where caution is necessary due to the low temperatures. While driving in these conditions requires special caution, the movement of snowflakes floating in the headlights, and changing in complex ways as if alive, can be fascinating to behold.
In whiteout conditions, it is impossible to follow individual snowflakes with the naked eye because the snow obstructs visibility. However it may be possible to see the movement of snow (wind) by shining a laser beam to illuminate only the snowflakes in a small area. Such an idea led to the start of this experiment.
For this exhibition, members drove through the night, chasing blizzards, and compiling documentary footage of their trial-and-error experiments with laser direction and filming methods, while simultaneously exploring the possibility of new visual expressions using blizzard motifs, laser beams for stage direction and the like. The film was shot on four occasions, including on January 25 of this year, when a major cold snap hit Hokkaido.

The S.I.D.E. Project (*1) introduced at SCARTS Mall C aims to implement “IEIE”, in which “wind” is a major component of each element of the work. This experiment, which refocuses on natural phenomena unique to Hokkaido, is one of the byproducts of S.I.D.E., which operates under the theme of “side effects”.

(*1) S.I.D.E. is a platform for a new era of research and development by SIAF Labs in collaboration with Hokkaido University CoSTEP and SCARTS.
In preparation for the Sapporo International Art Festival (SIAF) 2024, curatorial researcher, Hiroko Myokam, and artistic researcher, You Nakai, have been invited to work on “Side Effects 2022-2024”.
(*2) “Island Eye Island Ear” is an unfinished concert project which would transform an entire isolated island into a musical instrument. It was conceived in the mid-1970s by musician, David Tudor and has been undertaken by artists, Fujiko Nakaya, Jaqueline Matisse Monnier, and E.A.T. (Experiments in Art and Technology).

Direction: Kei Komachiya, Norimichi Hirakawa (SIAF Lab)
Shooting: Kei Komachiya, Norimichi Hirakawa, Katsuya Ishida (SIAF Lab)
Laser design: Kei Komachiya (SIAF Lab)
Programming: Norimichi Hirakawa (SIAF Lab)
Technical support: Takuro Iwata (SCARTS)