Tokyo Tech’s CBEC teams up with art students for Tech×Art Festival

Students of Tokyo Tech's Cross Border Entrepreneur Cultivating (CBEC) program teamed up with the Faculty of Fine Arts at Tokyo University of the Arts (TUA) to hold the Tech×Art Festival on March 14. Co-sponsoring the event was SHIBUYA QWS, a "social scramble space" in the massive 47-floor complex due to open in Shibuya, central Tokyo, in fall 2019.

The event kicked off with student exhibits and presentations. Students of the CBEC program introduced some of the creations they had designed during the Engineering Design Project (EDP) course, while TUA students displayed and discussed the works they had created as final projects at the undergraduate level.

The second part of the session focused on a talk entitled "Technology, art, and beyond: Intersecting imaginations." Participating were President Masamichi Toyama from Smiles Co., Ltd., performing arts producer Akane Nakamura, Associate Professor Kazuhiko Hachiya from the Department of Inter-media Art at TUA, and Associate Professor Shoichi Hasegawa from Tokyo Tech's Institute of Innovative Research. Moderating the lively discussions was Professor Haruyuki Fujii from Tokyo Tech's School of Environment and Society.

The Tech×Art Festival brought together over 100 participants for presentations, exhibits, and discussions regarding technology and art. Many commented afterwards that both the exhibits and talks were stimulating, and they sensed that "something new" would emerge as a result of the event. CBEC looks forward to promoting and participating in similar value creation collaborations in the future.

What is CBEC?

Tokyo Tech's Cross Border Entrepreneur Cultivating (CBEC) program was established in 2014 within the sphere of the EDGE Program of the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology. The program began as a hub for students to focus on engineering design, business management, entrepreneurship theory in order to promote startup activity. It has now moved on to its second stage, CBEC2.0, where increased independence and growth of the program is expected.

• CBEC: Cross Border Entrepreneur Cultivating (Japanese)
• Engineering Design Project creations exhibited at Slush Tokyo 2019 | Tokyo Tech News
• Hasegawa Lab
• Tokyo University of the Arts
• SHIBUYA QWS (Japanese)