media-8

Transcriber:	Mandy Wei (wie0715@yahoo.com.tw)
Brief Bio:
Date finished:	Jan. 28, 2005
Proofreader:	Grace Lin (gracelin_tx @ msn.com)
Brief Bio:	Doctoral student in Instructional Technology @ University of Houston
Date finished:	July 15, 2005

I am Shigeru Miyagawa, I teach at MIT, and I am executive producer of StarFestival, in this brief presentation I want to tell you about StarFestival. StarFestival is a multi-linear program which we created at MIT, myself and a large team of people, who work on different parts of the program. StarFestival is a model by which you tell your own personal history, who am I, this is who I am and I want you to look at it. As you'll see, it is a way in which you represent a variety of things about your own life, your parents, your home and so forth. [0:58]The content of StarFestival itself is about my own life. I was born in Japan and I was there until I was ten and then I came to the United States with my family, and as an adult I went back to Japan with a question-who am I? Am I Japanese or am I American? Or am I Japanese and American? I really didn't know and I needed to have an answer to this question. So, I created StarFestival with this team from MIT in order to try to answer the question. So, StarFestival is a very personal history about me and also a very personal look at Japan, my own personal Japan.

[1:55] I would like to now show you some things from StarFestival. If you look at the screen, we came right into the middle of the show. This is the PDA, or personal digital assistant. The PDA is what I took with me to Japan to record thing about Japan, about my own life. You can see that it has a screen here, lots of buttons and lots of things that you can click on here, The idea always is that it's a personal journey. So I am going to begin by showing you a vague personal look at my home town. A bus ride.

--Video clip 1-- [3:26] The bus ride continues for few more minutes, the point about this bus ride is that there is no talking, it doesn't tell you this is my home town and this is Japan and so forth. It gives you lots of visual cues that you use in my personal journey to see what Japan is like on a very personal level. Next I want to show you my home.

-Video clip2- [4;12] This is where I grew up, in Hiratsuka, Japan. Hiratsuka is about one hour by train from Tokyo. And you can see that it is a room, kind of cluttered, there is a TV, there are some familiar things, there is a Buddhist trine, Buddhist temple here, and you can tour around my home, and see things as you look around.

[5:10]One of the things that I want to capture with StarFestival is the notion of change that people and countries change. Here is an example of someone in my own neighborhood, the model shop man, where everything around him has changed except him.

-Video clip 3- [5:30]After the end of World War 2, people were saying Japan was defeated by the US, because we were behind in science, so I started the shop, thinking that I could help young people, that's why the way I conduct business may be a bit different from the others. The Children used to… Yes, back then I used to spend a lot of time playinged with kids hoping that I could help them. How about nowadays? It's not the same these days. Children don't play plastic models anymore? Children don't do it, children these days aren't interested, models aren't popular anymore, especially more complex model I carry. Really? For the most part, they play electronic-something, something like video games.

[6;29]So, kids play video games, but this model shop man continues to sell these very complicated models. The next site I'd like to show you is a site where I explore father-son relationship, cause I wanted to really understand what it is like for a son and a father to relate to each other.

-Video Clip 4- [7:19] Every year we pick a theme, this year's theme is movie stars and StarFestival, these are all from American movies, we like American movies, everything is made by hand. We aren't professionals, so every year there are things that go wrong and other things that we want to improved. I may be exaggerating a bit, but every year we gain more know-how about how to do it. My father started it but he died nineteen years ago, at first I wasn't sure if I wanted to continue, but gradually it became more and more fun.

[8:26]The next site is where we look at mother-daughter relationship in this culture. -Video Clip 5- [8:41] Do you worried about the next generation, your child's generation? No, she works for a company, so it's not so hard. We hope for our children's happiness more than our own, I wouldn't want her to suffer like me, It's okay now, but when I was younger, I cried at night when no one was looking.

[9:11]This is Tanako who you just saw, was the only woman that we found at the fish wall wharf, where we were looking for someone to interview, and she gave us this fascinating story about what it's like for a mother to worry about her daughter in this time of change.

[9:40]The final site I'd like to show you is the StarFestival site. Every town has a festival of some sort, and my home town has the StarFestival. The StarFestival is an old Chinese myth, is the Romeo and Juliet of Asia. A boy and a girl fall in love from the wrong side of the tracks. The families are upset and so they toss the boy and the girl into two different constellations, thinking that they would never, never meet again, and unbeknownst to the families, that two constellations come together in July of every year, on the seventh day of the seventh month, as the myth goes, and so StarFestival is to celebrate their coming together. In my home town, the StarFestival is a very big festival. And among many many things that you find in the festival, there are queens, StarFestival queens, so let me show you that.

-Video Clip 6 - [11:55]Okay, I hope you got some idea of what the StarFestival --- is like. Keep in mind that the CD-Rom is about Japan, but the reason why I did this was because I had to answer the question. Who am I? Am I Japanese or American? The whole idea of StarFestival is that It's a model by which you tell your own story. So, once you look at the StarFestival then you can think about the question that you want to have answered and the question may be the same thing that I asked myself, Who am I, but maybe some other questions. [12:36]There are lots of people using StarFestival all through the United States and even abroad and there are lots and lots of questions the people are asking and they're using the StarFestival as a model. [12:50]Finally, another thing that is important, is that all of these stories that are generated as the result of using StarFestival as a model, become a communal story. So people share what they create with StarFestival. So there are stories about Chinese-Americans. There are stories about Latino-Americans and on and on. That's a very important part of StarFestival. Just as I am sharing my story with you, I would like you to share your story with me and with others, who are doing exactly the same thing that you'll be doing. Well I hope you'll enjoy using StarFestival and do let me know the question that you're trying to answer.