ERECTRO(clara), 2004 / Photo:KIOKU KeizoMy initial intention with this post was to show the cool photo above, say that it’s an sculpture (I doubt it is a real person) by japanese artist Odani Motohiko, and then go on with my life. It catched my eye. It’s a bit weird, and eerily cool.
One of the things I like doing is searching for the sources, researching for more information, and not just trust what a blog says. And this is the perfect example of why you all should do the same.
I first saw a post about Odani Motohiko at a chilean blog named Bold.cl. The post is in spanish, and the author says the female artist is 26 years old. The text is an almost exact translation of a post at Design You Trust, where they also mention the artist is 26 years old. They, however, don’t mention if the artist is male or female. I’m assuming the Bold.cl poster assume it was a female, based on the photo. Following the sources, Design You Trust links to a post at Look in art. It’s in another language (I believe it’s georgian? I’m not sure) so I couldn’t translate…the only thing I understood is the first two characters in the post: 26. Look in art links to a post at Agitatto, but there there’s no mention of the age or genre of the artist.
The orginal post and information traveled through several blogs and each added a little bit of information. In the end, we know Odani Motohiko is a female japanese artist and she’s 26 years old, which is completely wrong. The funny thing is that all posts (except the original one) link to this page, where you can clearly see the artist was born in 1972 (it’s below the name), which means he/she is about 37 years old. That’s quite a difference from the other age everybody says he/she was. It took me a few seconds in google to find a bit more information about the artist. Art-it has a nice article, with a photo of the artist, where you’ll confirm he was born in 1972, and you’ll realize the artist is male. Assembly language has another article on the artist, where you can again confirm the artist is a "he". They mention he’s 25 years old, but the article was written in 1997, which by then was correct.
I guess it’s very easy to pass the wrong information around. I think bloggers should be specially careful with this, even more when a lot of them consider themselves journalists.
That’s it. Now you have a nice collection of links about Odani Motohiko, so go read about him, and if you can, go see his art. Oh, and keep in mind that everything I wrote might be wrong…you have to do your own research.
