Tokyo, Japan, November 9, 2006 - NSK Ltd. (NSK; Headquarters: Tokyo, Japan; President and CEO: Seiichi Asaka) will hold an art exhibition entitled “Smooth Sailing for BEARING – NSK Bearing Art Exhibition” at the Spiral Garden in Aoyama, Tokyo. The event is being organized to celebrate the company's 90th anniversary and aims to make bearings more widely understood to visitors.
The “Smooth Sailing” exhibition is an art exhibition themed on products and technologies offered by NSK, such as bearings, which are usually concealed within domestic electrical appliances and industrial equipment. As bearings are usually hidden from view with little sense of presence, the exhibition aims to give a real and fun feel of what bearings actually are, through incorporating them into works of art with light, color and audio, giving visitors the opportunity to seek them out and discover them for themselves.
In addition, as part of the Rendez-vous Project that brings together art and technology, and is promoted by Wacoal Art Center (Headquarters: Tokyo, Japan; Representative: Yutaka Kitamura), also on exhibit are works of art created jointly by 16 groups of artists and NSK engineers. These artists active in genres such as interactive media arts, fashion and music and created the works with the concepts of breaking stereotypes and rediscovering technology in mind.
Acting as the general producer of the exhibition is Japan's leading authority in universal design, the director of Universal Design Intelligence, Inc., Manabu Akaike. The exhibition offers a fusion of high-precision bearing technology and artists' inspiration, rendering new technological possibilities.