onedotzero: j-star 11

onedotzero is a London-based moving image and digital arts organisation which commissions, showcases and promotes innovation across all aspects of moving image, digital and interactive arts.  Founded in 1996, onedotzero has gained a reputation for representing a diverse array of artistic endeavour via the annual onedotzero: adventures in motionfestival and its associated touring. Suppported by the BFI and the Arts Council England, it has a cross media and collaborative approach attuned to technological advances and fast paced change within digital arts and the contemporary culture landscape.

The Japanese portion of the festival selection j-star 11 screened at Nippon Connection 2012.  It’s an eclectic mixture of music videos, innovative commercials, and short films.  Thank You World from the Sapporo Short Fest 2011 and Blind by Yukihiro Shoda were made as a direct response to the 3/11 disaster.  I had not heard of Construction by Mirai Mizue, but it turned out to be a low res excerpt of Tatamp(2011) featuring twoth.  Some of the highlights for me were Toshiaki Hanzaki’s animated music video for Mr. Children – a popular band who have a long history of supporting alternative animation – tangefilms’ phenakistoscope inspired animated music video for Hitomi Azuma, the surreal geometric play of Shinya Sato’s video for Chateau Marmont, and Yasuda Takahiro’s two tone approach to the primal scream of Kaisoku Tokyo’s Copy.  For those of you who missed this event, a number of the films are featured on Vimeo.

cmmhotes 2012

Thank You World by Seiichi HISHIKAWA, J 2011, HDcam, 2’59 Min.

Christmas / Amazarashi by YKBX, J 2011, HDcam, 6’24 Min.

Blind by Yukihiro SHODA, J 2011, HDcam, 5’17 Min.

Construction by Mirai MIZUE, J 2011, HDcam, 3’15 Min.

Tsuchinoko / Gaka by Yuto NAKAMURA, Ayahiko SATO [rakudasan], J 2011, HDcam, 5’37 Min.

Nnet Station Op by Fantasista UTAMARO, J 2011, HDcam, 0’24 Min.

The Smell Of The Flowers / Mr. Children by Toshiaki HANZAKI, J 2009, HDcam, 5’23 Min.

Senkyou / Mergrim by Makoto YABUKI, J 2011, HDcam, 3’09 Min.

Xylophone by Seiichi HISHIKAWA, J 2011, HDcam, 3’05 Min.

Polygon Graffiti: An Uguisu Morph by QNQ/AUJIK, J 2011, HDcam, 4’32 Min.

Kira Kira / Azuma Hitomi by TANGEFILMS, J 2011, HDcam, 3’09 Min.

Assimilation by Takuya HOSOGANE, J 2011, HDcam, 1’29 Min.

Anomie / Amazarashi by YKBX, J 2011, HDcam, 4’37 Min.

Electropia / Joyz / Uk + by Noriko OKAKU, J 2011, HDcam, 4’39 Min.

One Hundred Realities / Chateau Marmont by Shinya SATO, J 2010, HDcam, 3’25 Min.

Kyu by Yyu FUJII, J 2011, HDcam, 1’29 Min.

Copy / Kaisoku Tokyo by Yasuda TAKAHIRO, J 2011, HDcam, 1’33 Min.

Damn What Ringtone / Hifana by Takashi OHASHI, J 2011, HDcam, 0’53 Min.

The TV Show / Takayuiki Manabe by Kousuke SUGIMOTO, J 2009, HDcam, 3’28 Min.

Henshin Gattai! by Shota SAKAMOTO, J 2011, HDcam, 1’33 Min.

Akino Kondoh’s Kiya Kiya (きやきや, 2010-2011)

At Nippon Connection 2012, we had the rare opportunity to see the latest animated short by the artist Akino Kondoh.  It took Kondoh more than a year to complete Kiya Kiya(2010-2011), which is remarkable considering that each frame of an Akino Kondoh animation is as highly detailed as her paintings and illustrations.  Kiya Kiya film is about six-and-a-half minutes long with Kondoh creating 15 frames per second.

Eiko, the bob-haired girl with the beguiling smile, sits in a cabinet with a kamishibai (紙芝居) on her lap.  Kamishibai, which translates as “paper drama,” is a traditional form of storytelling that dates back to 12^th century.  It underwent a revival in Japan in the early part of the 20^th century when kamishibaistorytellers (gaito kamishibaiya) would bicycle from village to village with their portable wooden display boxes.  Today in Japan, kamishibai sets are often used in schools in lieu of storybooks as they are easier for storytelling to an audience.  The pictures are on the front of the large cards and the text is on the back for the storyteller to read. 

In Kiya Kiya, Eiko is the storyteller.  As she changes the pictures in her kamishibai, her lips move and instead of hearing her words, cursive script begins to appear in columns as if written by a calligrapher’s hand in the traditional direction of top to bottom, right to left.  At first it appears to be hiragana (the cursive Japanese syllabary which Japanese children today learn first), but is actually illegible.  In an interview, Kondoh explains that she made the script by combining parts of hiragana with four letters from the Latin alphabet.

The illegibility of the text works on two levels in the film.  The first is that it gives the impression of text without allowing words to distract from the animation itself – which is what Kondoh herself has stated as her intention in the aforementioned interview.  The ambiguity of the text is heightened when it metamorphoses into shapes, and then into playful little tailed creatures in blue and red.

The indecipherable text also adds to the illusive character of Eiko herself.  Eiko is a kind of trickster character.  In one moment she charms with her smile, while in the next moment she shocks with a cruel or disturbing act.  The stark blacks and whites of Kondoh’s colour palette also highlight the dual nature of Eiko.  In Kiya Kiya, two more colours are added: red and blue.  In the third section of the film Eiko splits into two and a red Eiko and a blue Eiko chase each other and embrace each other like two kittens at play.  This sequence recalls Kondoh’s earlier animated film Ladybirds’ Requiem (てんとう虫のおとむらい, 2005-2006) which features a sequence in which a red ladybird (or “ladybug” in North American English) with black spots and a black ladybird with red spots embrace and spin around together.

Kiya Kiya is divided into three sections which are indicated by the insertion of title cards.  There is also a short introductory sequence and an upside-down title card before the end credits begin.  When I first heard the title of this film, I thought that “kiya kiya” might be an obscure onomatopoeia (sound word) for the sound made by one of the wonderful insects Akino Kondoh likes to use in her works.  It turns out that the title comes from an archaic expression that Kondoh found in Shojo korekushon josetsu (1985), a collection of short stories about girls by Tatsuhiko Shibusawa – a writer, critic, and translator of French literature (including Jean Cocteau and de Sade) who was close friends with Yukio Mishima.  In the glossary of the Shojo korekushon josetsu, Kondoh came across the expression “mune ga kiya kiya suru” (胸がきやきやする/a “kiya kiya” in one’s chest) which was translated as “a keen feeling experienced after an episode of déjà vu hat is unsettling and disturbing yet also familiar” (source). 

The Japanese language is rich with onomatopoeia which not only mimic sounds (giseigo) but also can describe actions or feelings (gitaigo).  For example, the giseigo “doki doki” is the onomatopoeia for the sound of a beating heart, but when it is turned into a verb “doki doki suru” it is used to describe the feelings one has when one’s heart is racing – such as nervousness or excitement.  “Kiya kiya” may have also at some point have had a sound associated with it, but Kondoh seems to have been drawn to the expression “mune ga kiya kiya suru” because it expresses the feeling of unease mixed with nostalgia that she expresses in her work.

This feeling of unease is amplified in Kiya Kiya by the soundtrack which was composed by the American avant-garde artist John Zorn – for whom Kondoh designed the album cover of The Goddess: Music for the Ancient Days (2010).  The soundtrack is predominantly high female voices and percussive instruments.  Like the images, the music repeats motifs - sometimes so much so that it sounds like a skipping record.  Repetitive images build throughout the film: Eiko lying as if dead in the overturned cabinet, Eiko being strangled by the branches of a tree, Eiko catching the tailed creatures in her hands like she did the ladybirds in Ladybirds’ Requiem.  The images build and build until finally Eiko stretches out naked on her back on a branch over a precipice and she smiles up at us inviting us to both admire and fear her beauty.

Akino Kondoh art comes out of the traditions of alternative manga (Garo, Ax).  In particular, she cites the controversial artist Toshio Saeki as an influence (source).  However, unlike the more exploitative and voyeuristic view of women in Saeki’s work, Kondoh’s work is an exploration of the self.  Eiko is the artist’s alter ego, developed out of Kondoh’s own, often disturbing, childhood memories.  Eiko’s trickster nature means she is hard to pin down, sometimes appearing as a girl while at other times a young woman, sometimes she seems to be the victim, while at other times she is the perpetrator.  Innocent and knowing, kind and cruel, drawing us in and pushing us away – Eiko both seduces and unnerves with her unusual charms.

Catherine Munroe Hotes 2012

Credits

Animation by Akino Kondoh

Music by John Zorn

Special Thanks to

Emi Nishiwaki

Marc Urselli

Masahiro Katayama

Tomoe Tsusumi

Agency for Cultural Affairs, Japan

Mizuma Art Gallery

Pola Art Foundation

To learn more about Akino Kondoh and Kiya Kiya, check out:

Akino Kondoh’s official website

Her profile at Mizuma Art Gallery

My chat with Kondoh at Shinsedai 2010

A glimpse of the studio in Astoria (Queens, NYC) where Kondoh made Kiya Kiya

Kamijo, Keiko.  “Manga x Culture Vol. 1 Akino Kondoh.”  Cat’s Forehead. Trans. Luke Baker, 2011.

Huynh, Matt.  “Q+A with Akino Kondoh.” Yellow Trace. 19 April 2011.

This film screened at:

http://nipponconnection.com/

The Modern Films of Mirai Mizue

The innovative experimental artist Mirai Mizue often takes a scientific approach to animation.  With each new film or film series, he challenges his discipline as an artist (take his current Wonder 365 Animation Project where he aims to make animation every day for a whole year) and investigates the theoretical possibilities of his craft.

Modern (2010) and Modern No. 2(2011) further explore the method of geometric animation which Mizue used for the first time in Metropolis(2009).  These films are made using isometric drawings planned out on graph paper, and are inspired by optical illusions such as the graphic art of M.C. Escher. 

In the “Making Of” extra on the DVD Mirai Mizue Works 2003-2010, Mizue explains that for Modern, he set himself the rule that he could only use three kinds of lines: one vertical and two slanting.  Thus the film consists only of the transformation of rectangular parallelepipeds.  Mizue was interested in making as interesting a film as possible using a minimal number of elements in order to prove the theory that animation can be very good when one imposes a limitation on movements.  It would be very easy, and much less time consuming, to make films like Modern and Modern No. 2 using CG software but the look and feel of the film would be very different.  There is a warmth and tactility to Mizue’s films that would be lost if the lines were computer generated. 

Modern and Modern No. 2 have a lot of visual similarities in terms of graphic style, but they are at the same time quite distinct from one another.  Modern begins completely in grey scale then the shapes take on bright colours that stand out against the foggy grey background and the whole frame outlined by a soft black outline.  The rhythm is much slower in Modern than in Modern No. 2 because Mizue asked his composer, twoth, to increase the tempo.  Modern also had a much more consistent tempo, whereas with Modern No. 2 Mizue experiments with variations in speed. 

The biggest change with Modern No. 2 is the change in colour.  For his earlier films, Mizue tended to use plain paper, but for Modern No. 2 he uses traditionally made paper with texture.  This creates a wonderful textured effect with the threads of the paper visible and jumping about from frame to frame.  The colour palette for the geometric shapes is inspired by traditional Japanese art – colourful and dynamic yet more muted than in Modern.

It is an exhilarating experience to watch Mirai Mizue’s geometric films.  The precision of movement and the way in which the animation works in together with the soundtrack is truly a wonder to behold.  Modern appears on the DVD Mirai Mizue Works 2003- 2010.  Please support his artist by ordering it today.

Catherine Munroe Hotes 2012

Modern and Modern No. 2 screened at:

In a Pig's Eye (わからないブタ, 2010)

  

A giant pig lies in an ordinary garden, blocking the door to the house.  The house is occupied by a large and unusual family: wife, husband, grandmother, and six nearly identical chubby boys.  The atmosphere inside the house is dark and oppressive: the balding, middle-aged husband slices deli meat, decorating his body with the slices while the wife tries to push granny up the stairs while chewing on snacks she keeps in her apron.  Life in the garden seems more carefree: a boy embraces a piglet in the branches of a tree, another boy is blown in a series of gentle front tucks by air blown through, a boy swings like an acrobat from the tree, while another pretends to fish from the rooftop.  The repetitive activities of everyday life come to an end with the wail of the town siren.  The family makes a circle around the giant pig and do a kind of ritualized dance. Is this all real life or just a dream?  

In a Pig's Eye (Wakaranai buta, 2010) is independent animator Atsushi Wada’s graduation film from the graduate animation programme at Tokyo University of the Arts.   With In a Pig’s Eye, Wada continues his exploration of the artistic concept of “ma” or the “spaces in between.”  As with his earlier works, the animation is drawn frame by frame using pencil on paper, with subtle colours added during the computer editing process.  Compared to his earlier work, this film has a wonderful sepia hue to it that recalls traditional paintings done on scroll paper.

The film revisits many themes and motifs typical of an Atsushi Wada film: subtle character movements, domestic animals (in this case pigs and a dog), chubby boys, and repetition of movement.  The dreary everyday chores of life depicted inside the house are in stark contrast to the more carefree play outside, yet the film as a whole depicts both the tedium and absurdity of ordinary day-to-day life.  For me the giant pig in the garden symbolizes the types of inexplicable curveballs life sometimes throws at us.  You can allow it to trap you (like the boy trying and failing to leave the house), or you can make the best of it and discover something really wonderful (the boy being blown into the air by the pig).

When I have been at screenings of Atsushi Wada’s earlier films – particularly Manipulated Man (2006) and Day of Nose (2005) – audiences have tended to be quite silent either with wonder or with incredulity.  Mechanism of Spring (2010) and In a Pig’s Eyeare the first Wada films where I actually felt the audiences engage in a warm way with his art.  In fact, In a Pig’s Eye has some slapstick elements (door slamming into pig; boy suddenly falling; etc.) that made me laugh out loud at the absurdity of it all.  Thus I was surprised to learn from Wada, that the films were made with only aesthetics and not comedy in mind.  At the Filmmaker's Talk that I hosted at Nippon Connection 2012, Wada revealed that he had been quite shocked the first time he attended a screening of one of his films at an international festival (it was at VIFF) to hear the audience laughing out loud at his film.

Wada reminded me that film audiences in Japan do not make any noise while watching a screening (they don’t even scream during horror films!), so he cannot tell if Japanese audiences find his films amusing or not.  Western audiences are not shy about expressing genuine emotion during a screening, and the reaction to In a Pig’s Eye at festivals has been largely positive.  The film has won several awards including Best Film at Fantoche in 2010 and the Prix DeVarti for the funniest film at the Ann Arbor Film Festival 2011.  


When Wada was speaking to me about his films I was reminded of Luigi Pirandello's absurdist meta-theatrical play Six Characters in Search of an Author (1921) and theories about authorial intention.  A creator of art obviously wishes for their creation to be well received by spectators, but once an artwork is created it takes on a life of its own.  Although audiences may not be receiving the work in the way that Wada intended, it is surely a wonderful thing that the film has taken on a life of its own and delighted audiences around the world.  


Each frame of a Wada film is a work of art in itself.  During the Filmmaker's Talk I asked him about whether or not he preferred working with film or digitally (he had to use 8mm film for Concerning the Rotation of a Child (2004) when he was a student at Image Forum).  Wada prefers making his films digitally because he draws such fine lines using a mechanical pencil.  These fine lines are more difficult to capture with film, so digitally scanning the images gives him a much better result.


Wada explains more about his technique on the CALF DVD Atsushi Wada Works 2002-2010 which also includes In a Pig's Eye.

Order Now

Catherine Munroe Hotes 2012

Nose Tale (はなのはなし, 2010)

After reading Ryūnosuke Akutagawa’s short story “The Nose” (鼻/Hana, 1916), the great writer Natsume Sōseki is said to have written a letter to Akutagawa proclaiming: “I found your piece ["The Nose"] very interesting.  Sober and serious without trying to be funny.  It exudes humour, a sure sign of refined taste.  Furthermore, the material is fresh and eye-catching.  Your style is well-polished, admirably fitting.” (source)

One could use similar adjectives to describe Taku Furukawa’s animated short Nose Tale (はなのはなし/Hana no hanashi, 2010).  Reportedly inspired by a bout of hay fever (source– which would explain the runny noses of many of the supporting characters in this film), Nose Tale is a mash-up of five classic stories from around the world.  Four of these stories concern men with oversized noses:  “The Nose” by Akutagawa, “The Nose” (1835-36) by Nikolai Gogol, “The Adventures of Pinocchio” (1881-83) by Carlo Collodi, and “Cyrano de Bergerac” (1897) by Edward Rostand. 

Furukawa starts off by cutting between each of the stories, but in the climactic scene the men with giant noses all come together from their disparate times and places for a dragon viewing party – a concept adapted from another Akutagawa story “Dragon” (龍, 1919).  The dramatic conclusion is unexpected and delightful.

The concept is indeed fresh and eye-catching and exudes the tongue-in-cheek sense of humour one has come to expect from a Furukawa film.  In all my years studying the art of cinema, I never expected to encounter a film that makes a point of cutting between stories by matching the shape of an oversized nose.  It is so ridiculous as to be wonderful.

by Catherine Munroe Hotes 2012

"Yona Yona Penguin" Original Soundtrack

The stories are also tied together by the music of Toshiyuki Honda, whose compositions have also featured in the animated films  Miyuki-chan in Wonderland (Tetsuro Aoki, 1995), Metropolis(Rintaro, 2001), and Yona Yona Penguin(Rintaro, 2009).  The pieces “Spinel” and “Tellurium” from Songs of the Milky Way and “TERRA”, an étude for saxophone, were arranged and performed by Honda himself.

Nose Tale is available on the Takun Films 2 DVD, which can be purchased at Anido. ORDER NOW

Sound of Life (生活の音, 2010)

How do household noises influence our bodies?  

Our daily life has its own kind of music.

When I first discovered the animation of Shiho Hirayama (平山志保), b. 1979 in 2009, I was delighted by the simplicity and humour of her works.  She has a great eye for movement and the transitions in her short line drawing film Swimming (2008) are delightful in their gracefulness and originality.

With Sound of Life (生活の音, 2010), Hirayama adds the three-dimensionality of claymation to her trademark line drawing animation style.  Sound of Life is an example of how animation can make the ordinary extraordinary and cause us to think about our lives from a new perspective.  I was reminded of Nick Park’s Creature Comforts (1989), which animated interviews with people about their daily lives, transforming ordinary people into claymation animals living in enclosures at the zoo.  Sound of Life does not use interviews or dialogue, but instead the soundtrack consists of the noises that one encounters in the course of the day.  The soundtrack blends documentary sound with musical interpretation of the soundtrack of our lives (piano, synth) which Hirayama mixed herself.

The film begins in a minimalistic way: three children kicking a ball around in an undefined public space.  A woman joins the scene and picks up the clay ball and looks at it and the scene shifts to a moving walkway (of the kind one might find in extra long corridors when changing trains in central Tokyo) complete with the soft female voice that warns you to watch your step.  Bustling crowds where the line drawn people’s hair has been replaced with colourful clay.  Blue clay fills the screen, as if replicating the slightly claustrophobic feeling of being caught up in a crowd.

There’s a lovely sequence of people boarding a train, with the clay filling the windows of the train.  The train’s departure is captured with the blurring movement of the clay, and then Hirayama transitions into a scene of motorcycles on the street.  She ease with which Hirayama changes perspective and scene recalls the great master of changing perspective, Georges Schitzgebel.

From traffic noises and road repair drilling to the more subtle sounds of the wind in the trees or the more mundane sounds of a taxi driver yawning as he waits at an intersection with his turn indicator on, Hirayama draws our attention to the sounds of everyday life that we might otherwise ignore.  The animation movement and the amount of clay used onscreen increases as the soundtrack becomes more filled with music/sound.  Soon there are no more line drawings left, but the screen fills with clay sequences depicting a bird feeding its young, a mother with an infant, and the film returns to the image it began with: children playing with a ball.  The boys remain faceless, but the screen is full of colour this time.  The closing credits are played over an abstract sequence of clay colourfully moving and shifting as if powered by the forces of nature.

It is an uplifting experience to watch Sound of Life as the film reminds us not only of how our lives are all interconnected by our shared experiences of sound, but also how the sounds that make up our everyday lives can affect our mood and general well being.  With so many people today blocking out the sounds of life by listening to music or podcasts on their portable devices, Sound of Life draws attention to the simple pleasures of listening and being aware of the environment in which we live.

Learn more about Shiho Hirayama on her official website.


Catherine Munroe Hotes 2012

Two Tea Two (2010)

Hiroco Ichinose’s quirky animated shorts have been delighting festival audiences since 2006.  The Last Breakfast (2006), Ha・P (2008), and Cow’s Day (2009) combine stylistic sparseness with a touch of the surreal much like the films of her mentor Taku Furukawa.

Her most recent independent work, Two Tea Two,has a very tactile feel to it, with its inky lines drawn on a textured paper.  An alarm clock rings, awakening a long-haired woman with an angular face sleeping naked in her bed.   She tilts her head and contorts herself into a round shape, as if stretching her body awake.  She rushes off-screen and we hear a door close.  She reappears again in a loose fitting dress.  The sound suggests she is now on a public street and we see her gaze in a window, her face reflecting in a window as if she were a two-headed creature as she observes a cup of tea.

Cut to the woman seated in a low chair, her body oversized and contorted, as she tries to drink from her tea cup.  She looks up and a lovely short sequence unfolds in which we see traces of the world outside the café window – black ink on yellow paper.  A shadow of another female figure appears outside the window looking in at our protagonist.  Two women or the woman’s face reflected in the window?  She tilts her head inspecting the reflection of herself.  When she straightens, her mirror image remains contorted.   She pokes the contorted mirror image of herself and the mirror image rounds into her chubby form again, knocking the lid off the sugar dish as she floats to the other side of the table.  A small insect spreads its wings and scurries past the sugar dish.

We now have two identical women – or the same woman reflected – sitting in low chairs facing each other, with the coffee table hidden under the tangle of their long legs in high-heeled shoes.  They stare at each other, steaming tea cups in their hands.  In a split screen, the mirror image appears to speak to her original.

The woman with her bare shoulders above the red dress now stands in a storm, her long black hair streaming to the side in the wind.  A second head and long neck appear – a two headed woman staring at the audience.  She then curls herself into a ball and floats away. 

Back in the café, the winged insect wanders around a stray sugar cube on the table.  It splits in half then reforms before munching on the sugar cube.  The chubby version of the woman jumps past the cashier with a chink of change hitting the counter, then sheds her clothes as she jumps off screen.  A door squeaks as it closes on the vignette.  The alarm clock rings as the end credits roll.  The animated short finishes with a reprise of the city setting and the woman jumping to the coffee table in her two-headed form.

For me, Two Tea Two captures the ambivalent relationship many women have with their bodies.  Rationally we may have come to terms with our physical selves, but first thing in the morning, pre-tea/coffee and depending on what phase of lunar cycle it is, our bodies may feel heavy and bloated.  Looking bleary eyed in the mirror or at one’s reflection in a café window first thing in the morning, it is not unusual for a woman to search her own face as if it were a stranger’s, trying to reconcile our external selves with our internal selves. 

I love the little touches in this animated short of the action of city life passing by in fragments, and I identify with the feeling of being elephantine and klutzy in a tiny café.  This is a nice film to watch together with Aico Kitamura’s Getting Dressed (2010) as both films explore the relationship between a woman’s physical self and her state of mind.

Rita et Machin Rita to Nantoka no Picnic

Hiroco Ichinose (瀬皓コ, b. 1984) is, together with her husband Tomoyoshi Joko, one half of the creative animation team Decovocal.  She is a graduate of the animation department of Tokyo Polytechnic University, where she has taught part time since 2009.  In addition to her independent animated shorts, Ichinose has worked on commercial animation including the Rita and Whatsitand Bee TV animated TV series.


by Catherine Munroe Hotes 2012

The World of Kato Kunio

Hachioji Yume Art Museum Special Exhibition: The World of Kato Kunio

八王子市夢美術館特別展　加藤久仁生展

Hachioji Yume Art Museum

10 February – 25 March 2012

On Friday, the Hachioji Yume Art Museum launched its special exhibition celebrating the career so far of Oscar-winning animator Kunio Katō (加藤久仁生, b. 1977).  Since winning the Oscar for Best Animated Short Film for La maison en petits cubes(つみきのいえ/Tsumiki no ie, 2008), Katō has keep a relatively low profile internationally.  He has; however, indeed kept busy creating an animation campaign in celebration of the 40^th anniversary of Sekisui Heim (セキスイハイム) among other projects for his company ROBOT.  There have recently been rumours that Katō may be involved in the production of the animated adaptation of Khalil Gibran’s poetry collection The Prophet (Roger Allers, Sylvain Chomet, et al., 2013).

still from Sekisui Heim animated CM

A graduate of Tama Art University, where Katō was introduced to animation by the influential animator Masahiro Katayama, Katō quickly became the darling of Japan’s indie animation scene with his short films The Apple Incident (2001), Fantasy(2003) and his web series The Diary of Tortov Roddle (2004).  Before winning the Oscar, he had already been the recipient of many laurels including twice winning the Yuri Norstein Prize at Laputa as well as top awards at international festivals including the Japan Media Arts Festival, Hiroshima, and Annecy.

The exhibition, which was put together in collaboration with the designer Makoto Koizumi (小泉誠), features sketches, storyboards, and original illustrations from the production of La maison en petits cubes.  One can follow the production process step-by-step and learn about how this exceptional animated short came to life.  In addition, the exhibition features work Kato has done since winning the Oscar – sketches from Atogaki (あとがき/Postscript) a regular feature by Kato published in the animation magazine MOE.

 The highlight of the exhibition is Katō’s latest animated short  Jōkei(情景, 2012) which he made especially for this event.  In addition, Kenji Kondo, the composer of the La maison en petits cubes soundtrack, and the Kuricorder Quartet (栗コーダーカルテット) will perform music from the film at nearby Ichō Hall on February 16^th. 

For more information and a slideshow of images from the event, go to Yumebi.com(JP only).

Hachioji Yume Art Museum                                                                                                                   

2F View Tower Hachiouji

 8-1 Youkamachi, Hachioujishi

Tokyo 192-0071

Tel.  0426-21-6777 Fax 0426-21-6776

10:00-19:00

For directions to the event see Tokyo Art Beat (EN/JP)

Order Tsumiki no Ie (La Maison en Petits Cubes)

Gestalt (部屋/形態, 1999)

Gestalt
n.  [PSYCHOLOGY] an organized whole that is perceived as more than the sum of its parts; origin 1920s: from the German Gestalt, literally ‘form, shape’

Gestalt(Heya/Keitai, 1999) is an early work by the installation artist Takashi Ishida(石田高志, b. 1972).  I first saw it when I acquired Image Forum’s Thinking and Drawing DVD at a screening of Tokyo Loop in early 2007.  Ishida’s explorations of shape and form through animated installations have become increasingly sophisticated and bold over the years, yet somehow Gestalt is the work that has made the biggest impression on my subconscious mind.  On sunny days like today, when I see patterns on my wall created by the sunlight coming into contact with the with the textures of the wall and the patterns of grain on surfaces of wood, I imagine Ishida’s paint strokes transforming the walls of this unremarkable room into something quite magical.

The film opens with a plain wood frame on a non-descript wall.  A black line paints itself around the frame, then bursts free of the confines of the picture frame to create dramatic patterns of black lines against the white background.   Black lines paint over white, white lines paint over black, and so on until the bold white on black title card appears reading “部屋/形態  gestalt”

部屋= heya = room

形態  = keitai= form/shape

Ishida introduces us to the room with a shot of part of the old window flecked with paint and years of grime, but still allowing some amber light into the room.  He then shows us the rough surface of the wall, focusing in on it bit by bit, the rest of the room left unfocused.  The camera is then placed with the window on screen right and the wall that will be the central “canvas” for the animation on screen left.

There are several different camera set ups in this 7 minute animation.  Each one explores shape and form through a pattern of colouring dark on light, filling in space and emptying it again.  The artist reprises the shape of the window, his signature swirling lines, and plays with the flickering light, exploring all the possibilities this deceptively simple space offers the creative mind.  Gestalt was shot over the course of one year in a Tokyo dormitory.  Each day, Ishida would paint on the wall and photograph it using the available light from the window.  The flowing lines and play of geometric patterns result in a contemplative piece that is stylistically reminiscent of early experiments with music and animation by artists like Norman McLaren and Oskar Fischinger.

At one point, a lone sphere traverses the wall, recalling the classic work Spheres (Norman McLaren/ René Jodoin, 1969), which was composed to accompany Glenn Gould playing Bach. J.S. Bach is also a favourite of Ishida, whose later work The Art of the Fugue (2001) was commissioned by the Aichi Culture Center to commemorate the 250^th anniversary of Bach’s passing.  The soundtrack of Gestalt features one of Bach’s Great Eighteen Choale Preludes, the hauntingly ethereal BWV 659 “Nun, komm’ der Heiden Heiland” (Come now, Saviour of the heathen) performed on an organ.  

Gestaltcan be seen on Thinking and Drawing:

Thinking and Drawing

Mirai Mizue’s Tatamp (2011)

“One living thing.  One sound.  Becomes chaos.  Becomes melody.”

“This living thing has one sound but a thousand forms.”

Mirai Mizue continues his experimentation with music and movement in his latest “cell animation” Tatamp.  Not to be confused with the animation technique of “cel animation”, Mizue’s unique style of “cell animation” is hand-drawn and coloured on paper then scanned onto the computer for editing.  The name refers to the fact that the creatures that he draws resemble amoeba and other minute organic creatures one might find under the lens of a microscope.

As the onomatopoetic title Tatamp suggests, sound designer twoth (aka Shinichi Suda) employs a number of different percussive sounds (shakers, synth, snare drum, etc.) in this piece in addition to harp, whistle, loon calls and other experimental noises.  As with Jam (2009), the film begins in a minimalistic fashion with one sound being represented by a moving shape or shapes.  The cells splash onto the screen and disappear like fireworks exploding in the sky.  The appearance and movement of the shapes is directly related to the timbre and duration of each sound. 

The more full the soundtrack, the more full the screen is with shapes, and as the tempo increases, so too the movement of the shapes.  The score follows a pattern of rising and falling with the screen alive with abstract shapes and a chaos of movement at each peak.  The grand finale is an explosion of colour and movement with the individual “cells” layered densely on the screen.  Another fantastic film from Mizue in the tradition of visual music. 

Learn more about Mirai Mizue and order his DVD from CALF.  The DVD is also available from British Animation Awards.

Catherine Munroe Hotes 2012

Muybridge's Strings Flip Books (マイブリッジの糸 フリップブック, 2011)

Fans of Kōji Yamamura who live outside of Japan may not be aware that it has become a tradition for the great animator to publish a book tie-in along with his latest film releases.  For Kafuka Inaka Isha, he published a slim, hardcover illustrated storybook edition of Franz Kafka's acclaimed short story A Country Doctor in Japanese translation.  


For his latest animated masterpiece Muybridge’s Strings (マイブリッジの糸, 2011), Yamamura and his publishers came up with the ingenious idea of creating  flip book tie-ins.  According to the introduction,  Yamamura wanted to create a book that would reflect the temporal themes of the animation.  Although I have not yet seen it, I have read that Muybridge's Strings employs a parallel editing structure that interweaves a story from the past (the time of Muybridge) with a story set in the present.  

Front covers: book slipcases, flip books, info booklet 

There are two complementary flip books available: (マイブリッジの糸I and マイブリッジの糸II).  They are published in a format of 13x8cm and consist of a slipcase and flip book in full colour, accompanied by a monochrome paper booklet.  When the front covers of both slipcases are pushed together (top photograph) they form the full length poster for the film.

Back covers: book slipcases, flip books, info booklet

Each flip book features a series of images on the right-hand side pages and transcribed music from the film by Normand Roger and J.S. Bach on each facing page.  The pages are of two different alternating lengths which means that once you have flipped through one side of the book, you can turn the book over and flip through a different series of images.  This forward and backward structure is also drawn from the animated short which references J.S. Bach's Crab Canon - a clever piece of music which is the musical equivalent of a palindrome.  It is best scene and heard, so I recommend checking out this helpful explanatory video.

Info booklets

Both flip books are accompanied by the same information booklet.  It features an introduction by Yamamura as well as an interview with him about not only the flip books but also the making of this Japanese-Canadian (NFB/NHK/Polygon) co-production.  See all photos on Google Plus or Facebook.  Even if you cannot read Japanese, these books are a visual delight and a must-have for collectors of independent animation.

Catherine Munroe Hotes 2011

ISBN 978-4-89194-909-9
ISBN 978-4-89194-910-5

Order the Flip Books today:

Muybridge no Ito 1  [Flip Book]

Muyvridge no Ito 2  [Flip Book]