Next generation anime

I was recently shown these two examples of independent/student animation by an 11-year-old with an obvious taste for good animation. These are two college projects from last year. Above a darkly moody, odd – and excellent – short called Children by Okada Takuya (from Trident Computer College, uploaded to his YouTube channel exactly a year ago today)


Below, a light-hearted – and equally good – contrast from Hiroyasu Ishida: his graduation work from Kyoto Seika University Animation Department. The girl asks, "Will you go out with me", the boy replies, "Sorry, but I want to concentrate on baseball", causing some flying hysterics. Check Ishida's site under the name Tete. His aspiration is to work in animation – an aspiration which should be fulfilled pronto for both these animators.


(The above is light, but also see Tete's atmospheric Rain Town.)

Old print

Well, I kind of liked this momentary joke. (Already it's no longer linked to from their front page – all news is only momentary.) To celebrate their 190th anniversary, The Guardian linked their online site to a 1821-style display. Updates with the same news as the main site.

You've been framed

As digital art becomes a norm, as we all simply keep digital versions of our photos, here's a new frame for viewing it called simply Framed. Of course, there's plenty of small frames for electronic images, but this hopes to match the upper-end of display of home/public art. And it looks pretty nice. Conceived by Yugo Nakamura (of tha ltd) and made in collaboration with both Yoshihiro Saitou (of A-study) and design/engineers Om, Inc.

Even though video art has been around for a while, I'm still not sure I'd want to permanently have a Bill Viola piece on display, however much I love his work. But of course the point is not to think of one display: you've got a choice, switch it on, switch it off, change the display as often as you want. (And perhaps I can imagine a frequent display of Sam Taylor-Wood's David Beckham sleeping.)

I still have a niggle though with this kind of thing – it's more of getting what you want as soon as you want it, and I have an old-fashioned upbringing in which that wasn't possible or deemed good. And perhaps it's just being in Japan during energy-saving times, but yet another energy-consuming device – for displaying what otherwise could be just static or viewed elsewhere – also seems a luxury.

None of which reflects on the good design or that I'm a consumer of electricity like everyone else.

Green birds

May 30, is Gomi Zero no Hi (which translates as Zero Rubbish Day – or, in the way that Japanese love to play with the pronunciation of numbers, Go Mi Zero, which is 5 3 0 or 5/30). Good to have zero tolerance of litter and promote the idea of cleaning up.

But as for the green bird character from the Green Bird NPO which promotes the event: I just can't make up my mind whether the male (I assume) bird with a dangly protuberance, and the female with a matching concave bit, are "cute" or further gender-enforcing icons along these lines! (I also can't make up my mind as to whether I need to make up my mind!)

Happy Birthday

I was backstage at a jazz festival once when musician Anthony Braxton came in to greet some of the people who had already been on stage. "Thank you for your music," he said. A simple greeting, and the only thing I'd feel like saying to complete-stranger-to-me Bob Dylan on his 70th birthday. Plus a thank you for the words.

This blog is essentially connected with my field of work, so there isn't so much that's personal, so why mention Dylan's 70th birthday today? Well, since the name of this blog is taken from a Dylan lyric (and explains why there's little personal opinion on the blog – after all we're all idiots, blowing "Idiot Wind" every time we move our teeth, and that seems to sum up much blogging) I thought I should mark it. His music has accompanied me since I was about 15 or 16 years old and helped me make (non)sense of the world since Blood on the Tracks (or was it Blonde on Blonde that I first bought? Specifics are unimportant. Best to take the songs as a whole for his 70th, and you can chose which Dylan you want: hence my quick cut-up above). So, at the risk of being pointless, a personal selection of 15 songs performed by Dylan and 5 covers by other folk to celebrate with.

Watch the full episode. See more In Performance at The White House.

The Times They Are a-Changin': performed at the White House. The Guardian reviewer disliked the performance, which illustrates how one can be on a different planet of opinion. (While many writers generally struggle to either "get" Dylan or to make him fit their idea of what he "is" or should be.) Singing to the largely popular, most powerful man in the world, President Obama, "The first ones now/ will later be last" resonates with not protest-song but humble truth, as does Dylan's minimalist and beautiful rendition 

Things Have Changed After the times changed, things changed, not least for himself: "I used to care/but things have changed". The video is a fun example of Dylan as the song and dance man he has described himself as. Pathos and disappointment: "You can hurt someone and not even know it" and "All the truth in the world adds up to one big lie" 

Dixie: from the film and CD Masked an Anonymous. Because a seemingly unexpected choice of traditional song can still be given classic yet new voice 

Red River Shore Bob can always handle a love song in all its shapes, not least this one of loss and regret. (Plus I'd just read Octavia Butler's great time-slip novel of slavery, Kindred, and if anyone makes a movie of that, this – coincidentally and strangely – is the final song.) 

Mississppi (first version from Tell Tale Signs). It was good on Love and Theft, it's just great here. Funny, tragic, lilting: "I was raised in the country/been living in the town/I've been in trouble ever since I set my suitcase down" 

Everything is Broken Because, well… it is 

Queen Jane Approximately Anyone creative who has been "tired of yourself and all of your creations" will recognise this 

Sara Another love song, another lost-love love song, and an adult one with children involved in the divorce, great descriptive verses and a heartfelt chorus 

Tomorrow is a Long Time Written by Dylan and not a cover of a traditional song – though when I first heard it I thought it was, and in its timelessness it might as well have been. "There's beauty in that silver, singing river/there's beauty in that rainbow in the sky/But none of these and nothing else can touch the beauty/that I remember in my truelove's eyes" 

Every Grain of Sand Dylan borrows a Blakean phrase for the chorus but the rest of the words are his and he leads you through something of the awe (and questioning) of his religious beliefs, and even if you don't share the beliefs, you can share the awe 

Must be Santa After a few slower songs listed above, time for one from Dylan's tongue-in-cheek/not-tongue-in-cheek Christmas album, and a strange video that has him as some sort of dissolute uncle at a Christmas party turning violent. "Play it fucking loud," I'd say 

Billy 4 Part of Dylan's extraordinary soundtrack to Sam Peckinpah's great Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, which also saw Dylan create "Knocking on Heaven's Door" apparently overnight, and apparently reducing the drummer to tears of emotion in the single take 

Don't Think Twice it's Alright (alternative version from No Direction Home). This is not a love song, just a great song of a failed relationship voiced superbly with words of care, sarcasm and withheld bitterness to almost ironically gentle guitar: "You just kind of wasted my precious time/but don't think twice, it's alright" 

Forever Young (from Live at Budokan). There are several versions of this hymn to a friend, lover or family (in Dylan's case apparently to his son), and this is just one great one 

Tangled Up in Blue One of Dylan's "story" songs, which as he explains below, are less story songs, than situations looked at from different views. Hurting and seeking: "She was working in a topless place/And I stopped in for a beer/I just kept looking at the sight of her face/in the spotlight so clear"

Covers (though the originals will naturally also do):
The Times They Are a-Changin', from the film Masked and Anonymous. In the film, a cynical promoter introduces a child (played/sung in this short appearance by Tinashe Kachingwe) who's strangely been made to learn a Dylan song, and Dylan listens/watches her perform from a position of a different generation and the same understanding

Cover: Like a Rolling Stone, by Articolo 31. The original song in this Spanish-language hiphop-ish cover backgrounds as a sample, but the result and knowledge of the original classic make this just infectious and great. Also from Masked and Anonymous

Cover: Death is Not the End, by Nick Cave. Suitably featuring on Cave's Murder Ballads album, a great, tragic, passionate, and occasionally comic dirge: "When the cities are on fire/with the burning flesh of men/just remember that death is not the end"

Cover: When the Ship Comes in, by Marcus Franklin from I'm Not There. A cool, clear folk song, sung so coolly and clearly by a roughly 12-year-old Marcus Franklin

Cover: Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again, by Cat Power from I'm Not There. Dylan's so often-present humour is to the fore in this song, with an suitably upbeat version by Cat Power. ("Grandpa died last week/now he's buried in the rocks/but everybody still talks about/how badly they were shocked/But me, I expected it to happen/I knew he'd lost control/when he lit a fire on Main Street/and shot it full of holes")

Interview with Dylan in the 80s, uploaded to YouTube by the director:

Plus Idiot Wind, Just Like a Woman, Shelter from the Storm, Blood in my Eye, Just Like Tom Thumb Blues, I Shall be Released, Highway 61, Moonlight, Desolation Row, Ballad of Thin Man, Make You Feel My Love, Lay Lady Lay, It's Alright Ma, I'm Only Bleeding

Manga plates

Very neat graduation project idea by Mika Tsutai: Japan is famous for the serving of meals on several plates, so Mika took details from a manga page-layout and split the frames into plates. Great fun.

More on Design boom.

Via watashi to tokyo

Rebuilding Japan

The magazine and website Monocle, has an interesting video report on rebuilding Japan – the reality and the possibility. Architects – and the oyster farmer concentrating on planting trees, above – express a hope for not only rebuilding but re-imagining. I can't embed the video, but it is viewable on the Monocle site here.

Power shortages

My photo and layout for the May issue of the Foreign Correspondents' Club of Japan in-house magazine, Number 1 Shimbun, about Japan's power shortages post-Fukushima. The photo shows a darkened Shinjuku on a Friday night one week after the quake. Things are returning to (relative) "normality" with power savings, but the long, hot, energy-consuming summer is still to come. Written by Japan Times' Osaka deputy editor, Eric Johnson, and online here.

Portraits: 14

Diamanda Galas, singer/musician, at her home, New York, 1992
Galas is well known for her difficult musical takes on (often painful) subjects, and this photo was to accompany a new album of blues covers – the article was titled "Lady Screams the Blues". (After it appeared her manager said they liked both photo and article title). When I met her at her apartment (all suitably black and white, including black candles) she had her recently-taken portrait by Annie Leibowitz propped against the wall in the entrance way, which gave me pause for thought on anything I might achieve photographically – although not so for Galas, who stood on no ceremony of heirarchy in the photographic world. Clearly interested in photos, she posed easily, and was a truly approachable and an engaging person. Again, I liked the Polaroid negative, including its damage from the peeling apart and handling, a result which seemed to especially suit her. I originally also printed it on colour paper, adding-in tints, but the black-and-white was used for the mono-printed The Wire.

For more on these portraits, see here, and the Portraits tag at right.

Light relief

Always good to get some welcome light relief these days. Tired of the saturation coverage of the affairs of the British monarchy? Tired of too much celebration over a death? Or happy for the couple and at the end of a terrorist who himself hideously celebrated death? The weekly round-up in print form from Britain's (daily) The Telegraph (my previous workplace) had the two main stories on one page – an above-the-fold photo and below-the-fold headline. You can please yourself whether this is hilarious, unlucky trivialising, fantastic design or …

via magculture

Take a Trip

I believe that the way the Japanese have responded to the quake, tsunami and aftermath seems to have made an impression on much of the world, so in the future I can see tourism rising, but in the short term, however, it has plummeted, with tens or even hundreds of thousands of cancelled hotel rooms and untaken trips. Yet Japan needs business to get itself righted, and tourism business is just one of those things.

For our "Golden Week" break we went to Aizu and environs in Fukushima Prefecture. With the 25th anniversary of Chernobyl and a meltdown in Fukushima Daiichi confirmed, it seems a good time to start re-promoting the area… Yes, this is the same prefecture with the damaged power station, but no, it's not close. While not diminishing the trauma of those close to the plant, there are parts of the prefecture almost as unaffected as Tokyo. But, of course, visits from home or abroad are down, and the whole area is looking for business.

We went to Ouchijuku – a small tourist destination that would make a good addition to anyone's Japan schedule. Sure, it's now a tourist spot, but 20 years ago it was just a forgotten town. Historically a staging post on the route through Japan's centre, modern living saw roads redirected, and Ouchijuku was forgotten. It continued a quiet existence until it was realised that it would be of interest to tourists. Although like a little stage set, it is an actual town, and the residents continue to live there. Now, most of the old thatched houses which line both sides of its unpaved main street are restaurants or gift shops. But the street is as it was – simply open for tourists. Old (100 years plus) Japan is not always as easy to find as in Europe. Though there is plenty, recent events plus wooden houses show why there isn't as much history at every turn – and Ouchijuku is a curious spot (if you don't mind a certain degree of crowds. Even with rain and visitor-numbers down, the street was relatively full on this national holiday. Non-national holiday/non-weekend there'll be fewer people).

But with pre-holiday visitors few and far between, and other places in the area also seeing smaller numbers, many shop keepers genuinely said "thanks for visiting". And the fire-grilled fish in the restaurant we ate at was superb. So, if planning a Japan visit you don't have to limit yourself to the unaffected west, or the lightly-affected Tokyo, try giving Fukushima some of your custom.

Getting there: I went by car, so I'm getting this advice from elsewhere! Tobu Limited Express from Kita-Senju to Kinugawa Onsen, change to the Kinugawa Line to Aizu Kogenoze Guchi, and finally take the Aizu Line to Yunokami Onsen. It's 6km from the station, so you can walk or get a taxi – apparently, no public transport serves the town. So a stay in the area, for example, in Aizu with its castle, samurai house and old shopping street, may be the best option if you're carless.

updated Nov 2011, to tie-in with a post linking to my list of destinations on CNNGo

Hidden in the folds

Beautiful origami by Takayuki Hori. The transparent paper is pre-printed as though with an X-ray of the skeleton of an animal, also revealing the thrown-out human-created garbage it has swallowed, and ten folded into its origami shape. It's intended as a comment on Japan's polluted waterways, and is a spooky, sad comment on Japan's professed love of nature. He calls it oritsunagumono – things folded and connected. A slideshow on Fastcodesign and elsewhere, for the artist (who won a Mitsubishi Junior Designer Award last year for the work.) I can't find a website for Hori yet.
(Update, Sat 14: republished from Thursday after Blogger had some problems and unpublished stuff)

Tsuneko Sasamoto

I don't like to concentrate on age, but once in a while it becomes part of someone's story. So it is with Tsuneko Sasamoto, who opened an exhibition of some of her photos, taken between 1945-58, last night (at the Foreign Correspondents' Club of Japan). Sasamoto has been freelancing in reportage and portraiture since 1947 and is now 96 years old. Dapper, fashionable, a bright and approachable personality, she is also still working. Last year she went to New York (for the first time) to photograph Japanese women working there.

In a brief talk I had with her at the opening, she said she wanted to go again this year but it gets difficult as time goes by. And anyway, she also would like to go back to the West Coast of America (first trip there was in 2002) and visit the Napa Valley – as she does like red wine.

In some ways, she's an inspiration to us all. In others, she's more just herself rather than any "role model", a great example of spirit. For age is only part of the story: her photographs are gentle, observational, positive takes on people which, apart from a wonderful technical execution, almost have an aura – perhaps simply of affection for the subject.

She has an interest in social questions, leading to such photos as "Maria of Ant Town" (of a woman who helped children in a makeshift shanty town of post-WWII Tokyo, below right in the layout) but she photographs anyone – socialist politicians or the Imperial family, space researchers or ballet dancers – it's her love of people that comes through foremost. There's little that's stylised, but much that's captured with a firm but gentle eye.

After speaking with her, perhaps that's the "secret" to her continuing to work – a curiosity about things, a happiness to engage. I'd love to see her recent work (which includes the digital – this show, obviously, features work from Rolleiflex and Leica cameras). Meanwhile, there's not just her work and her continuing to do so, but the fact that she was a "pioneer": she's seen as the first Japanese female photojournalist and continues her interest in women's lives.

I laid out a piece on her work by Lucy Birmingham (above) in the FCCJ in-house magazine last year, and was glad of the opportunity to meet her: it was a pleasure.

Yes, I got her to sign my pamphlet

Print again

The regular issue, the Royal Wedding special and then a bin-Ladin-is-dead special. TIME prints three issues in a week. And there's still something to be said for print, after all, the immediate online release saw the story changing anyway…

Update, Monday 16 May: Having finally read a copy last week, I hadn't realised this is the 4th X cover – Hitler, then Saddam Hussein, Abu Mousab al-Zarqawi (you'd forgotten him) and now bin Laden. Is this not too many, somewhat weakening the X effect: one in the previous century, 3 since 3003? Inside, two articles say that bin Laden had outlived his relevance, which seems at odds with the importance attached to the coverage of the event – and the cover design. Quibbles or worth noting?

Akko

Akira Kobayashi has designed or redesigned many fonts at Linotype – some you'll probably have seen, or just have, like Optima Nova, Zapfino or DIN Neue. He has a new, designed-from-scratch font called, appropriately enough, Akko.

Jarnz

Today sees the release of the new CD single for a newly promoted Jarnz (じゃ〜んず）– "Donzoko Heaven"（どんぞこヘヴン）. With lyrics that say something like, "Do the best you can do/the lowest hell is heaven" it sounds like a song for the times here in Japan. I designed the cover – the original idea of a turtle on its back (even upside down, it will right itself) got designed out, until now the idea of that remains in the title, with the two words at 180 degrees to each other. (And the turtle remains as a little icon under the title).

Seems to be doing allright on its release – the download already number 1 in an indie chart, Amazon temporarily out of stock, and the song already an advertisement used in Hokkaido (where the group – five voices, beat box, no instruments – are from).

CD available from Amazon here, small clip of their singing it on the street here,

Taro addition

Over the weekend, someone anonymously added a section of ghostly figures rising from the ruins of the Fukushima power plant to Taro Okamoto's huge mural "The Myth of Tomorrow", which was moved into Shibuya station concourse a few years ago. The addition has been swiftly removed – after all, you can't have someone adding the imagery of danger from a damaged nuclear power plant to a painting of the effects of nuclear weapons. Full picture from AFP here. (Above a detail from my photo, taken when the work was newly installed in Shibuya, and a detail from a mobile upload from Tokyo Times.)

Extreme deconstruction

Came across this poster for a Noi Shigemasa exhibition by Ken Miki. In the bottom left, you can see Noi Shigemasa's name in kanji (野井成正) and those kanji have been deconstructed into the graphic lines that make up the poster. I don't know how native Japanese read it, but it's a (fun) challenge for me with my limited kanji knowledge in the first place!

Warning sign

25 years after Chernobyl, as Russia attempts to encase the site in a concrete dome, and as Japan starts out on the same problem in Fukushima, it's the first time I saw this from 1993: the Sandia National Laboratories discussion on how to warn future generations that a nuclear waste disposal area is a hazardous area. Thousands of years hence, any connection to language or knowledge of the storage facility's function may well have been lost, so how do you design warnings that cross language barriers, and hopefully indicate danger and don't pique an interest in archeologically opening up the facility. The report's compilers may not be designers, but the came up with a couple of suggestions which include the large "danger" marker stones surrounding the area, above – and could a designer do any better? What signs, what images, what architecture would convey that information across vast, culture-changing stretches of time?