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September 30, 2005
onedotzero Nippon 2005
It’s that time of the year again. onedotzero is rocking this small island nation with the onedotzero Nippon tour. We have a personal record going with four pieces in the J-Star program of this year’s festival, and they are:
Afra / Digital Breath (from last year’s Prefuse 73-produced album, Digital Breath)
Hifana / Wamono (From their brand new second album, Channel H)
Hifana / Mr.Beer (also from Channel H)
Takagi Masakatsu / Bloomygirls (unreleased)
The J-star program will be on today, Friday the 30th, at 1pm, and we (myself, +cruz, woog, Genki Ito) will be there to do some kind of very short talk / introduction. To be honest, I have no idea, but anyhow I will be there. If you have any interest in sampling the best motion graphics currently on offer in Japan, you should be too.
The whole festival is going on at Daikanyama’s Unit this year, so it will be interesting to see how they have things set up. There are a lot of other interesting events, as well as two live shows both Friday (UVA, Trevor Jackson) and Saturday (Ken Ishii, etc.) nights, so check the website for more. The odz title and identity this year is by Logan.
Posted by shane at 04:30 AM
September 28, 2005
Over Four Weeks In A (Large) Nutshell
When there’s too much to talk about, it often ends up that I simply don’t say anything at all. A whole lot has happened since the last post I made (a pathetically long time ago), and I’ll try to outline it here in something that promises to become somewhat of a long entry. Or perhaps it will split into parts.
First, I went to Korea for the second time in my life (first time to visit Seoul). The occasion was a lecture we gave at onedotzero Seoul. Actually this ties well into current events, as I’ve just come back from dinner with Shane (who share’s the same first name as me) Walters, the head of odz, who has just arrived today from London for the Tokyo festival which starts this Friday. Anyhow, a few weeks ago in Seoul, my AD, +cruz gave his lecture, asia.no.w.here, and then together we presented some of our latest work as W+KTokyoLab. This went ridiculously well, with extremely high attendance, despite a large entry fee (though to our credit, it was probably over three hours worth of content), and was complete with fans asking for autographs and photos with us afterwards. This is the first time I’ve experienced graphic designer rockstardom, and if I had to say anything about the phenomenon, I suppose it’s a bit awkward. We were subsequently interviewed by two Korean magazines, Graphics Live, and another whose name I don’t remember. Anyhow because I can’t read them, I don’t suppose it matters much. The night after the show, we VJed at a club called M2. As you can tell by the website, it’t not exactly my type of place, but it meant free drinks and fun all the same. As my friend Deigo commented, the visuals were too good for the music.
After returning from Korea, there was a bit of a welcome slow period for me at work. It was during this week that I started getting to hang out a bit with one of the important humans of the world (to me anyways), Tujiko Noriko.
Noriko, Rumie, Tacky
Noriko, Etienne
She and her boyfriend Etienne stayed for a week at my good friend Kenji’s place in Ebisu. There is plenty to talk about in relation to this, but I ought to save it for its own post, as I will attend two more of her performaces in the next few days, following which there will be even more to talk about.
The following week some good friends were in town for Tokyo Game Show, so I got a good dose of gaming geekdom, and more importantly hung out with the staff of 1up, and even more importantly with two particularly amazing individuals, Ryan and Jane, or should I say Ryan and Jane.
Jane and Ryan, Yamanote Line, Tokyo
After this, one Friday it was concurrently Gino’s (woog’s) birthday and Tujiko Noriko and Riow Arai’s RATN release party on the Japanese holiday, 秋分の日, at Superdeluxe. The night before that Eric and I had VJed at some club in Roppongi, which was good fun, but not such a great setup for visuals.
Eric, Sayaka, Gino, RATN release party
On the work tip, we’re producing an ID for Space Shower TV, which promises to be better than anything I’ve seen on the station so far (besides maybe some of our previous videos, and Hifana’s Zamurai TV). The piece is only 15 seconds, but with master designer woog, master animator Genki Ito, and master musician Tatsuya Yamada (Tyme. / Mas) on board, it should be a nice piece.
Posted by shane at 11:40 AM