This is the zodiac song for the Year of the Snake, “DAPPI,” which first aired on NHK’s “2355-0655 New Year’s Eve Special.”

The second installment of the 2024 zodiac song “Tatsukotatsu,” “Tatsumanatsu”

This is the zodiac song for the Year of the Dragon, “Tatsukotatsu,” which first aired on NHK’s “2355–0655 New Year’s Eve Special.”

An animation created for the newly established “Exchange Space” at the Nagano Prefectural Museum of Art. It is projected onto a large L-shaped screen formed by combining two walls, each 3 meters high and 12 meters wide. The “single line” that appears on a screen composed of simple monochrome colors moves according to the following rules: It moves by “tracing” a predetermined path. In other words, all the stories are connected by a single line. The length of the line is kept almost constant. Because of the constraint that the line’s length remains constant, it is impossible to view the full story all at once as a single picture. While following the ever-moving line with their eyes, viewers can actively take part in the work and enjoy it by unraveling and imagining the hidden story. As the single line transforms in diverse ways—into a small bird, a girl, a submarine, a crocodile, a spider’s web, and more—the story unfolds. When viewed as a video, however, it becomes clear that the work has a three-part structure: after the first story, “the story of a certain bird,” and the second story, “the story of a certain girl,” come to an end, the two are combined to create a third, new story. The composition in which “two stories meet” makes use of the L-shaped walls and is explored through both image and music.

A program aimed at helping viewers acquire “programming thinking” through video—before even touching a computer—in anticipation of programming education becoming mandatory in elementary schools from the 2020 academic year. https://www.nhk.or.jp/sougou/texico/