We planned and produced a special movie to coincide with the launch of shu uemura’s Christmas limited-edition collection featuring artist Takashi Murakami’s “Flower” artwork. The concept was “Tokyo Wrapping.” The story follows a female protagonist and a spherical drone character as they fly all around the sleeping streets of Tokyo, wrapping the city in ribbons adorned with Murakami’s art. Murakami himself also made a cameo appearance. The film was created using a technique based on light painting, in which light is moved while the camera shutter speed is slowed to draw trails, and shot with a piece of equipment called a pixel stick. Through the dancers’ elegant yet dynamic movements as they manipulated the stick, the film depicts ribbons being wrapped around the city of Tokyo. The director was Genki Ito, one of the most acclaimed visualists in the creative scene. This brand movie was born from a chemical reaction between Ito’s aesthetic sensibility and JKD Collective, inspired by Takashi Murakami’s art.

Whatever New York collaborated with Blockchain Creative Labs, FOX Entertainment’s NFT studio and one of the main sponsors of SXSW, to plan, create, and produce a wide range of content. This included developing Blockchain Creative Labs’ corporate identity (CI), designing BCL’s base of operations at SXSW, creating various blockchain-powered installations, producing NFT works in collaboration with artists such as American singer Dolly Parton, developing NFT art and outdoor advertising inspired by films and music showcased at SXSW, and organizing thought leadership programs on blockchain and NFTs.

For the production, CG and generative AI were used in tandem, and the work was developed by designing structure, light, and material qualities while also incorporating forms and movements that emerged accidentally. In the end, the piece was composed, edited, and color-corrected across multiple tools, aiming for a visual expression in which human intention and the unpredictability of algorithms coexist.

This is a documentary video of Masaya Ishikawa’s first solo exhibition, “Layers of Light,” held from Monday, February 8 to Sunday, February 21, 2021. Working as a graphic designer and visual expression researcher, Ishikawa developed an original three-dimensional image device in 2020 using the principles of light wavelengths. At the same time, as an artist, he has been creating works that explore new forms of expression by making the most of the device’s characteristics and constraints. With this new medium, which comes with significant limitations—“up to three layers” and “the color of each layer is fixed”—he has applied insights from cognitive science and animation to uncover several rich veins of expression and turn them into works of art. These are sculptural forms and animations made of light, with a vivid sense of three-dimensionality that can only truly be experienced by seeing them in person. This recording was made in the hope of conveying even a little of that texture.