The campaign “Spring Break,” produced by JKD Collective for Airbnb China, is a series that travels through four cities popular among Chinese millennials as spring break destinations: Okinawa, Taipei, Bangkok, and Seoul. A total of four videos were produced in a documentary style. The campaign concept is “Been There, Not Done Yet.” Even in famous tourist destinations you’ve already visited, there is always deep local culture known only to the people who live there. Exploring some of Asia’s most notable travel spots from a local’s perspective, the campaign proposed a unique and lesser-known way to travel. Bangkok, the chaotic city. Its appeal is something that cannot be fully understood after just one visit, drawing travelers back again and again. The Bangkok edition of the video series produced by JKD Collective for Airbnb China is a journey to discover Thailand’s contemporary design and craft, and the sophistication hidden within the chaos, in a city that is now on the verge of a dynamic evolution.

Commissioned to create an installation for the masterpiece Alice in Wonderland, I wanted to create a space where visitors could feel as if they had entered the mysterious world within the story. The various unbelievable events Alice experiences are wondrous, but at the same time they are filled with the intellectual curiosity and excitement we felt as children—thoughts like “Wouldn’t it be great if this happened?” and “What if this happened?” For the installation, we wrote down countless “wouldn’t it be great if...” ideas and exchanged many proposals, and in the end we decided on the concept of John Tenniel’s beautiful illustrations coming to life and moving in response to the viewer. The small 2.5-meter-square room was designed as a “special place for connecting with Alice’s world.” Inside the 14 frames hanging on the walls are iPads, each displaying a character from Alice’s story. Based on John Tenniel’s original illustrations, 3D model data was created for the characters, and through shader programming, real-time image processing makes them look like paintings drawn with hatching techniques, so at first glance they appear to be ordinary framed artworks. When a person stands on the carpet in the center of the room, a Kinect v2 sensor detects their pose, and all the characters in the frames slowly begin to move and “mimic” the person’s stance. The playfulness that fills Alice’s world contains many suggestions for the way we live and work today. Dutch historian Johan Huizinga argued that “play” is the essence of human activity and the source from which culture arises. French philosopher Roger Caillois developed this view of humanity, identifying mimicry, meaning “imitation,” as one of the four fundamental elements of play, and noting that it played a particularly important role in primitive societies. In addition, in Mozart, Hideo Kobayashi points out that Mozart was a genius of imitation, and that his original music was born out of imitation. We can discover many things through play and develop culture. We created this work in the hope that many people, through the story of Alice and this exhibition, would feel the importance of filling everyday life with more play.

Description: We produced a brand film for AITRIOS, Sony’s sensing platform centered on edge AI.

While holding their beloved instruments in a semi-realistic style 🎸🥁 the clay characters are singing their hearts out for us ☀️