"The Extending Arm"
2008 EUPHRATES
When you sit down on the chair and reach your arm out towards the target object (milk carton),
placed where it definitely seems like unreachable, your projected 'arm' unexpectedly starts to expand.
When your expanding 'arm' reaches the milk carton, you feel your hand touching it. It seems as though
your arm has completely extended. Here you can experience the gap between what you see and and what you touch.
Software development: YASUMOTO Masasuke
"Fly! Little Me"
2008 SAITO Tatsuya (SATO Lab.) + IDAKA Kumiko (SATO Lab.)
You stand still, flap your arms, and the little you takes flight. You feel yourself in the little you,
and have a strange feeling of floating. By delicately matching vision and physical movement, you feel a new sensation.
"21st Century Nyoi-Bo"
2008 KATSUME Yuichiro (SATO Lab.) , SATO Masahiko, KIRIYAMA Takashi
The moment you put your pool cue-like staff into the hole on the wall a line the same length you
have inserted appears on the screen, and starts to make various figures.
The staff in your hand and the line in the image are not actually connected, but since their
movements are synchronized, it almost seems as if the staff inserted in the hole is bending and freely moving through the image.
*Nyoi-Bo: Literally, 'Bound staff as you like' a magical staff wielded by the Monkey King in the classic Chinese novel "Journey to the West."
"Dot Man, Line Man"
2008 YASUMOTO Masasuke (KIRIYAMA Lab.) + ISHIKAWA Masaya (TOPICS), SATO Masahiko
Using principles of 'biological motion,' this piece transforms you into either 'Dot Man' or 'Line Man.' Standing in front of the screen, your movements are shown as either animations of dots or lines. 'Dot Man' encounters various things. Or, you become a strange creature 'Line Man' consisting only of lines. Those experiences make you feel like you have never felt before.
'Biological motion': the cognitive psychology field of how humans group and recognize patterns of movement generated by living forms from dot markers placed on articulated joints.
Sound design: SUGE Syun'ichi
"Micro Craftsman Training"
2008 EUPHRATES
Using a tiny 'calculation drill,' and following the image of a special camera which can magnify the pen point up to 60 times.
When you concentrate and finish the drill, you are surprised to see that you had written something far tinier than you had thought.
This is a piece that makes you realize that the resolution in your hands (the ability of your hands to perform specific functions)
can be much higher than the resolution for your eyes (the ability to discriminate small and detailed things).
Equipment supply: GOKO Camera Co., Ltd.
"Arithmetik Garden"
2007 SATO Masahiko + KIRIYAMA Takashi
In "Arithmetik Garden" you can actually experience calculation with your body. Before entering, you select a RFID tag-embedded card with a given number, put it on, and enter the garden. Each time you pass through a gate with a calculation formula on it, your card automatically calculates that number. When it totals exactly 73, you can leave the garden. At the end, you will have a different sense of numerology and calculation.
Funded: Hayao Nakayama Foundation for Science & Technology and Culture
Support: Dai Nippon Printing Co., Ltd., Takaya Corporation, Total Interior Sugahara Co., Ltd.
Graphic design: ISHIKAWA Masaya
Software development: YASUMOTO Masasuke
Device development: FUJITA Yoshikazu
