OKI SATO

Sato is a Japanese designer and architect, and founder of the design firm NENDO.

I have written two quotes below from an interview I watched of Sato last year.

“You’re starting from the possible and ending in the impossible, representing the theme of my work which is between two worlds.”

“What makes Tokyo interesting and really inspiring is that there’s always noise in the city and for me this noise is not really distracting. It gives me a lot of inspiration.”

I wholeheartedly enjoy Oki Sato’s design philosophy, in that nothing he completes ever looks like the beginning concept design, because a solution to problem never comes in a single form. It evolves over time, through research and meticulous experimentation.

Visually, Sato works in black and white, relying on only stark bare spaces and the contrast of artificial lighting. His design is not only aesthetically pleasing but clever.

MISTUO KATSUI

“In my opinion the essence of design is to reveal this interactive relationship between nature and our self from a totally innovative viewpoint or location; in other words, to exhibit a form that conveys surprise… The universe, man, nature, life—everything blends and reverberates” W.S./Rectures (Page 10).

Katsui is a designer who profoundly shaped the industry of experimental expressionist design in Japan. If I were born 50 years earlier, I would have described it as ‘alien’. Katsui’s expressionist graphic works show are created to show that everything in our life is a spectacular product of light. He describes that even just after birth, we create relationships with nature as our eyes develop and we begin to see our environment . I admire the way he puts the technicality of design second, focusing first on the pure feeling and essence of a subject. I truly believe that if one designer on the planet could visually design the essence of the word ‘essence’, Katsui would be that person.

DAIDO MORIYAMA

Moriyama’s acceptance of imperfection in the world is what first drew me to his work. Every moment of daily life when you feel alive is worth documenting. Walking around the bustling streets of Tokyo armed with a digital camera, Moriyama waits until he feels any surge of emotion and captures an image. My favourite works of his are below,

A photographic term I rather like is banality, where a mundane subject is captured through a caring or concerned eye. It raises the subject to a new level of awareness of something much bigger than itself. There is an underlying ‘something’ that is elevated through the act of photographic framing in banal photography.

Monochromatic, , Experimental, Prismatic, Surreal, Energetic

DESIGN SOLUTIONS

Sounds installations set up around the city in different key locations, where people may stop. There is a sound installation across the bridge at the Viaduct currently, made by an AUT lecturer Rachel Shearer. When you stand in a certain spot on the bridge, you can hear the murmuring and chanting of woman’s voices. It is at first very unnerving as you do not realize where it is coming from. It really is in a 1m area. But my immediate reaction after realizing I could hear something unusual, I searched for a sign to explain the installation. I think we could incorporate this idea into our group project, bringing awareness to culture and environment. One of the hardest things about beginning a campaign is growing awareness of it. Using a bizarre method of capturing audience attention, if the sound leads to a poster about the project, could just work.

A gallery film/ moving image incorporating all our work – game joystick or keyboard game set up in a gallery. for example Netflix’s Black Mirror Bandersnatch, but short. Use illustration, pattern making, coding, photography and typography in a multi-choice game. The game could be simple enough for a child to play, and it changes the environment to the gallery space as the choices move forward, eg cutting down trees makes it smoggy or planting a tree clears the air and birdcalls come back.

Make use of one of the ruined/ abandoned building spaces, like a haunted house. Immersive space that uses lighting and sound to get the viewer into a certain mood, before experiencing the exhibition at the back of the building. Abstract: The Art of Design is a Netflix series that focusses on different designers and creators across the world. At London’s Tate Modern gallery, Olafur Eliasson’s “The Weather Project” was a marvelous installation.