Masashi Kawamura is a leading light in the creative world, doing art/ads/music videos with a beautiful whimsy about them. So lets check some of his stuff out. Japanese indie punk/organic band Sour have done some amazing video collaborations with Masashi Kawamura:
Sour – Hibi no Neiro (Tone of everyday)
On YooouuuTuuube it looks even more trippy/amazing.
The alignment of the glow sticks and hearts and water droplets… wow. “This music video was shot for Sour’s ‘Hibi no Neiro’ (Tone of everyday) from their first mini album ‘Water Flavor EP’. The cast were selected from the actual Sour fan base, from many countries around the world. Each person and scene was filmed purely via webcam. ”
Sour – Hangetsu (Half moon)
Shadow hand puppets always interested me. They remind me of Halloween – child-like and creative but also dark and deceptive.
The packaging on the CD (designed by Masashi as well) could be folded into neat paper airplanes.
Sour - Rainbow Under the Overpass CD packaging
Sour – Omokage no saki (Beyond your memory)
Headphone wire stop motion animation. He re-purposes these everyday objects into dancing puppets on people’s shirts.
He is also one of the minds behind the Pythagora Switch TV show and fad, where people build Rube Goldberg machines and show them to the world, often singing it with the jingle of the show: “Pi-ta-gor-oh Su-i-tchi!” (”Pitagora Suitchi”). “Pitagora switch was a whole new concept for a children’s TV program for NHK devised by my colleagues and I while working at Masahiko Sato laboratory in 2002. It is still the most popular kids TV program in Japan. The 2 main ideas I created in the program are the “Pythagora Sochi”, where household objects are combined to create a Rube Goldberg-esque machine that ends with the title of the show. The other was the “Algorithm Exercise” which is a simple exercise where the body motions are made to co-ordinate with the person next to you. These 2 sections of the show soon became a fad, and are widely viewed on youtube, even by the people outside of Japan.”
2 Minutes of Pythagoras Switch
18 Minutes of Pythagoras Switch
Homemade Fan Pythagora Switch Videos: One / Two / Three
Set Your Fingers Free
Who didn’t make with their hands walk around like little lilliputians as kids? An ad for HTC touchscreen phones.
Rainbow In Your Hand
optical illusion
rainbow in your hand
inside
Awesome coffee table flip-book that makes an illusory rainbow float in your hands. Not available at Amazon, apparently sold out everywhere. Perfect gift for anyone and it’s sold out? Makes sense.
He has done a ton more, maybe I will go over it in another post, but you can go on and on researching all the awesomeness of Masashi Kawamura and never run out of awesome.
So I’ll simply link to his website here.
Trash Tank
Tisshoes
