Roppongi Art Night 2019: A weekend journey of imagination.
Written by : Harry Li
My blog article is about my personal experience of exploring Roppongi Art Night 2019 on May 25th. I was involved in this event through the workshop organized by KUAC (Keio University Art Center) in collaboration with Roppongi Art Night 2019. During the workshop, we used an innovative way of system and design thinking to come up with methods that help improve the promotion of future Art Night events. To begin with, I would like to share my own experience, or a guide of what I have been doing during the event. I hope this article gives you a better idea of what this event is about.
My Schedule:
Date: 05/25/2019
Time: 3:00 pm~ 10:00 pm
Route: Roppongi station -> Roppongi Hills -> RedBall Project -> Mori Art Museum -> Roppongi Hills West Walk -> Suntory Museum of Art -> Fruit Tree-> Barcoder -> Mohri Garden
1. Red Ball Project
The RedBall Project is a public art project designed by American artist Kurt Perschke. I never imagined I would encounter such huge ball in the middle of the city, especially in Roppongi. It is a new form of art piece that “travels”. It was interesting to see different people make use of the red ball in their photos.
2. On the way to Mori Art Museum
After a brief stop at the red ball, I went straight to Mori Art Museum. The vivid environment of Roppongi was amazing. There were performers dancing and playing instrument on the street all the way from the station to Mori tower. It was the first time for me to participate in public art event and it was absolutely a relaxing moment in a busy week.
3. Roppongi Crossing 2019: Connexions - Mysterious Contemporary Art
Roppongi Crossing is a series of exhibitions organized by Mori Art Museum once every three years, held since 2004 as a comprehensive survey of the Japanese art scene. This year's exhibition took a close-up look at “connexions” revealed via contemporary artistic expression. The art style within was quite modern, and some of the installations have the AI and robotics elements in it. My favourite installation out of all was the collections of cats. First picture shows various cat teasers on the wall. I really like the combination of colors of various cats and the chinese characters on them, creating colorful visual effects. Second picture is about this installation called Cat Olympics by Nobuaki Takekawa. The cats on the field are all made of ceramic. Behind the field, there are various paintings of cat athletes. It was funny to watch sport event through the perspective of cats.
Also, the artwork entitled "Contact" by 目 [mé] was astonishing to watch. It mimics the scene of ocean, and it is interesting to see a still ocean. The ocean is calm and it reminds me some elements in Zen culture.
4. Pixar Exhibition: An Adventure to the World of Animation
One of my favorite exhibitions out of all is Pixar Exhibition. It illustrates how they produce an animation movie from 0 to 1. From explaining Story & Art to final animation rendering, this exhibition breaks a full movie into buildable pieces, and I like the idea of studying this type of knowledge through the fun. The interactive part is also well-structured. It attracts visitors to “play” with their devices in order to gain hands-on experience. I would recommend playing with car sprays for the movie Cars.
The educational aspect of this exhibition is influential, and it reminds me of one of my Computer Graphics classes. We did a lot of experiments on Cornell Box. Pixar actually sets up the box and shows how to simulate light and reflection through experiment. I think it is really professional to show the physics part of simulation.
And of course, all the movie characters.
5. Roppongi Hills West Walk: Hallway of various art forms
I encountered a lot of small but fun exhibitions in Roppongi Hills West Walk after I left Mori Art Museum , such as Singing Cobweb, Zsa Zsa Zsu, Serigaia Militia. Singing Coweb is a spider web that can “sing.” When you put your hand on it, it generates different music. It was really cool to combine the idea of spider web and music, giving the feeling of dragging people into the wall. Tromarama is the author for both Zsa Zsa Zsu and Serigaia Militia, using screens to express his art. Zsa Zsa Zsu is video made of buttons of different colors, and Serigaia Militia is using woodcut.
6. Roku Gin: Japanese Craft Gin
As always, it is good for the visitors to grab a drink when they are thirsty. Right in front of Roppongi Hills, there was a stand for alcohol. Roku Gin is the Japanese craft gin brand. After a drink, I felt refreshed and ready to go to the next place!
7. Roppongi Art Night Elements
I encountered several intriguing scenes and activities as I walked in the city of Roppongi. People were writing words on black boxes that shed rainbow light inside. There were also different forms of art pieces showing on the street. Various colors of the balloon attached to the wall seemed to symbolize a timeless daydream, which indeed referred to the theme "Night Journey, Daydream."
8. Suntory Museum of Art
Suntory is one of the oldest companies in the distribution of western alcoholic beverages in Japan. The Suntory Museum of Art held an exhibition of its collections of wine, whisky glasses and china.
9. Art Night activities
There was a lot of cool interactive stands around Roppongi Hills. One of the interesting stands I found is the Barcode. The staff asked me to hold the scanner and scan through different shapes of barcode and generate music. It made me think that if the supermarkets and convenience stores implement the music system along with the barcode, cashiers would be making music while scanning the products and it just adds a lot of fun to somewhat boring job. The imagination behind this really spurs some inspirations. Also, there were talks and other exhibitions around the area, and it was fun to just walk around and explore.
Summary:
I was really impressed about the various forms of art displayed during Roppongi Art Night. From large exhibitions to street performances, it was fun to explore the area. This was my first time joining such public art event and I was really impressed by it. The atmosphere was not only artistic but also relaxing, and I certainly enjoyed it. I’d like to recommend future travelers and students to join Roppongi Art Night next year!
Further thoughts about promoting this event:
So how can we promote this event in a more creative way? One of our original suggestions during brainstorming was that Roppongi Art Night can have theme songs that make people remember. Using 2x2 Matrix, we have plotted different ways of advertising such public event on a graph of visual and audio aspect, and we found out that these events tend to focus on the visual part like posters and flyers more than using the audio aspect.
We suggest that future event to add some focus on audio part in the promotion too. For instances, the theme of this year’s event was timeless dream. The music can be made to express this theme. With both music and visuals, it leaves people with a deeper impression. Maybe inviting singers to sing about it can bring more music fans to the festivals too.
Harry Li. I was born in Guangzhou, the south part of China. I went to study in United States when I was 15. I am studying Computer Science at University of California Berkeley. During my last year of university, I chose to take a study abroad program at Keio University and that is how I connect with Minato Ward. My interests are in cloud computing, computer graphics, apps, game development, virtual/augmented reality and artificial intelligence. In addition to computer science, I am also interested in Japanese culture. I have taken several Japanese classes in my school, including Japanese language and cinema. Website about me: yawenli.com
