Random collection…
Just in case you thought Tokyo was alive with colour – here’s the grey, grey, grey and more grey view from our (very nice residency flat). Must get plant. Followed swiftly by a car turntable – an amazing piece of design and a lot of effort to ensure you don’t need to reverse out of a car park… And I get told off by the security guard for filming at the end! So engrossed I didn’t realise he was trying to tell me to stop… I’m fascinated by things that spin at the moment… however slowly! And I stumbled across these plants all tied up. Loved how dense and intense this became – have no idea why this was happening – a way of making them grow in certain shapes??
All tied up…
So I’m going to start posting video shorts of things I’m finding interesting. I’m keeping some of the best up my sleeve as I’ll probably use them as a basis for some new films. It has been pretty cold and wet here in Tokyo so far – so I’m starting with some umbrella related ones…
Nifty Device for Keeping Wet Umbrellas Dry…
Pa-Pa-Pa-Pa-PAPAPAPA-Pa-chin-kooooo!
One of the things I most wanted to do before I arrived in Tokyo was go to a Pachinko Parlour (‘Tokyo-GA’ – Wim Wender’s film again -has a truly beautiful sequence shot in one – watch here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rur5k3BCSI8 )
So today I braved the torrential rain with my new see-through umbrella and caught the Ginza metro line to Kanda station and walked the short distance to Akihabara – otherwise known as Electric City.
I’ve got some amazing footage which I’ll edit into something presentable and load up but in the meantime words will have to suffice…
Pachinko is a type of upright pin ball machine – lots of tiny sliver metal balls go whizzing round. Nearly 30 years on from Wender’s footage – Pachinko now features not just hundreds of metal balls clattering round and down a brightly painted surface – but also thousands of flashing LEDs surrounding a Manga style cartoon sequence. AND the speakers at head height blaring an accompanying cacaophony. AND then one of the Parlour ladies yelling something over the top on a microphone. Nothing stays still for more than a split second. It’s unbelievably loud with a room full of row upon row of machines back-to-back (and 7 floors of rooms). Walking into the Big Apple Pachinko Parlour today was a physical experience of noise, like walking into a wall. Totally deafening and with no rhyme or reason to make sense of what you hear it becomes a blanket wrapped around your head. And there’s a beautiful orchid plant in the corner soaking it all up. Japanese society seems to me to be full of contradictions.
I played a bizarrely marriage themed Pachinko game – bright pink and silver – in “wedding road maisonikboku” you have to choose an eligible male manga character – and if you’re good at it get to hold hands at the end. I wasn’t and also can’t read japanese so this is pure guesswork.
The idea is to control the flow of balls falling through the brass pins in such a way that they go into the hole at the base. These ones pop out so you can feed then back into the game, prolonging your ‘go’. It costs 1000 yen minimum to play (for 2 gos). So that’s roughly £8 spent in under 10 minutes. The machines accept 10,000 yen notes (£80) and have a mostly male clientele mostly in business suits. If you’re super-good and amazingly flukey (as they are engineered for you to fail) you can collect enough sliver balls to qualify for prizes. Possibly this is what was being shouted over the microphone. Even the poor girl mopping the floor had a uniform of bright pink miniskirt and thigh-high white socks. Practical!
The wall of noise, the flashing lights, the fixation of tiny little shiny balls spinning around, the warmth and weight of them in your hand as you feed the few hard won back into the machine. After sticking it out long enough to break through the pain barrier – it makes sense – it’s all hypnotic. And impossible to think about anything else. Possibly the most effective way of disappearing altogether. And as I wondered around after my short-lived game, rows of people slumped in their seats as if in a trance. Faces reflecting flickering lights as they gazed without blinking into oblivion.
Pure information overload. Beautiful and terrifying at the same time.
a small taster…
Rhoades every where…
Last night I slept 3:30am to 6:30am. I just couldn’t fall asleep. Partly over-saturation from an amazing day and partly jet lag. My mind was buzzing with ideas and possibilities and when I awoke and couldn’t get back to sleep I decide to read a Jason Rhoades essay I had brought with me. It’s actually an transcript of a conversation between Rhoades and Eva Mayer-Hermann discussing his ‘Perfect World’ installation in 2000.
It’s called:
“A Place Where Nobody
Could Step
Over My
Extension Cords
Or: The Next Level.
At the End of
the Rainbow.
Perfect World.”
Genius. Emphasis his.
Some of what he had to say seemed to relate directly to my recent work – installations with moving image responding to information excess.
“All pieces of mine are kind of models or metaphors for the physical world. The piece starts from a small model, then as a public you’re next to a bigger model, then you realize that you are in an even bigger model, you compare it to your scale. Within this structure it is infinite to either direction… The work is about how you come into these experiences or moral questions or physical questions. It is how you perceive them. For example, you freak out about bugs, they are small but they are many. You have power over them, but then you realize that you are the same size as the bugs and you treat the relationship differently…” [Rhoades (2000) p.18]
And then later discussing machine elements of the ‘Perfect World’ (which included amongst others a slow printer continuously printing pictures of his father’s allotment…)
“You have various kinds of machines, like a history of machines. They are all included in the structure, one being the buffing machine, another the printer, the sewing machine and the lifts. They are a bit like keys. There are certain technological revolutions which happened in these machines which helped building this apparatus… I would be very happy if all my materials and my tools, all my fantasy of physical elements will be there: like a pile of pipes, a pile of clamps, pile of paper, pile of fabric, all these industrial quantities of things would be there.” [Rhoades (2000) p.22]
Food for thought as I reflect on my last piece of work which was in Chelsea Triangle Space as part of the CapeFarewell show ‘Without Boats – Dreams Dry Up’ the week before we came here.
What develops from this most recent piece of my work and out of this place remains to be seen…
Text: ‘Jason Rhoades – Perfect World’ (2000) ed. by Zdenek Felix and published by Oktagon to coincide with a solo show at Deichtorhallen Hamburg
Shibuya and the Special Melon…
Ya means valley according to our majestic Japanese CCW contact here Gen. Gen is a bit like the key to Pandora’s box. Not understanding any Japanese characters means that everything is unknowable. Although very pictorial in some ways – meaning is always floating out of reach. So I am surrounded by signs – but ones that have no signifier. It is easy to see the power of a translator here – a gatekeeper to meaning.
TWS Aoyama is in Shibuya – a central (and as mentionned before) extremely expensive area of Tokyo. About 15 minutes walk away is the famous Tokyo 5 way pedestrian crossing. We walked through this today as we orientated ourselves in the area a bit. After the snow of a couple of days ago – it was raining today. Yorkshire type rain – the fine rain that wets people through as Peter Kay might say. Millions of people got out their umbrellas and I was fascinated by the visual disruption and pattern these created and shot some nice videos using my little Samsung HD camera. I am hoping for more rain.
We had great fun in the supermarket afterwards. Food – expecially fruit and vegetables – are extremely expensive. There was a special melon in the supermarket. And when I mean special I mean 3,800 yen. According to XE.com that’s £29. It even had a special red ribbon rosette stuck on the top. Mushrooms and beansprouts were the only inexpensive items – about 100 yen – 80p. A single potato was also 80p…
I have a feeling I will mostly be eating beansprouts and mushrooms…
