Tag: Japan
Japanese artist Sebastian Masuda, who helped bring “kawaii culture” mainstream, wants to create a giant, cute time capsule in the shape of a Japanese bear in New York City. In this interactive art project, called Time After Time people are encouraged to fill a semi-transparent bear-like character with keepsakes and other personal items, creating a […]
Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter is a movie about obsession, isolation, and the extent to which people will go to escape reality. The drama follows Kumiko, masterfully played by Academy Award-nominee Rinko Kikuchi, as she travels from her dreary, lonesome life in Tokyo to Minnesota in search of a briefcase full of money that Steve Buscemi’s […]
The supercomputer technology that previously won Jeopardy is now heading to Japan to learn Japanese and develop cognitive abilities, the New York Times reports. With Japan’s SoftBank, IBM’s Watson will be able to perform “human-seeming tasks” like “parsing language, interacting in sympathetic ways and deducing important contextual information from huge amounts of data.” The hope […]
Leave it to the Japanese to show us how a beatboxing battle should really go down. This video by Seiichiro Shimizu pits contestants against one another with animated avatars illustrating the contest in a street fighter style scenario complete with power-ups, special moves and victory dances. The two work together in a symbiotic relationship with sound dictating action and providing […]
While the phallus is literally worshipped in Japan, representations of the vagina are considered taboo to the point of being criminally offensive. Dazed reports that Megumi Igarashi, the Japanese artist who was famously jailed for creating a kayak based on a 3D print of her vagina, has been re-arrested on the same charges of obsenity. […]
Here’s a fantastic music video for yaming’s “umio” produced by BRDG. It’s pulsating and completely overwhelming, cascading glitchy collages of various Japanese internet ephemera and interfaces, withering like electrocuted innards. Enjoy. (GIF: Prosthetic Knowledge) […]
Meanwhile, in Japan, Barack Obama is playing soccer with a robot. The president received a pass from Honda’s vaguely creepy humanoid bot ASIMO today as part of a technology- and security-focused visit to the country, according to the AP. After leaving Japan, he’ll visit South Korea, Malaysia and the Philippines. […]
Ordinarily, we wouldn’t encourage you to look at advertisements in your free time, but this Japanese-market Vitamin Water spot is an easy exception. Soundtracked by a goofily catchy new song about NYC by former Das Racist guy and all-around great rapper Heems (“New/plus York/equals New York!”), a dude with a weird turntable/boombox hybrid for a […]
The team at Animal Bikes — the similarly-named-but-otherwise-unrelated-to-ANIMALNewYork.com BMX company — went to Japan last year, and is dropping a new video next week. They released this six-minute promo today, featuring some ridiculous footage of the team shredding in Tokyo. Look out for Tyrone Williams, star of our Citi Bike BMX video, at around 1:45. […]
Void, a mechanical sculpture by artist Wit Pimkanchanapong, looks like a giant, floating spider. Thanks to a system of eight winches, it can fly around, moving freely through the air above a little parking lot. It’s pretty stunning on its own, but wait until it gets dark, and Void’s light comes on, then this happens: GIF magic! The […]
