Hasta La Ideas

Party‘s promo for Japanese channel Space Shower TV featured animated sperm dancing to viewer-chosen tracks, and when it came to sourcing the raw material for the production, the all-male team did it by hand

CR is at the Design Indaba conference all this week and reporting back on some of the sessions and work we’ve seen. At the end of each conference day there’s always one project that everyone is talking about – yesterday it was Masahi Kawamura and his dancing sperm.

Regular CR readers will be familiar with much of Kawamura’s work – both individual projects such as his music videos for Sour and Androp and his work as one of the partners at ‘digital lab’ Party. The Space Shower TV project he showed yesterday has had somewhat less exposure than those other works.

Party was asked to create a promo for the music channel’s Music Saves Tomorrow project and picked on the idea of featuring ‘the seeds of tomorrow’. They decided to create a film using animated sperm which could also be made into an interactive experience. And rather than use CGI, in typical Kawamura style, they decided to use real raw material. With an all-male team making the work, the first step was to ask everyone to, er, contribute.

The final version of the website (URL sperm.jp) allowed users to choose a track from Vimeo which the sperm would dance to:

Kawamura made the point that with a lot of his projects, the making-of films are more popular than the finished work, people enjoying the laborious process he goes through.

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The March issue of CR magazine celebrates 150 years of the London Underground. In it we introduce a new book by Mark Ovenden, which is the first study of all aspects of the tube’s design evolution; we ask Harry Beck authority, Ken Garland, what he makes of a new tube map concept by Mark Noad; we investigate the enduring appeal of Edward Johnston’s eponymous typeface; Michael Evamy reports on the design story of world-famous roundel; we look at the London Transport Museum’s new exhibition of 150 key posters from its archive; we explore the rich history of platform art, and also the Underground’s communications and advertising, past and present. Plus, we talk to London Transport Museum’s head of trading about TfL’s approach to brand licensing and merchandising. In Crit, Rick Poynor reviews Branding Terror, a book about terrorist logos, while Paul Belford looks at how a 1980 ad managed to do away with everything bar a product demo. Finally, Daniel Benneworth-Grey reflects on the merits on working home alone. Buy your copy here.

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