- Brandon Boyer
Brandon Boyer
IGF chairman and Venus Patrol founder Brandon Boyer will introduce us to the workings behind probably the most important annual event in Independent Game history to date, which takes place in San Francisco. Indie Gaming is slowly recovering the human dimension of an apparently monolithic multi-billion gaming industry and maybe also changing the way gamers and audience will perceive gaming in the near future. Edu-gaming, DIY game development and non-esoteric, homemade game design may be much closer than we think - and IGF and its broad base of supporters are making this happen.
- SEFEU
SEFEU
SEFEU aimed to do the impossible, to combine the hyper-productivity and populist powerhouse of weekly tanpen and rensai mangas with the brutal humor and ferocious non-conformism of Garo. Even its name is a blasphemous pun directed towards a generally straight-laced and quite conservative Romanian SciFi, while celebrating the fictive expansion into an uncharted graphic and storytelling territory. Very similar to the heta-uma aesthetics of 80s Japan, SEFEU combines the contradictions of naiveté and de-skilling - with ultra-high workmanship.
- Naoya Haga
Naoya Haga
Naoya Haga lives and works in Sapporo. His spidery contours can meander trough ocean depths and between the root system of trees. Abstraction is not just geometry or a retreat into essentialist trappings. Abstraction can well search for the difficult to represent alveolar arrangements in nature, from chambers of anthills to grapes of bodies with their own inside chambers. Naoya Haga redirects attention towards unobtrusive details that nonetheless fixate and anchor reality.
- Yuriko
Yuriko
Yuriko creates original manga and illustrations. She is the author of the manga “Satohoro”, where transportation facilities in Sapporo are personified as characters. “Satohoro” was present as a visual work rather than a manga at the “Fanon revealed” exhibition in Sapporo, which was held in 2011 as a preceding event to the Sapporo Biennale. In 2012, she created the posters and stickers for Otaku Festival 2012. She also drew a Sapporo-based cover illustration for Otaku MAG.
- Gino Bud Hoiting
Gino Bud HOITING
Gino Bud Hoiting is a Dutch artist/illustrator based in Paris. Influenced both by Dutch Modern Papier and Zap Comics, he is exploring a DIY world of spidery doodles and notebook simplicity. His analogue pages have an almost textile quality to them. His complex horror vacui hand drawn imagery is spilling over with characters that seem to reach to the early animation pioneers and their unrepentant hunger for doodling.
- S-AIR
Interview: S-AIR
Many artist residencies around the world literally constitute an archipelago of artistic autonomy and creative freedom, increasingly important as a permanent local base for cultural production and the critical flow of ideas and concepts. For over 12 years S-AIR has offered its unique support to a varied and international group of artists and cultural workers. This Japanese artist residency in Hokkaido is encouraging designers, artists and even movie makers to apply. S-AIR directly demonstrates the importance of such residencies for the entire cultural ecosystem of the surrounding city.
- Satoshi Kon
Satoshi Kon Animation as Magic, Illusion and Realism
One could write entire volumes or talk for hours about Satoshi Kon (1963-2010), and the subject would still be far from exhausted! Even after hours and hours of watching and re-watching, his works never cease to amaze. Even after his tragic and painful early passing, he remains one of the most original, innovative and creative animation artists. His movies, diverse through genre and approach, amaze, hypnotize, sometimes even frighten the viewer; nevertheless, once within the universe of his works, one can’t hold back from wanting to revisit them.
- Design Festa
Design Festa
Design Festa opens its gates to over 10.000 artists. This “world” made possible for anyone who brings original art into being to participate regardless of age, nationality and genre. Throughout its 2 days duration, this biannual event continues to increase in size and it “storms” the visitor’s senses by binding syncretic and eclectic artistic styles and cultural manifestations.
- Toys
...The Designer Toys Superclass
In today’s toy scene, urban vinyl toys are the seductive young rebels, a photogenic wonder and an aesthetic thrill, unlike most everyday mind-numbing toys. Their history (not so long, but quite energetic) follows the course of a peculiar ingeniousness that came to be a classic landmark in the world of those who appreciate, collect or create art toys.
- Adventure Time!
What time is it? It’s Adventure Time!
One of the shows that have been gaining a cult following in the last couple of years is Adventure Time. With a world that’s on the frontier between weird and wonderful, Adventure Time has managed to become a sensation among different subcultures, among children and young adults at the same time.
- Ukiyo-e Heroes
Ukiyo-e Heroes
Jed Henry & Dave Bull are retroactively finding precedents for some of the most iconic heroes of the gaming world. We know of the legendary prehistory of manga in the age of samurai's and woodcuts. Legendary adversaries join together, battling beyond temporal boundaries or stylistic unity. These neo-ukiyo-e are pushing the Japanese gaming world full circle. Demons, monsters, ghosts There is nothing anachronistic here, the past and present intermingle showing us unsettling similarities, uncanny analogies and humorous juxtapositions.
- Hatsune Miku
Exclusive Inteview with Crypton Future Media
The blue-haired virtual diva Hatsune Miku has become a worldwide phenomenon. What we are witnessing is the magic co-emergent capacities of both its initiators and fandom elaborating, expanding and diversifying the initial success story of the most celebrated Japanese vocaloid superstar yet to grace the concert halls. Hatsune Miku brings with her the promise to harness the limitless and continuous creative reproduction of its avatars and variants, making it a renewable form of cultural fuel for its mother city.
- Jason Freeny
Exclusive Interview Jason Freeny (aka “Moist”)
Jason Freeny’s “Moist” leads you into a designer toy anatomy class, passing through some of the most bizarre curiosity cabinets to date. His toys are truly frankensteinian, in the sense that their internal organs can be easily assembled and re-assembled. These didactic bodies are always partially transparent and translucent, unsettling our entire relation to collectible toy trophies. His gummi bear anatomies, Hello Kitty embryos and balloon toys make reference to dime museums and ghostly X-ray science. We have come far from pretending we are still innocent bystanders admiring Barbie doll physiology.
- pre-Sapporo Biennale
Review of the pre-Sapporo Biennale
In preparation of the Sapporo Biennale 2014, the "Fanon revealed: Expressions of the fandom subculture" show launched a clear move towards exhibiting not only object-oriented works but also the immersive environment and qualities of fancultures such as the otaku, car customization, or maid-cafés. Museums in Sapporo have been interested in bridging the gap between high and low culture, betting on the cumulative effects of cultural-social and cool-capital. Its aim was to open a window into the inner workings and knowledge ecosystems developed by glocal (global+local) subcultures.
- PAINTMARVELS
ADOLFO TORINO NUÑEZ (PAINTMARVELS)
He can hybridize some of the most iconic silver age comic book heroes and manga/anime superstars in an entirely new pop art form (or we should better say, popage form). Welcome Paintmarvels! Taking his cue from such masters as Jack Kirby, John Romita, Mike Sekowsky and Alex Ross he can arrange for the most wished-for superhero cross-overs in a life time of pop culture adoration. Wonder Moon or Hulkboy already mix Japan with the US or past with the present. Temporal and geographic boundaries get blurred when affinity and convergence are at stake.
- Makura Sakita
Makura Sakita Mangaka
Makura Sakita is a young mangaka from Sapporo. Let's get introduced to her catworld manga's. From Cat soup (ねこぢる草, Nekojiru-So) to Night on the Galactic Railroad (銀河鉄道の夜 Ginga Tetsudō no Yoru) we could really speak about a Japanese cat genre that reaches new heights of interspecies/companion species interplay. It can be very serious, even philosophical and terribly humane. Makura Sakita's cats are completely dynamic, fluorescent fresh felines, full of gags and tricks.
- Ry-Spirit
Ry-Spirit
The Australian artist Ry-Spirit unleashes a plethora of video game and manga, anime or tokusatsu heroes, escaped from his childhood dreams and memories. Not afraid to cherish his fanart roots, he manages to extend and tap into visual equivalents of fanfic or creative writing categories that push the limits and boundaries of initial original series or narratives.
- Melissa Smith
Melissa Smith
Melissa Smith is an obstinate and proud media geek. Because of her true love for superheroes or pocket monsters that many of us all hold dear, she started using her digital skills to explode, implode and splash into hyperactivity limbs, faces, bodies and robotic exoskeletons. The force of abstract expressionism gleans trough these action figures, animating both Spiderman, Batman and Pikachu with incredible élan vital!
- Metamorphose
Metamorphose’s interview
Metamorphose is an official brand that is associated with this section of Lolita subculture photos from Sapporo, Hokkaido/Japan. Metamorphose is the changing state of being, that often winged insects enter, it’s a multistage transformation. Lolita fashion totally follows this graceful ideal that allows entry into a world of flowery elegance and perfumed bliss, far from the heavily urbanization of contemporary Japan. Again, the tea ceremony is refashioned to still maintain a strong social component that maintains this community based on affinities together.
- KodyKoala
Exclusive Interview: KodyKoala
Many designer toys have gone bad, but never so many in such a profound way. Some of the resident evil toys are maybe scary because they show how inoffensive and limited roles video game characters got 2play in the pop cultural pantheon. KodyKoala is able to challenge the Nintendo and Sega holy canon ingeniously infecting its purity with a heavy dose of walking dead and zombie outbreak serum. Inbuilt obsolescence is transformed into a mark of valor, a way out of the toy cemetery and anti-Mecha flesh fairs. His sculptures are not afraid to be battered video game monuments and damaged heroes.
- Craftwife
Craftwife
Craftwife is a female band formed by Japanese sound designer Takeko Akamatsu in the summer of 2008. They play techno pop music in special handmade costumes that may remind you of Kraftwerk (though in a miniskirt) . They use iPhones/iPad to control an original sound synthesis program and a video sampling system developed by themselves. Their works cuts across the existing fields, such as music/audio, video/visual, design, science, fashion and languages etc. All of the 5 members are "wives". Some are on the stage, and some are only working off-stage.
