WOW is a visual arts studio based in Tokyo and Sendai, Japan. Their aim is ‘to reach beyond the boundaries of motion graphics, presenting installations which raise questions of how we interpret and express the modern world.’
WOW has been involved in a wide field of design work, including advertising and commercial works for brands including Sony, Suntory, Aston Martin, Dior, Chandon, Pokémon, Issey Miyake and Shiseido.
Until the end of March, Japan House in High Street Kensington is home to two installations by WOW studios, amounting to the company’s first UK solo exhibition.
Both installations are in the downstairs gallery space (although there is a display of the carved wooden dolls filling Japan House’s shop windows) and both are completely FREE. The one large gallery space has been partitioned in two.
POPPO – part of the WOW: City Lights and Woodland Shade exhibition at Japan House London. Credit: Image by WOW
Room 1 – Tokyo Light Odyssey
You walk through curtains into a pitch-black space with curved walls shaped like a teardrop – you’ve walked into the pointed end and the walls curve away from you and then form a half circle at the far end, about ten yards way.
Onto the walls on both sides of you and facing you, in one seamless image, is projected a fantastic, five-and-a-half-minute long, 360-degree journey through Japan’s capital city by night. Remember the space travel ending of 2001 A Space Odyssey, or any footage you’ve seen of cars driving at speed through cityscapes? It’s like that, only better, and totally immersive. A lot of artists talk about immersive but this is a genuinely sensaround film experience.
Still from the Tokyo Light Odyssey installation at the WOW: City Lights and Woodland Shade exhibition at Japan House London. Credit: Image by WOW
The ‘camera’ moves seamlessly through the neon lights of a subway station, which morph into the lights of convenience stores, then down into a tube train of the Yamanote Line, moving forwards over the head of the strap-hangars then the camera’s point of view swivels through 180 degrees so it’s travelling back the way it came then bursts free of the train to fly through the night sky between skyscrapers which change shape as in a kaleidoscope before shooting through the window of a hotel, across a room, through a door and then through a sequence of corridors of numerous ‘capsule’ hotels, pausing for a view of the iconic Tokyo Tower which changes and distorts before your eyes and then shooting forward to confront a vision of the world as one watery orb on which a series of illuminated ocean liners are railing, before flying past their lit portholes.
Wow, indeed. The five minutes pass in a flash. I loved it so much I watched it three times, the third time actively walking round the room-sized space, experimenting on my own perception as I walked either towards or backwards away from the fast-moving imagery, adding a further level of dizziness to the vertiginous visual journey. It’s brilliant.
Room 2 – POPPO
The second room is a more conventional display, with a range of objects and few interactive activities. It introduces us to the wooden folk craft of Tohoku – a region in the north east of Japan damaged by the large scale 2011 earthquake and tsunami. There are three main parts to POPPO.
This digital display includes three different installations focusing on kokeshi – wooden dolls – and poppo – the popular word for small carved wooden toys.
Poppo woods
In the POPPO Woods section there is a wall where people (mainly children) can place magnetic ‘tree segments’ against the wall, and after they’ve built their tree stump, digital birds will come and land on them.
A child places a magnetic mat against the Poppo Woods projected graphic in order to build a tree which an animated bird will then come and land on, at WOW: City Lights and Woodland Shade exhibition at Japan House London. Credit: Image by WOW
The birds are native to Tohoku and there’s a display of half a dozen sweet, non-digital, carved birds, explaining that each one has a symbolic meaning, for example the hawk is an image of business success and prosperity, the owl is an image of happiness and good fortune, the wagtail a sign of fertility (!)
Bird poppo, small, hand-carved wooden toys made in the Tōhoku region of Japan, at WOW: City Lights and Woodland Shade exhibition at Japan House London. Photo by the author
Rokuro
In the second part, Rokuro, visitors are presented with a couple of digital screens. The screen prompts you to activate it and then a computer animation of a circular piece of wood appears spinning at high speed on a lathe. By touching the screen, you decide where the lathe-cutting instrument interacts with the spinning wood pole, carving rings into it – these can be deep or shallow, wide or narrow, just one or many. And so you carve your own digital kokeshi, or wooden doll.
After thirty seconds the process is complete and the program automatically colours in the curved shape you’ve made and then it appears on the wall-sized computer-generated screen behind the little screens, a wall-sized projected gallery of all the carvings visitors have made to the exhibition so far.
A child uses an interactive screen to ‘carve’ a kokeshi doll, which will then be coloured and appear on the shelves full of similar dolls projected on the wall. Part of WOW: City Lights and Woodland Shade exhibition at Japan House London. Credit: Image by WOW
Yadoru
In the final part, Yadoru, there are 130 unpainted kokeshi dolls which have the faces of 130 Tohoku residents (pulling a variety of faces) projected on to them. The body of the dolls are imbued with ‘auspicious meaning’ and have been decorated using designs from a veteran Japanese kokeshi maker based in Zao Onsen.
Some of the 130 kokeshi dolls with real faces projected onto them at the WOW: City Lights and Woodland Shade exhibition at Japan House London
To one side of this display is a screen and chair. You sit and line up your face with the cam above the screen, as in a passport photo machine, get is just so and click the button. The computer saves the image of your face and any silly expression you were making, then projects it onto the blank face of one of the half dozen dolls in a special display away from the main collection…. So that you have projected your own face onto the kokeshi to create their own unique doll.
Project your own face onto a kokeshi doll in the WOW: City Lights and Woodland Shade exhibition at Japan House London
It’s not an academic exhibition. It’s a small, fun, interactive display and, as the photos with kids suggest, it is probably one for people with kids below the age of about 11. But if you’re an adult with an interest in Japanese crafts, or know enough to be interested in kokeshi dolls, then it’s for you, too.
Related links
- WOW: City Lights and Woodland Shade continues at Japan House until 22 March 2020
- WOW’s website
- An explanation of kokeshi
Other exhibitions at Japan House
- Anno’s Journey: The World of Anno Mitsumasa (August 2019)
- This is Manga – The Art of Urasawi Naoki (July 2019)
- LGBT+: Diversity in Manga (July 2019)
Books & Boots 