J pop!

I have decided to post some of my favourite Japanese music!

I've been listening to a lot of vocaloid music lately, as well as songs from the anime Macross Frontier (which is a really unusual mix of popstars and life in the limelight, and giant robots and an intergalactic war). All very futuristic.

Vocaloid is synthetic voice software developed by Yamaha where popstars and voice actors voices are recorded and programmed into a computer, marketed as "a singer in a box". Anyone can buy one of these programs, and type a melody and lyrics into it to create songs using this synthetic voice. Each program is given an anime character and a personality, so in essence you have a virtual popstar. People have even developed animation software so that people can make music videos to go with the songs they make. Some people might find this really fake, but to me, despite the fact it's not a real person singing, they have an authenticity that defies the singers at the top of the charts, because these characters and music have been created by all sorts of ordinary people, with all different themes and styles. They are everyone. The songs are down to earth, quirky and often very eccentric, and relate to the lives most people lead, unlike the very samey lyrics of the chart toppers who can't seem to sing about anything but sex and bad relationships.

I can particularly relate to these two songs, Triple Baka always makes me laugh :)
Out of all the vocaloids, I like Miku, Gumi and Luka best :)







Miku is about 16, turquoise haired, and is the pure, cute and innocent one who has an obsession with leeks (she uses them as batons sometimes).
Gumi has green hair, likes carrots, and is a really sweet, bouncy and positive character.
Luka loves Tuna (and occasionally waves those around too), has long pink hair and is a more serious and mature character. Until you mention tuna...

What with all the food Miku even has a song about vegetable juice.



Here's Miku and Luka performing live at one of their concerts. This is possible through the use of projectors and screens, and essentially creates holograms of the two on stage while a band plays the backing track in the background. The same technique is used when the band Gorillaz plays in concert too.

I've heard a rumour that the vocaloids will be performing at the London Olympics. This would be the first time they've performed live in the UK like this, and for the first time I'm tempted to get tickets to the games :P

Interestingly enough (and somewhat creepily), the software can also be programmed into the latest robots being developed in Japan as well. Truly the beginning of cyber popstars.

Anyway, as I mentioned, each vocaloid gets their voice from a donor human. The vocaloid Megupoid Gumi gets her voice from the voice actor who plays Ranka Lee in Macross Frontier. They even drew the characters to match. Spot the difference!

I love the music from the anime Macross Frontier, so I ended up watching the whole series. It was actually really good, especially considering I don't usually go for the sci-fi genre. Basically what happens is the human race is looking for new planets to settle on in an effort to survive, but are caught in a war with an alien species that are connected and communicate via "fold waves". Two girls living on the human spaceships love to sing and rise to stardom, and as a result it is discovered their singing can sedate the aliens long enough to fight them off, because their singing gives off fold waves. 

All in all there's a rather strong cyber influence on modern Japanese music, which reflects the rest of contemporary Japanese culture. 

Ink, Print and Chrysanthemums

I bought a bunch of chrysanthemums, carnations and different daisies to study and draw from, and ultimately visually play with on paper :)

I decided I wanted to inject my own ideas and style into what I was looking at rather than just record what I was seeing, and these are the results so far (incredibly, the flowers haven't shown much sign of dying so far - even after a couple of weeks there are still some opening up!)

With my teapots I've been trying to layer up imagery and print on the surface, so I tried playing around and masking off the outline of a cherry blossom with masking tape. Then I used brown ink to paint the chrysanthemums, sumi-e style! The brown is a bit more subtle than using black, and tones nicely with the brown paper. Having got this far, I decided the detailed drawing on it's own wouldn't be enough to allow the sakura outline to be clear and stand out, so I roughly brushed some translucent iridescent blue white ink over the flowers, and finished by tinting the flower centres with coloured chalk dust.

Then came the tricky bit - taking the tape off again.....

I really like how the two of these images came out, but I actually really like the piece before I removed the tape. It looks like the next experiment is going to involve cutting and sticking coloured paper flower patterns to make a sketching/painting surface! I really like the way the imagery overlapped and glowed through one another. I should be able to translate this onto the teapots using coloured clay, slip trailing and screen print all layered up. I think just a small area of imagery like that (created with some nice earthy oxides or something subtle) could be really understated but really elegant too. It'd be too much if it covered the whole piece though.

Here are the rest of the pages so far.

From the top: - Print with dip pen sketched chrysanthemum tinted with chalk dust, the first layered imagery test
- Roughly sketched rose in dry watercolour crayon, basically a quick exploration of colour
- Sumi-e rose in black ink, exploring shape, line and shadow.

For anyone interested, the Japanese name for rose is bara. The anime Saiunkoku monogatari has a really interesting fairytale it mentioned about the "rose princess" (bara hime). I don't know if this was just made up for the plot line, but it talked about why roses had thorns. Basically, the rose princess was a bit more than mortal, and very beautiful, with the gift of being able to cure any ill. Then she fell in love with a human man, so lost her power and died, becoming a rose and growing thorns so no other man could pick her.

Brush and brown ink chrysanthemums tinted with yellow, green and white chalk dust. I was trying to understand the form and shape, how they grew, and capture the spirit of the flower.

As before with a daisy and different kind of chrysanthemum (I think). I took adding colour to the brush drawings a bit further here, using watercolour to create rough shading and tints. I also put the print next to the drawings as a contrast to the layers.

More chrysanthemums - I'll probably work more into this drawing later

The other kind of chrysanthemum, this time with black ink and coloured print. I'm not so impressed with the starkness of the black compared to the brown ink, but I like the effect where the brush was starting to go dry - this is also what wabi sabi is for the Japanese. For some reason the fading nature of the ink reserve running out gives drawings a transient feel and beauty.

Iridescent print, with watercolour crayon and clear embossing liner daisies. I was trying to get a similar effect to slip trailing here with the raised outline, and then contrast it with coloured outlines.

The Golden Tearoom, built by Toyotomi Hideyoshi

Another embossing liner drawing, this time in gold. I'm considering using gold lustre to highlight certain bits of imagery on my teapots, as the Japanese often use it to highlight their designs to great effect on everything from washi paper to architecture. Although saying that, I think they went too far with their golden tearoom. I'll probably work into this drawing some more as well - I was wondering how it would look with the patterns from computer circuitry behind it.

Wooden carving of a dragon with added gold accents on the
bottom of a huge paper latern

Anyway, why chrysanthemums and daisies?

 The chrysanthemum is the official national flower of Japan (cherry blossom or sakura being the incredibly popular unofficial one), and in Japanese floriography (flower language) they mean happiness and long life, and are sometimes seen as an object for meditation. The daisies and chrysanthemums are very frequently seen in Japanese imagery and patterns, including everything from kimono to mon, Japanese family crests. According to wikipedia:

" Japan

• The Chrysanthemum Throne is the name given to the position of Japanese emperor.
• Chrysanthemum crest (菊花紋章, kikukamonshō or kikkamonshō) is a general term for a mon of chrysanthemum blossom design; there are more than 150 different patterns. The Imperial Seal of Japan is a particularly notable one; it is used by members of the Japanese Imperial family. There are also a number of formerly state-endowed shrines (官国弊社, kankokuheisha) which have adopted a chrysanthemum crest, most notably Tokyo's Yasukuni Shrine.^[15]
• The Supreme Order of the Chrysanthemum is a Japanese honor awarded by the emperor.
• The city of Nihonmatsu, Japan hosts the "Nihonmatsu Chrysanthemum Dolls Exhibition" every autumn in historical ruin of Nihonmatsu Castle.^[16]
• In Imperial Japan, small arms were required to be stamped with the Imperial Chrysanthemum as they were considered the personal property of the Emperor.
• The Chrysanthemum is also considered to be the seasonal flower of September. "

Hyper Japan

I have just discovered that the big Japanese culture event I'm planning to go to in February is going to have Japanese ceramics there too! I can't wait!

http://hyperjapan.co.uk/2012-spring/culture/580-doki.html

The event is called Hyper Japan, and I found its website online a few days ago. I thought it was pretty unusual, as I've only ever seen museum exhibitions of traditional stuff or comic/anime expos being organised before, nothing really about the rest of the Japanese culture. However, here they seem to have everything all mixed up together! Food, sake, kimono, cosplay, street fashion, books, films, manga, music, traditional crafts......

So maybe the overall effect is something like this:

:P

However, I could never hope to do such an extravaganza of sensory overload justice with a few mere photographs. J-culture has to be seen to be believed.

I've been on some of the exhibitors websites now, and among other things, they have some gorgeous kanzaki, or hair ornaments. I've been thinking for a little while it might be nice to have a go at making a hair comb or pin the the crochet flowers I'm making. Crochet corsages are pretty popular here at the moment, and giving them an oriental twist might spice them up a bit! >: 3

Matching teapot and hair accessory anyone?

For those interested, this is Hyper Japan's website: http://hyperjapan.co.uk/ , and it's on for three days, the 24th, 25th and 26th February at Earl's Court in London