The viral Harlem Shake meme has been taking the world by storm recently, as you have likely already seen in your internet travels. The infectious dance has even made its way to Japan too, as the folks over at Pixiv have produced a really fun and particularly elaborate version.
As you can see in the video above, it starts off with a lone Stig-like dancer, followed by the rest of his office mates once the beat drops. Ranging from an inverted/skirted office lady to a fuzzy costumed panda in the background, the Pixiv team certainly looks to be having lots of fun here.
Photo: mdn.co.jp
In fact, the Tokyo-based company, which runs a very popular online art community of more than 6 million members, is known for having a lively and creative company culture. When a new staff member recently came to the Pixiv office from Malaysia, they welcomed him with a fun personalized hanging banner.
They have an amazingly colorful work space (pictured right) which almost makes Google’s famously playful office seem drab. Stay tuned for more information about Pixiv, as we hope to bring you more details about them in the future.
At a recent FITC event in Tokyo I had a chance to hear renowed artist Shantell Martin speak about her artwork, as well as her connections to Japan, a place that has played a central role in her development. Her work is sometimes so simple that it resembles doodles that you might have done the margins of your school text book – but yet at the same time it sometimes has overwhelming detail and scale. Her tool is, more often than not, a simple pen – typically traveling black lines on white surfaces, sometimes big surfaces, sometimes small. Watching her draw, you initially say to yourself “Pftt, I could probably do that,” only to realize minutes later when a jagged edge becomes a cliff and then a sailboat pops up and then a face and then, well — and then you realize there’s far more to it, crossing over into the digital space and live performance art [1]. Another dimension For Shantell the act of creation is part of the work, part of the spectacle, a third dimension of time added to a 2D surface. It was when she realized that her live drawings were a type of performance art…
At a recent FITC event in Tokyo I had a chance to hear renowed artist Shantell Martin speak about her artwork, as well as her connections to Japan, a place that has played a central role in her development. Her work is sometimes so simple that it resembles doodles that you might have done the margins of your school text book – but yet at the same time it sometimes has overwhelming detail and scale.
Her tool is, more often than not, a simple pen – typically traveling black lines on white surfaces, sometimes big surfaces, sometimes small. Watching her draw, you initially say to yourself “Pftt, I could probably do that,” only to realize minutes later when a jagged edge becomes a cliff and then a sailboat pops up and then a face and then, well — and then you realize there’s far more to it, crossing over into the digital space and live performance art [1].
Another dimension
For Shantell the act of creation is part of the work, part of the spectacle, a third dimension of time added to a 2D surface. It was when she realized that her live drawings were a type of performance art that things really became interesting. Shantell began using projectors to cast her live drawings onto wall, a gradually unfolding improvizational digital performance, sometimes to complement an on-stage music act.
Projections are great as they can take a small idea and make it big, they give you that room to be interactive with and open up a space on screens and wall etc. I would like to move out of the square format though and work with more landscapes, balloons or unexpected spaces.
Shantell says that the years that she previously spent living in Japan really influenced her ideas about visual performance, as that’s something you see a lot here. She adds:
[Japan] gave me space to discover ‘ME’ and who I was in a way, I could be Shantell from London and that was enough. Growing up in London people constantly would ask about my ethnic background or where my parents where from, etc. It’s also hard at a young age to break away from the social mirrors that friends and family have for you, and by moving away completely to a new place I could build a new foundation. Another fundamental thing [was that] I became o.k with things being cute and found ways to integrate that into my work.
Some of the figures that emerge in her work indeed have a Japanese flavor, sort of XKCD meets LSD in some ways (pictured right). But what I think is most impressive about Shantell’s work is that over the years she has developed this style into something with patterns and method, turning what that initially looks quite random into what she describes as a language.
While Shantell prefers to keep her work as low tech as possible, she does make use of a number of digital tools in her work:
When drawing live on my computer I use the Wacom Intuos4 Medium size, I really like the size and model. [I] do wish the Bluetooth option was more reliable though, but for now I make sure that the USB cable is plugged in when performing. For software I’ve been using Sketchbook pro for a long time and more recently I’ve started to make sketching using tools created using open frame works by Zack Lieberman for a drawing and code workshop that we co-taught last year at the Eyeo festival.
If you’d like to get a better idea of Shantell’s work, a picture doesn’t quite suffice as it lacks the performance aspect that is so central to what she does. I encourage you to check out her Vimeo channel, where you can find a number of wonderful videos like the one I’ve included below.
I paid my way though university painting murals, so initially I actually did think that I could pull off something like this. But after watching her perform, that notion was quickly put to rest! ↩
NHN Japan, the producer of the wildly popular Line chat app, announced yesterday that it has partnered with Nokia (NYSE:NOK) aiming to accelerate the app’s global user acquisition. The company is making the app available on Nokia’s Asha handset, a low priced smartphone (ranging from $100 to $200) that has topped more than 200 million units sold globally. Line will be available on the Nokia Store by the end of March, but some features such as free voice calls will be added later on after the initial release. With this partnership, NHN Japan is targeting new users in South East Asia, Latin America, Middle East, and Africa where Nokia’s budget Asha handset is popular. The two companies will work together to promote the handset and the app at merchant storefronts in these regions. The Line app is now available on several different mobile platforms including iOS, Android, Windows Phone, Blackberry, and even Japanese feature phones. Currently at the Nokia Booth at Mobile World Congress 2013 in Barcelona, a test version of the app is installed on exhibited Asha handsets so that visitors can try it out. Japanese tech news site RBB Today has several still images of this, which they…
NHN Japan, the producer of the wildly popular Line chat app, announced yesterday that it has partnered with Nokia (NYSE:NOK) aiming to accelerate the app’s global user acquisition. The company is making the app available on Nokia’s Asha handset, a low priced smartphone (ranging from $100 to $200) that has topped more than 200 million units sold globally.
Line will be available on the Nokia Store by the end of March, but some features such as free voice calls will be added later on after the initial release. With this partnership, NHN Japan is targeting new users in South East Asia, Latin America, Middle East, and Africa where Nokia’s budget Asha handset is popular. The two companies will work together to promote the handset and the app at merchant storefronts in these regions.
The Line app is now available on several different mobile platforms including iOS, Android, Windows Phone, Blackberry, and even Japanese feature phones. Currently at the Nokia Booth at Mobile World Congress 2013 in Barcelona, a test version of the app is installed on exhibited Asha handsets so that visitors can try it out. Japanese tech news site RBB Today has several still images of this, which they shot at the exhibition booth.
Line recently surpassed the 100 million user milestone, having originally launched back in June of 2011. If you’d like to learn more about it, check out our video overview of the app below.
For more information on the growth of Line, please check out our interactive Line Timeline which chronicles its growth from its launch back in 2011 up until the present day.
Facebook (NASDAQ:FB) has officially surpassed 19 million monthly active users in Japan, putting it well ahead of domestic rival Mixi, which has been spinning its wheels in the past year or so at around 15 million. Serkan Toto points out today that this figure comes directly from Facebook Japan’s country growth manager Taro Kodama during Social Media Week here in Tokyo. I think this is interesting for a couple of reasons. Most importantly, of course, is that it shows that Facebook is growing well in Japan, a country where some thought early on that it would fail due Japan’s unique distaste for using real names on the internet. Facebook’s growth before the 2011 earthquake was indeed modest, although in the wake of that tragedy many people apparently realized the value of a social network that reflected real world connections, as growth would accelerate after that. This new data point also clarifies recent confusion that Facebook’s user numbers in Japan might be plummeting by the millions, as indicated by Social Bakers, which pulls data from Facebook’s own ad tool. The latter (and by extension the former) probably shouldn’t be trusted for anything more than a general guide [1]. Such headlines spring…
Facebook (NASDAQ:FB) has officially surpassed 19 million monthly active users in Japan, putting it well ahead of domestic rival Mixi, which has been spinning its wheels in the past year or so at around 15 million. Serkan Toto points out today that this figure comes directly from Facebook Japan’s country growth manager Taro Kodama during Social Media Week here in Tokyo.
I think this is interesting for a couple of reasons. Most importantly, of course, is that it shows that Facebook is growing well in Japan, a country where some thought early on that it would fail due Japan’s unique distaste for using real names on the internet. Facebook’s growth before the 2011 earthquake was indeed modest, although in the wake of that tragedy many people apparently realized the value of a social network that reflected real world connections, as growth would accelerate after that.
This new data point also clarifies recentconfusion that Facebook’s user numbers in Japan might be plummeting by the millions, as indicated by Social Bakers, which pulls data from Facebook’s own ad tool. The latter (and by extension the former) probably shouldn’t be trusted for anything more than a general guide [1]. Such headlines spring up for other countries occasionally too, and it’s best not to make too much commotion when such ‘user drops’ occur.
Tokyo-based startup incubator Samurai Incubate is planning to launch another co-working space at Odaiba, Tokyo’s waterfront area. The group already has a venue for incubating startups at another location, but the new one will focus on gadget and hardware manufacturing startups. It is jointly organized with a local architectural firm. The new incubation venue will be called MONO, and will be launched in the end of this month. To commemorate the opening the incubator recently held an exhibition and conference event for startups called Samurai MONO Festival Vol. 1, featuring a number of notable people from the gadget and hardware manufacturing scene. Let’s have a look at some of the interesting ideas and startups who we met at the event [1]. The Advanced Institute of Industrial Technology, Tokyo ¶ A team from this university showed us several interesting ideas including: Kansei Senkyoku – Mind Jukebox ¶ Kansei Senkyoku (literally ‘music selection by sense’) chooses a song that fits your current feeling by detecting your brain waves. It’s known that alpha brain waves emerge when you are stable before sleep, and the beta wave is usually seen when you are doing something that requires concentration. Accordingly, the app selects a song…
February 16th 2013, at Telecom Center in Aomi, Tokyo
Tokyo-based startup incubator Samurai Incubate is planning to launch another co-working space at Odaiba, Tokyo’s waterfront area. The group already has a venue for incubating startups at another location, but the new one will focus on gadget and hardware manufacturing startups. It is jointly organized with a local architectural firm.
The new incubation venue will be called MONO, and will be launched in the end of this month. To commemorate the opening the incubator recently held an exhibition and conference event for startups called Samurai MONO Festival Vol. 1, featuring a number of notable people from the gadget and hardware manufacturing scene.
Let’s have a look at some of the interesting ideas and startups who we met at the event [1].
The Advanced Institute of Industrial Technology, Tokyo ¶
A team from this university showed us several interesting ideas including:
Kansei Senkyoku (literally ‘music selection by sense’) chooses a song that fits your current feeling by detecting your brain waves. It’s known that alpha brain waves emerge when you are stable before sleep, and the beta wave is usually seen when you are doing something that requires concentration. Accordingly, the app selects a song to play, and help you get a better sleep or do your work more efficiently.
This tablet app’s name is a combination of ‘recipe’ and ‘receipt’, and it helps you find a recipe for a meal the items you have just bought at the supermarket. By scanning the receipts for your groceries, the app will search for possible meals that can be cooked with these materials. You can then print out the recipe from Ricoh’s internet-enabled photocopiers. (The project is jointly conducted with Ricoh.)
Large glass projection film, often used for digital signage systems at convenience stores and other public places, is usually very costly. But by combining normal frosted-glass and a camera-enabled Android handset, the team has developed a very cheap interactive touch panel system that allows users to control a screen with flicking motions over top of the glass, as your fingers are detected by the camera of the Android handset on the other side of the glass. The coodinate data for the screen is stored in a Google Docs file, and the app will show you the next screen which corresponds to your finger motion.
Link, a user-generated, short novel posting site ¶
With this app users can create multiple parallel universes, based on someone else’s previous postings. This collective/collaborate writing results in a wide variety of novel endings, which sounds like a lot of fun. The app is expected to be available on iOS and Android soon.
This idea reminds me of the British-American film Sliding Doors, where the story alternates between two parallel universes.
Goeng, an iOS app that aims to help Japanese Facebook users communicate with foreigners ¶
Goeng helps Japanese Facebook users find friends from outside the country who share the same hobbies and interests, or like the same things. Once you and that friend get along well, you can obtain their national flag and add it to your collection. Through this sort of collection you can also earn badges.
Making a report and submitting it to your boss on a daily basis can often be way too much hassle. Gamba allows employees to post daily reports to their bosses in a very easy way. I assumed this app was targeting SMEs or startups, but the app’s creator says they have many big Japanese companies as their users as well.
The festival also had an elevator-pitch session, where entrepreneurs were requested to pitch with a handheld megaphone (see picture below). When all was said and done, the winners were:
3rd place:Shokunin-san, a job matching site for construction workers.
2nd place:Anipipo, a crowdfunding site for animation content. It’s launching soon but still waiting for Paypal to approve them as a merchant.
1st place:Craftstep, a how-to collection of handcraft matters, including things like Japanese paper foldings.
Tablet-focused web developer Social Agent pitches at Mono Festival
Note that not all the startups introduced above have received fundraising from Samurai Incubate. ↩
We’ve covered the cutthroat chat application war in the Japanese market in a recent post, illustrating how NHN Japan’s Line leads the game so far, with DeNA’s Comm and KakaoTalk as distant runners-up. As if there weren’t enough chat apps already, CyberAgent (TYO:4751) just launched yet another player, but this one has a slightly different angle. Decolink (yes, it’s another Deco-something app!) is CyberAgent’s newly minted application for iOS and Android, which is aming to snag teenage girls as its target users. The app lets you chat with a maximum of 100 friends, and you can also change the background image and fonts for different chat windows. This latter ability to customize the look of a product is essential when the primarily target market is younger girls. What’s even more essential perhaps are the decorative stamps, of which Decolink provides over 10,000. Stamps are often cited as the major reason behind Line’s huge success so far. Sort of like emoji on steriods, people often use stamps in chat to express themselves instead of using text. In much the same way that a Facebook Like is a sort of mindless response that doesn’t require any words, stamps are often used…
We’ve covered the cutthroat chat application war in the Japanese market in a recent post, illustrating how NHN Japan’s Line leads the game so far, with DeNA’s Comm and KakaoTalk as distant runners-up. As if there weren’t enough chat apps already, CyberAgent (TYO:4751) just launched yet another player, but this one has a slightly different angle.
Decolink (yes, it’s another Deco-something app!) is CyberAgent’s newly minted application for iOS and Android, which is aming to snag teenage girls as its target users. The app lets you chat with a maximum of 100 friends, and you can also change the background image and fonts for different chat windows. This latter ability to customize the look of a product is essential when the primarily target market is younger girls.
What’s even more essential perhaps are the decorative stamps, of which Decolink provides over 10,000. Stamps are often cited as the major reason behind Line’s huge success so far. Sort of like emoji on steriods, people often use stamps in chat to express themselves instead of using text. In much the same way that a Facebook Like is a sort of mindless response that doesn’t require any words, stamps are often used in the same way among many Japanese users.
Deco-disrupter?
CyberAgent does have a competitive advantage, as the company runs the huge Ameba Blog platform which had more than 20 million users as of January 2012. The platform is widely used by Japanese people including celebrities. Through cross-promotions with other products under the Ameba umbrella, Decolink might be able to eclipse some of the other chat app competitors — although it’s unlikely that it could catch Line.
Decolink was developed by a team within CyberAgent that creates products dedicated for teens. I have to wonder if these cute, more feminine stamps are a key differeciator from Line, and if any teenage girls will take the bait. We’ll find out sooner or later, so stay tuned.
Rick Martin
Masaru Ikeda
Yukari Mitsuhashi
