Mar 29, 2013

Kou Kou" is a fantastic abstract animation from Japan.

Less than 15 seconds after pressing play on Takashi Ohashi's "The Shape of the Form", I did something I rarely do when watching movies on my laptop: I turned off the lights in my workspace, creating a dark theater environment. A good abstract animation, like a good song, focuses the audience's full attention.

Director Takashi Ohashi, who has been featured in our Animation Fragments feature, created a stunning abstract animation in "Kou Kou. Ohashi manages to do something unusual for an abstract filmmaker. The second "movement," which begins around the four-minute mark, really packs a punch. The competing red and blue offsets create tension and instability in the images, adding to the visual excitement.

For non-native Japanese speakers, the film is a beautiful visual experience, but native Japanese speakers will enjoy the additional layers of depth. Ohashi sent Cartoon Blue the following description of the film:

"Koukou" is a visual work based on abstract animation synchronized with a song composed of fifty unique Japanese syllables, and does not actually use complete words.

A syllable sound is the original sound element of a word. In the case of Japanese, the language root, or "Yamato Word," each individual sound has a unique meaning. For example, words containing "su" represent the sound of friction and are used to describe linear or direct movement. In modern Japanese, "sasu" and "sumasu" denote concrete, tangible actions.

Furthermore, words with fewer syllables are used for simple onomatopoeic expressions, while words with more syllables are more concrete.

However, certain syllable combinations may not be understood even though their constituent syllables each have meaning, but there are special cases where meaning can be found from meaningless words.

This is what I find most interesting about the Japanese language, and why I decided to combine how the unique Japanese vowel-consonant combinations resonate so well with music synchronized to abstract animation.

The music was created by recording six songs with vocals from singer Ruschka's natural voice and selecting lyrics that could be expressed using combinations of Japanese syllables. The song is composed of words that have no meaning in themselves, but the careful combination of syllables and their respective inherent resonances ensure very musical peaks and valleys.

Credits Director: Takashi Ohashi Composed by Yuri Habuka Yuri Habuka Mixing Masumi Takino Vocals Ruschka Drums Kyoshun Tanaka (from DCPRG) [19]