Photo 1: 3D Narwhal ©Yoichiro Kawaguchi
When we write of Japan's CG culture, what do readers overseas imagine?
Unique visions of the world as seen by manga characters?
The fertile imaginations of the otaku and moe cultures?
Or the vibrant detailed colors and dynamic images of CG games and figures?
Photo1 shows a two-dimensional image that has been transformed by CG into a three-dimensional object.
I’m sure you have read about virtual reality (VR). Advances in this technology have brought us to the point today where sensing technology can extend our five senses such that when we enter the world of VR moving images we can walk in that virtual space and feel that we are touching the objects there.
What is happening now is that the involvement of VR in Japan’s CG culture is opening up a whole new movement. Previously, the common understanding was that through VR people enter into a virtual world. Now, however, at the same time as humans with their brain waves and tactile senses immerse themselves in a CG world, objects from the virtual world are becoming able to physically penetrate the real world. Development of this conceptual structure and technology has already begun in Japan.
Let me illustrate with an example that is easy to understand. I’m sure you have heard of machines that can produce smells and stimulate our sense of touch. In order for odors and tactile sensations in the virtual world to be actually smelled and felt by humans, we must be able to project them as odor molecules and tactile sensations into the real world. In the same way, we believe that a day will surely come when the inhabitants of our virtual worlds – such as cute cartoon characters, eerie monsters, ghosts, artificial life with strange bodies that make us think of ancient life-forms – will also be able to cross over into the real world, conveying emotions and physical sensations.
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Graduating in Visual Communication Design from Kyushu Institute of Design (now Kyushu University), he then received his master’s degree from Tokyo University of Education (now Tsukuba University Graduate School). After teaching positions at Tsukuba University and at the School of Engineering at the University of Tokyo, in 2000, he became a professor at the Graduate School of Interdisciplinary Information Studies, University of Tokyo. He began his involvement in computer graphics in 1975, and today is a world renowned CG artist. His growth model, a self-propagating growth algorithm, has allowed him to create a complex, organic, dense and ultra-detailed world of CG imagery. Recently, he has been involved in presenting international stage performances using a work named "Gemotion" to stimulate an emotional reaction in its human audience. He is also continuing to develop the "Gemotion Display", the world’s first display that reacts in three dimensions – its surface bulging and rippling like a living organism to represent the CG images projected on it. He has won many awards, including the first prize at PARIS-GRAPH 1987. His books include "CG ABC" (pub. Maruzen, 2003).
