Shuhei Matsuyama Born in 1991. Visual artist and programmer. Director of THINK AND SENSE at T&S Co., Ltd. He specializes in exhibitions, art, and interactive performances that utilize cutting-edge technology, and has been involved in projects such as the "Pokémon GO AR Observatory" and "AR Roppongi x Ingress," which utilize Microsoft's mixed reality device, "HoloLens." He is affiliated with the creative label nor. His publications include "Visual Thinking with TouchDesigner."

First interview: MINOTAUR INST. × THINK AND SENSE "The ultimate goal is to create a movement"

"It's truly a once-in-a-lifetime experience. It's difficult to make the same thing again and again."

────Your previous T-shirt expressed an "alternative city built on the internet" and was made up of countless photos posted on Instagram. Your second series has the theme of sound. Could you tell us about the production process?

First of all, this time I again chose not to use the cityscape itself, but rather the indirect elements surrounding the city as material, and this time I used sounds I had recorded in the field in Shibuya.

Last time, we used a generative art technique to create a single image from a large amount of data, but this time, as the base is sound, a material with a time axis, the generated visuals have a sequence on a frame-by-frame basis. For this reason, we replaced the visual materials generated in large quantities on a frame-by-frame basis and adjusted the generation parameters to tune the generation, and then worked with MINOTAUR INST. to art direct the design.

This method is probably not used in existing fashion or illustration. It is generative art that is generated infinitely, but the production method this time is to generate countless visuals and curate them.

──It seems like you created a variety of designs, but does that mean you programmed different sounds each time?

Rather, it's more like adjusting parameters. However, since a maximum of 60 designs can be made per second, if you make too many it can be difficult to choose (laughs). The actual design on the T-shirt lasts for just a moment in sound terms. You can make as many designs as the length of the sound sequence, so you have to choose from among them.

The sounds we used this time were actually recorded in the streets of Shibuya. Searching for sounds that are typical of Shibuya, we also recorded at the scramble crossing and the old Ginza Line platform.

──I see. So when creating the T-shirt design, you started by recording the sounds in Shibuya.

That's right. In other words, in this case, the "sound" plays a role similar to the "paint."

When thinking about a T-shirt design, typically we discuss the direction we want to go in and then start production. From there, we create an actual design, check it, and then revise it again, repeating this process. However, we only decide on a theme, create a system to match it, and have the program write out a large number of designs to select from.

If there is a request for something like "I want a little more white space," we adjust only that element and have the system re-write it to bring us closer to our goal. The art direction is done by a human, but the design itself is created by the system, which is a unique feature of the system.

--It seems like there are a variety of patterns not only in shape but also in color. Are these adjusted by humans?

Rather than us tweaking things, the parameters that generate the sound waveforms are not unique, so what is born changes depending on that. It really feels like a once-in-a-lifetime experience. So it's actually difficult to make the same thing.

────I see. This time, you've released four different types of "graphic t-shirts generated from the sounds of the city," but did you ever think about using the designs that were created as they were and releasing many different t-shirt designs to the world?

That would change the meaning quite a bit. If we were to present what the program created as is, it would simply be a T-shirt designed by the program. It's something made by the program, but if an artist or designer provided art direction and curated and selected it, saying "this is cool," it becomes something entirely different.

By including the process of art direction, the work can be presented as part of the brand's collection.

──You mentioned the phrase "as part of a brand collection." Is there anything you paid attention to?

That was very clear to me, and I was often told, "This is a product for a fashion brand, so it has to be a commercial design" (laughs). In the case of art works, the finished product is often left as it is, unprocessed, without any refinement of details, but to make it work as fashion, it needs to have the perspective of being a commercial design.

For example, if it were art, it could be something too obscure that the viewer doesn't expect to understand, but this is commercial design, so that's not acceptable. I intentionally placed elements that evoke the background and story, such as mixing a wave-like pattern that evokes sound into the visuals, and including the coordinate numbers of Shibuya Scramble Crossing, where the sound was recorded, as part of the pattern, and it was important to strike a balance so that the viewer can feel the meaning of the design as a whole.

--That's deep. Next, please tell us about the design of the third series.