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Important note: basically all of the works I talk about here have some element of flashing or strobing images so if you are photosensitive please take care if you watch any of the shorts I talk about here.

One of the things I've done on my stream that I'm most proud of is marigovision where we take a little break to watch something together. I've taken this as an opportunity to show off things that people might not have seen. We've watched a lot of experimental stuff from the 40s like Norm McLaren and Len Lye, former Soviet Block animation, early computer explainers from the 70s, videos of people cooking that kind of thing. (recently I've been getting big into 8mm experimental shorts so look forward to that when i come back from my streaming break)

One of the first things we watched was an experimental short film called Shift by Toshio Matsumoto.

"One of Matsumoto’s last shorts, Shift is also among his most impressive works. Through the use of what was at the time state-of-the-art video technology, Matsumoto decomposes a residential building in horizontal stripes, thus tearing down its balance and symmetry."

If you haven't watched it, it is here. It's weird and crunchy and digital and eerie and above all else, playful. It's funhaver media, it's one of my favourite things I came across as part of screening for marigovision. I did notice something fun about it, something that I don't think I've noticed anyone has spotted. At the very least, no one in the English speaking web.

So a little while ago, I've gotten into the films of Takashi Ito. Takashi Ito is another experimental Japanese film maker from this cohort. The first short of his I saw was Spacy which knocked my damn socks off (if you look up this one, please do take care if you are photosensitive, there is a lot of strobing). Ito uses a lot of my favourite filmic techniques like stop motion and light trails to create this really otherwordly space where it feels like a haunting is taking place. The next one I saw is called Box (again if you are photosensitive, please take care with this).

The film shows a rotating box with frame-by-frame landscape photographs on each face of the cube. The box looks as if it's revolving 360 degrees, but it only revolves 90 degrees. Ito explains that he was "aiming at disturbing our awareness of space in the movement from the three-dimensional to a plane and back again."

Here's a frame from it.

Here's another.

As I was watching it for the first time I almost jumped out of my seat. That's the same damn building from Shift! Has no one else noticed this? At least on the English speaking web at least, I haven't seen anyone notice this. It's possible there's an interview with either Matsumoto or Ito where they discuss this.

So a quick biographic detail, Ito studied at the same university that Toshio Matsumoto taught at. In fact his film making style is directly influenced by Matsumoto.

He attended an exhibition showcasing works by filmmaker Toshio Matsumoto; upon viewing Matsumoto's 1975 experimental short Ātman at the exhibition, Ito thought, "I want to make a movie like this."[7] When he learned that Matsumoto was coming to work at the university, Ito abandoned plans to get an immediate job and decided to stay enrolled in the school.[7]

So a little while ago before I watched Box I was kind of curious what building this was, where and when it was shot. Because it's so strange and interesting looking, someone probably knew but I wasn't able to find anything anywhere, no one even talking about it (again, i can't speak japanese which limits me to discussion on the english speaking web, I'm sure someone has talked about this on a japanese film blog or something like that).

But the fact that the same area is also featured in Takashi Ito's Box kind of gave me a big clue as to where this was shot. I found the college that Toshio Matsumoto taught and where Takashi Ito studied and popped it into google maps, had a lil click around on streetview and, sure enough.

There it is! It's the Kyushu University Ohashi Campus. Specifically the most famous image of shift with those two circular windows above the doorway seems to be the "Acoustic Research Center Building" according to Google Maps. You can click around in here to give an eerie approximation of Shifts camera movements. It's very surreal.

Here's another wide view, it's a really quite striking campus with these very geometric shapes. I can totally see why two separate experimental film makers were both able to make something so radically different using the same space as inspiration.

Both of these were released in 1982, I'm so curious to know of the genesis of this project. Was it the younger Ito that suggested this or was it the elder Matsumoto. If anyone speaks Japanese and is familiar with experimental film during this time period I would be so curious to know.

Thanks so much for reading and watch things that make you excited to make things!

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