Transcriber: Yasushi Aoki Reviewer: Denise RQ
Good … not morning. Oh, it's just twelve.
Good morning, almost.
(Laughter)
I lived in Toronto in 1993.
I'm a Torontonian not a Canadian. But Toronto is wonderful.
How many people live in Toronto?
Spadina-Yonge Street - it's so cold.
You can't do anything but research in the building.
But anyway, I love Toronto.
Also, obsession and passion are something so important.
I'm very obsessed about vision, creation of vision.
Smile!
(Laughter)
So, today, I'd like to talk about "Radical Atoms,"
one of my latest vision,
and how this vision came out.
It's still in a very early stage.
It's very difficult to communicate a vision.
But I'd like to look back in time.
My first encounter with TED was 1993 in Kobe.
How many people were there?
Oh, really?
You were already born! It's great!
(Laughter)
Most of you weren't born.
And there, I presented a vision called "Seamless Media."
Discontinue technology brings so many themes,
but I show you "ClearBoard."
It's a Skype plus Google Doc,
but your gaze beam travels straight; no distortion.
You can really see what your partner is looking at.
That's an old piece I've done with my colleague in NTT.
2011, I was really lucky Patrick Newell invited me to TEDxTokyo,
but that was just after the 3.11 disasters.
So I talked about a poem of Kenji Miyazawa called "Last Farewell,"
that talks about what stuff we can really learn from this tragedy.
But today, I'd like to talk about my vision.
I'm really obsessed about keeping creating crazy vision.
In the beginning, nobody understood.
I was so lonely, but I really enjoy being in solitude.
But in 2014, finally, I could bring my first piece of "Radical Atoms"
called "TRANSFORM" to Milan Design Week.
So I'd like to show the videos of that work.
(Video starts)
(Music)
(On stage) Hiroshi Ishii: One of my dreams is to make atoms dance.
They are very shy and frozen,
but I want to give them a computational dynamic life.
make them interact, respond, and autonomously tell a story.
(Video) Narrator:... represents conflicts and "aufheben"
between two juxtaposed concepts.
One: technology and design.
The other one: stillness and motion,
and also, nature and machine.
(Video ends)
HI: So you saw 1,000 pins came to life computationally, then danced.
That's a new material I've been dreaming about for many years.
I was very lucky.
This year, in Ars Electronica, they took my vision very seriously.
The theme of the Ars Electronica Festival
was "Radical Atoms and the alchemists of our time."
Who went to Ars Electronica?
I know some of you.
That's one of the best media art festivals
where crazy artists, philosophers, technologists,
all the people who care about society attended.
Art, technology, society were the three themes.
but we made a really great exhibition, had a symposium,
and talked about future of materials.
We are alchemists. We can create new materials.
so that's how we can really use that expression.
This piece called inFORM, I'll introduce later,
but you can be here, also there.
They manipulate remote physical stuff.
This is one example,
but running those exhibitions,
showing one dozen projects to convey the idea of the new materials
is something we did.
This is a very classic example, "musicBottles."
This is "ZeroN," on floating, levitating atoms
that I'll introduce later.
Also, this is another highlight:
the biological natto-driven second skin which breathes, called "bioLogic."
And my team which I'm very proud of.
All the students went there and worked so hard.
So, my life is a battle against the pixel empire.
This is a summarization of this 22 years of battle.
On the left, you can see the ice under the water.
You see the pixel but behind the screen.
You can't reach to it, you can't grab it, you can't smell it
because it's intangible.
But once it's physically embodied, you can grab it from above the water.
But still, the physical part is very shy, frozen and that sucks.
So I decided to hack the material, to make the material dance.
I like to be crazy.
Nobody understood it 22 years ago.
But this is "Tangible Bits," now very famous musical bottles.
If you open them, all the music or the poem are coming up,
But why tangible?
Why is that very important other than my obsession?
How to represent the most critical idea?
Because once you choose one representation,
you are limited by the operator, the mental operator.
Physical [orality] has an amazing bandwidth of communication
because you can really see all the physical structure in a body space
but this handle is inviting you to grab it with your hands.
So all the movements of the stars around the Sun
is completely in sync with kinesthesia.
Your body is a part of the engine, part of the system
not a decoupled beautiful video in a couch potato.
So how to engage people?
The body is one of the key ideas that would be working.
Also, naturally, all the students and scholars can come around.
It's a real 3D not a fake 3D of one person's point of view
on a 2D flat screen.
So that's real.
This is one of the examples: "SandScape."
We really like form-giving for beautiful landscape design.
But computers always watch the geometry,
then [brightness] based on the water drainage, or shadow.
That's an old piece of "Tangible Bits"
we exhibited at Ars Electronica, and at ICC almost 15 years ago.
But sand does not have a memory.
No shape memory.
They can't restore the old mountain which eroded, and that sucks.
So I decided to make the sand dance, remember.
That's "Radical Atoms."
Radicalness is basically dynamic future materials
that transform, conform, inform,
which may mean nothing until you see the real stuff.
But to formalize it, as a designer, artist, engineer, you have two choices.
One is the frozen atoms like a floor, a chair, this plastic box.
They never dance.
An intangible pixel is dancing, dynamic, but there's no substance.
So you cannot touch it.
You always need a remote control.
It's decoupling.
So we decided to make a third material called "Radical Atoms."
That's dynamic, physical, and computational.
This is one of the early systems called "inFORM," which has 1,000 pins.
It's crazy engineering,
but I'd like to show you how this really works.
(Video starts)
(Music)
We're obsessed about your body being here and there.
This is not a telepresence using Skype, Google Hangouts, or video conference.
You can really transmit your body - existence over distance.
Then you can really touch, manipulate remote objects.
That's beyond the traditional concept of telepresence.
This is called "Shape Display," but this is not a display.
It's a machine that actuate it.
We are disguising ourselves.
This is one of the breakthroughs to convince people about new materials
that may bring a new capability, that of the hands,
but any found objects can be physically embodied.
You can imagine that dramatically changes
computer-aided design or communications, like this.
But you can also read a book.
So, this is "inFORM," but also we started building the next generation;
putting three engines of "inFORM" together, we made "TRANSFORM."
We also love triptics, so that we put three machines together
to make "TRANSFORM."
(Rattling)
This one was exhibited in Milano Salone del Mobile - Milan Design Week.
Milano Salone is such a famous furniture festival.
Furniture is frozen, shy, passive.
Beauty is skin deep.
I want to make beauty and machine collide through dynamic motion.
This was sponsored by Lexus International.
So we have to make collision of the machine and furniture.
But also I want to [add poetry], interactivity.
So we started emulating nature.
Nature is very beautiful.
And you can interact with it.
Also, machines became jealous about the beauty of nature.
So they started to emulate and copy parametric design, mathematical formula.
Then I developed algorithms under the water -
an evolutional algorithm.
Then you'll see that deep, new wave, expression,
that converge into a certain new form.
It's not an exact copy of the natural wave,
but more [inaudible] multiple 2D planes.
Those are experiments;
how can we really convey the story, a new story, using this new material?
Also, machines are lonely.
They are looking for a partner to dance, to tweet, to Facebook,
and to die together.
"Radical Atoms" about white pins found a beautiful old material, this red ball.
This are frozen atoms.
This red ball has no consciousness, but they can dance together.
This are experiments equivalent
to the invention of a new, white canvas, a paintbrush, ink,
looking for Picasso, Gogh, Matisse, whatever you would like to be.
So that is a challenge for the artist and the designer,
because the creation of new media opens a door
to new expressions, new communication.
That's something I'm very passionate and obsessed about.
So this is "TRANSFORM."
"TRANSFORM" also intentionally made a collision of design and technology,
static and dynamic, and atoms and bits.
I do believe that on the edge of the collision of different paradigms,
you always see new possibilities.
But my dream is simply to make atoms dance, leap.
But making them dance is not enough.
I want them to levitate, fly - anti-gravity.
So I'd like to show you "ZeroN."
This is one of the pieces we did.
Three capabilities: you can grab them in the air, then they stay there;
two: the computer knows their exact location;
three: the computer can move them.
Then you have the media of the computational world,
but in a physical 3D space between you and computations or whatever you care for.
But I'm very obsessed by astronomy.
I love Kepler's laws and all the stuff.
so I always choose this kind of space-ish materials.
Who saw "Gravity", "Interstellar," and "The Martian," all of them?
OK, you should really watch them.
That really inspire the future.
Future is the Interstellar travel.
Anyway, we've done lots of stuff, but time is running out,
so I have to be very quick.
Bio is the new digital.
This is a very profound message Nicholas Negroponte sent last year.
We took bio as a new interface.
Let me show you some natto bacteria.
Who loves natto?
Good. Japanese!
OK. (Laughter)
Now, nattos dance for us.
(Music)
We designed a second breathing skin driven by natto bacteria,
bacillus subtilis var. natto.
There are millions of natto inside.
They are responding to relative humidity if you run and sweat.
It's open, and based on physiological precise calculations,
on heat maps, wet maps, sweat maps.
We calculate.
How should we print all these bacteria
in such precise positions so that they can breathe?
To communicate that kind of crazy stuff is very tough.
So we did lots of exhibitions at MIT Media Lab 30th anniversary last October
and at Ars Electronica.
Steam bot is making "bioLogic"; bacteria wake up, expand, open.
You see how all textile respond in real time.
So this is a mechanism.
This is a printer.
There's no printer that can print solution precisely,
so we built our printer.
These are bacteria helping us.
One bacterium becomes 10 billion next morning.
It's a very fanciful soldering, Arduino ball.
It's growing.
This is a skin that responds, clears the body, with no battery, no wire,
but living bacteria, or dormant bacteria that respond.
But the real beauty is not the bacteria, the machine or design;
it's people who express themselves
using an amazing experience, their skill and their body.
These are our friends from the Boston Ballet Company.
But they're also dancing been aware, conscious about bacteria on their back.
This is "bioLogic," another example of the transformable materials.
And this is an amazing teamwork of fashion designers and scientists.
But the point is that at the boundary of all those opportunities,
there is art and science, technology and design.
So trans-inspiring is one of the key disciplines,
finding opportunities in the conflict between disciplines,
and breaking down all paradigms to create a new archetype.
That's the important guiding principle.
Art is also so profoundly important.
Art provides a new perspective that turns our gaze to a new horizon.
That's all about vision.
So the vision is something so important.
But to materialize a vision, you have to envision,
you have to dream about what's the future you want to bring.
You also have to build, embody, and to make it real,
so people can experience it.
You have to speak the language of engineering, technology, science, design.
But in the end, it has to inspire and reach the level of arts.
Arts are driving our work.
Perspective is something important.
We invented a telescope in the 14th century,
which enhanced our sight, also amazing observatories expanded.
But unfortunately, all stuck on the Earth.
as our eyes are stuck on the head.
That is a limitation.
But the Hubble Space Telescope is an amazing quantum leap.
Now you can decouple your eyes, let it flow in the Universe.
You can really see the world in a totally different perspective.
Also, my loved Voyager 1 went beyond the Solar System
and brought all the amazing surprising imageries including ourselves.
The problem is people could only see the world from their own perspectives.
You are stuck.
If you love to be a designer or an engineer too much, it's a dead-end.
So the real question is how to really change this limitation,
enhance your vision, how to expand the scope,
meeting new people, new friends, a new perspective,
and then, how to escape from your comfort zone.
The world is changing very rapidly. We really need a holistic perspective.
But also life is short. So you need fewest focus.
Oh, really life is short. Time is running out.
Today I have focused on bacteria. Sorry, Patrick! (Laughter)
How to really focus on a very important thing?
So many exciting stuff.
What's most important? What matters for you and for the world?
I'm always thinking, asking to myself,
what can we leave for the people living in 2200?
What's the legacy? How will they remember us?
That's a future we are responsible for.
An important thing I'm learning is life has a set end point.
But the future for which we are responsible for is never ending.
We love technology and also hate technology,
but technologies soon become obsolete.
However, true vision is everlasting.
Thank you very much for your kind attention.
(Applause)