“Pika Pika” is a Japanese onomatopoeia with a meaning akin to that of our twinkle, sparkle, or glitter. It has come to be used as a term for a memetic movement of “light doodles” which are spreading around the internet. These are created by using a flashlight or led lightsource to draw images in the air, the trails of which become a single image in long-exposure photographs, and then turning a sequence of these images into an animation.

The Pikapika project started by Tochka, a Japanese creative group, has now collaborated with the Japanese internet company So-Net to create the light-doodle-animation extravaganza that is “PiKA PiKA the Movie”.

The project’s blog on So-Net has quite a few different pikapika videos, including some behind the scenes footage. It’s interesting to see how the seemingly random flashlight wavings of a bunch of people wandering around turns into complex and charming collaborative animations.

This groundbreaking Canadian animated short can now be seen in its entirety at the CBC website. Its been raking up awards and leaving people stunned since the film began its festival run last year.

Dark. Thrilling. Eerie. Beautiful.

I came out of the theatre in awe. I said to my friend, “Those eyes, I can’t believe those eyes!”

9mm Parabellum Bullet, Ogre You Asshole, Nhhmbase, Toddle – Japan’s indie rock resurgence continues with the likes of Far France, a quartet of twenty year olds from Tokyo who possess a level of talent far beyond their age.

I was one of those people that broke down upon hearing the news of Number Girl disbanding. And despite some of the great bands that have arisen out of Number Girl’s ashes – Zazen Boys, Vola and The Oriental Machine, Toddle, Sloth Love Chunks – there exists a void that has yet to be filled.

Enter Far France.

Well not quite. But Mukai and company did seem to have a left an impressionable mark on these talented young musicians.

The Japanese rock music cognoscenti have yet to take notice of Far France, which is expected, their debut mini album was only released last week. Don’t be surprised though when you see Far France on a bunch of “best of 2008” lists.

We’re big fans of multimedia artist Takagi Masakatsu here at Red Ruin. He recently performed at the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C. as part of the Japan! Culture + Hyperculture festival. For those of us who couldn’t make it, the entire performance can be seen online here.

And for those of you in D.C. *wink* I sure hope you went out to see this.

Artist: Grammatics
Song: Shadow Committee
From album: Shadow Committee 7″
Genre: Indie Dramapop
[Buy Mp3s][Myspace]

I heard about the band Grammatics from a music recommendation thread on some Japanese site; and this song sort of makes me wonder why I hadn’t heard of them elsewhere first, and how long they will remain unsigned.

This group from Leeds, UK make songs with music more like plot lines than tunes, and both of the specimens on this 2-song album have more than enough creativity and polish to stand out in a crowd.

This aptly titled song is a wondrous power ballad by Toronto based rock band, Ivory Tree Observatory. Such is the song’s power to capture the mind, I find myself overwhelmed with the sense of flight within the first few notes. As these delightful melodies continue, I imagine myself gazing downwards at vast majestic landscapes, where miniature people are waving at me. One of them is pointing and frantically jumping up and down. It appears to be some kind of warning.

Sure enough, the song takes a violent shift in mood and a torrent of chaos interrupts my flight. As the guitars thrash their way through a metal riff, I am now whirling around in a thunderstorm, desperately clinging onto my hot air balloon. Lucky for me, the unexpected storm is very brief, the sky clears, the guitars calm down and the song returns to its whimsical melodies. I loosen my grip, turn off the burner, and peer over the wicker basket. The miniature people have grown in size. A few of them begin to chase me as I begin to make my final descent. At that moment, the vocalist finishes the final note of the chorus and the song’s satisfying conclusion carries me to a safe landing.

Balloon Ride is one of the five songs from the band’s free demo which can be downloaded via their Myspace. Ivory Tree Observatory can be seen playing at Clinton’s Tavern (Toronto) this Thursday Feb. 7, 2008.

Artist: Bacon
Song: Bye-Bye Little School Girl
From album: Bacon (Self-titled)
[Buy CD][Bacon’s Website]

Why not make a resolution to help expand the musical horizons of those around you this year? For those of us with friends who are drawn to some of the extremely successful pop punk of recent times, bands like Bacon may be the perfect foot in the door.

These guys in particular have a dynamic delivery and virtually every song bristles with synth-hoisted melodic hooks that will expertly harpoon the involuntary-humming-centers of your brain. This is my favorite song off of their self-titled album of several years ago. Their more recent album “Butterfly” has double its length and number of songs, and a lot more of the same catchy accessible sound and savory name that fans of the genre are almost guaranteed to find appetizing…

I see I haven’t been doing much of the “Exploring the world through sight…” part of our title. So here is some very interesting slice-of-life photography of daily situations in various parts of China complete with captions.

I don’t know about you, but I often get the feeling that we humans experience the world too much through simple recognition and not enough through conscious reflection. Which is to say that every time we see or hear about something that is far enough removed from our daily experience, for example foreign countries or cultures that happen to be thousands of miles away, the information gets cross-referenced against a subconscious database of shallow tidbits –possibly simply a few cliché mental images– which is just enough to provide a basic frame of reference that is suitable for understanding the conversation and moving on.

The problem seems to me to be that without some kind of external impetus or revelation many of us may always see these people and their situations as hazy unrealistic caricatures of reality; and remain unable to sympathize with them or identify with their hardships. When we hear about Asia’s struggle for energy and industrial growth we may simply think of the whole continent as an Asia-shaped piece in an economics board game and forget the human element entirely.

In other words, I think images like these can help inspire us to reflect upon what it means that there are real people out there living these lives today.

The world is an interesting and dynamic place. It’s just hard sometimes to see it past the daily grind, to mentally disembark from our domestic slumber.

[Part 1: Survival][Part 2: Relationships][Part 3: Desires]