In late 2008, a YouTube video began to circulate online of a bespectacled man with electrodes attached to his face, short bursts of electricity making his muscles twitch in time to a soundtrack of glitchy electronica. Titled ¡±¡°, the clip would eventually rack up more than 1.7 million views. Its creator, Daito Manabe, has posted 150 such videos, charting his ongoing experiments to forge a tighter, happier relationship between man and machine ¡ª even if it requires some obvious discomfort on his part.
Anyone who caught J-pop trio Perfume on their European tour during the summer will have seen Manabe¡¯s work in action. The group performed their futuristic electro wearing elaborate white dresses that acted as a canvas for a constantly morphing kaleidoscope of digital graphics, which in turn interacted with the images being projected on screens behind them. Manabe may insist that he¡¯s ¡°not doing anything complicated¡± with the stage show ¡ª a combination of motion capture, visual programming and projection mapping technology ¡ª but the effect is dazzling.
A man of multiple talents ¡ª programmer, composer, designer, DJ, VJ ¡ª Manabe had been bugging Perfume¡¯s people for three years before finally getting a chance to work with them. ¡°I was a big fan,¡± he says. ¡°Eventually, [Perfume choreographer] Mikiko got in touch, saying that they wanted to do something interesting at their Tokyo Dome show, and asking if I¡¯d be able to help them out.¡± That was 2010, and Manabe has since become a pillar of the group¡¯s creative team, using his programming nous to transform their gigs into immersive tech fantasias.
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