(This is the second of a three-part email interview with Masaharu Sato conducted by Masami Tsubouchi, curator of the current exhibition at the Hara Museum. Click here to Email interview Part. 1)
Tracing the World in Order to Understand It
Masami Tsubouchi (T): In the strictest sense, when you trace a thing or an action, what is produced is a reproduction, so it is very interesting when such a thing is accepted as a work of art. To my eyes, your tracings looked very much like copying. It seems to me that it is an attempt to understand the world by tracing it, in the way that artists copy a famous painting in order to understand the work or artist better. To an acquaintance of mine, the act of tracing seemed similar to the copying of sutras. I felt there was some truth to that. For yourself, you’ve been tracing for several years with the real feeling that you were “subsuming” the subject within yourself by doing so. Can you talk about how the act of tracing led to your most recent work Tokyo Trace?
Tracing as an Act of Shadowing or Tracing as a Daily Act
Masaharu Sato (S): Although the technique of tracing live-action film images is rarely seen in today’s world of commercial animation, it’s a classic technique that was invented before Disney began making animated films and is now referred to as “rotoscoping.” The technique was used in the early Disney film Snow White to make the animated characters seem more realistic. The characters’ roles were first acted out by real actors and then the live-action images were traced and later overlaid by the animated characters. This technique was a kind of early version of the motion-capture technique used in CG today. Rotoscoping was invented to make awkward characters move more smoothly as if they were alive, but there still remained something unnatural about such smoothly moving characters which caused viewers to react in a way the creators never expected. I had known for several years about the rotoscope technique. As I started to create works by tracing live-action footage, I realized it was this strange quality of movement that I found so enchanting.
My friend Shuji Sugihara, upon seeing a video work that I made in 2013, wrote in his blog, “The method Sato uses is like closely shadowing his subjects.” Until then I had thought of tracing as only a technique, but by substituting it with the word “shadowing,” I was able to think of tracing as one of the mundane “act” that one does as part of everyday life, like eating, riding a bike, watching the news, laughing, getting angry, taking a shower, chatting, farting, singing karaoke over drinks and getting tired and going to sleep.
During this time, I was contacted by Ms. Tsubouchi about holding a solo show at the Hara Museum. At first I was thinking of showing something totally different from Tokyo Trace, but when I found out I would be able to choose my own theme, which is not the case with a group show, I decided to put my focus on the act of tracing which I had used up till now.
Animation with a New Soul
T: I was interested in your act of tracing, so I was happy about your decision.
The Tokyo Trace series is different from what you did up till now, in that you trace only one part of the video image. Even though the two versions of Calling shown in Gallery 1 are animations, there’s a one-of-a-kind feeling about them that is very interesting. There’s also something uniqueness about the subtle discomfort that arises from a seemingly real live-action video that has been traced.
On the other hand, another unique thing about Tokyo Trace is I feel the great potential that the technique presents to animation as a technique and action. For me, I was shocked how tracing only a part of the video made traced part seem more real than the unanimated parts, as if there were a spirt residing in it. The ambiguity between the real and unreal one sees in Calling transfers to other dimensions.
This ambiguity has had a large effect on my own perception of actual scenery. I end up detecting parts that seem traced within real landscapes here and there: a jetliner lightly gliding through the evening sky, trees stoically resisting the frigid cold. These and other things appear as animations (laughs).
Sorry for indulging in my own personal thoughts. I’ve said a lot about what intrigues me about your work, but if I may continue with one more point.
Tokyo Trace includes as many as 90 scenes of Tokyo. By evoking through “shadowing” the vague bittersweet quality of life in one mundane scene after another, it is impossible not to feel the complexity that exists in everyday life. This, along with the gentle, heartrending sound of Debussy’s Clair du Lune played on the player piano made me think about various situations in my own past and feelings about my own future in perhaps a sentimental kind of way.
In closing, having placed your focus on the act of tracing, can you give us your personal thoughts about Tokyo Trace?
(To be continued to Email Interview Part 3.)