Computers thinking tenderly about paper

[imomus]

Namco's Katamari Damacy, a game in which a 5 centimeter-tall prince rolls a big adhesive ball around collecting objects and throwing them up into the sky to replace lost stars, is being hailed in some quarters as the arrival of artist Takashi Murakami's idea of superflatness in computer games. Whether you agree with this or not depends on how metaphysically you interpret Murakami's original concept. Personally, I think the whole point of the idea of superflatness is that it's very, very literal. A superflat social system must be horizontal. Superflat art must recognize no distinctions between high and low. A superflat character must look, well, flat.

There have been flat characters in video games since the very beginning of video games, because it's only relatively recently that computers and consoles got the chip-power to render the illusion of 3D in real time. But I'd like to make a short personal history here of self-consciously superflat characters; characters who look like they're made of paper, even when they move through a 3D landscape. Superflatness-by-necessity doesn't interest me here. It's when we get superflatness-by-design that things get intriguing; that moment when we abandon power-mania (the desire to imitate everything, to be all-knowing and all-rendering) and pluck up the courage to embrace limitations. The moment we realise that limitations and flavour are pretty much the same thing is a wise moment.



The first game character to be superflat by design rather than necessity was Parappa the Rapper. Parappa appeared in 1997, and the English-language press release explained that "parappa" meant "paper-thin" in Japanese. In fact, that's not strictly true -- pera pera is the Japanese word for paper thin. Rodney Alan Greenblatt, who made animations for the game, explains that game creator Masaya Matsuura was making a play on words when he combined the phrase pera pera with the word rapper. Parappa is a paper-thin rapper, a canine relative of the daisy age peace-and-flowers rap of De La Soul (his girlfriend, Sunny Funny, is in fact a flower; she could have fallen straight off the cover of Three Feet High and Rising).

Why restrict yourself, in a world of smoothly-flowing 3D computer animation, to something that looks like paper? There are several reasons. First of all, because what's limited has its own flavour. It has identity. Secondly, because what's limited is cute. As cute as a child. Thirdly, because nostalgia feels warm. Fourthly, because visiting a past stage of media evolution is an interesting form of media time travel. Fifthly, because self-consciousness can be interesting. And finally, because all these reasons add up to the thing we call postmodernism.

Parappa the Rapper was a big influence on my 1998 album The Little Red Songbook, which embraced monophonic analogue synthesizers in exactly the same way, and for exactly the same reasons, that Parappa embraced flat characters. Moogs had flavour which their digital descendents, attempting to be all things to all musicians, had lost. Moogs had a stronger synth identity. Moogs, once considered cold, were by the late 90s cute and retro and warm, evoking nostalgia rather than future shock. A Moog could help you travel, associatively, through time. To use a Moog in 1998 was interestingly referential, self-conscious, and post-modern. I'm getting nostalgic for the nostalgia just talking about it!

Parappa was followed by other characters proclaiming their allegiance to paper, notably Nintendo's Paper Mario (2000), a self-consciously retro version of Super Mario. And although the characters in Katamari Damacy aren't paper-thin, the game plays with the conventions of spatial rendering, mixing (in a fine example of the Japanese aesthetic I've called Cute Formalism) different characters with different types of rendering in the same frame. Postmodernism has, of course, been mixing and matching its rendering conventions since the 60s paintings of Sigmar Polke and David Hockney. But it's only relatively recently that computer games have been sophisticated enough to do the same thing. The Katamari Damacy website has a page where you can actually bring the paper metaphor full-circle by downloading pdfs of the characters -- a chunky cat, for instance -- which, printed out, can be made into 3D paper models, reminding us that paper also has a relationship with 3D: not only does it start off as a tree, but paper can, in the right hands, wind up as origami.

Tamasoft's Pepakura Designer is a way to reverse-engineer origami from computer data: its cute slogan is "Let's make paper craft model from 3-dimentional data!" I'd think of this post-digital origami as a nice example of what I called, back in 2000, The Post-Bit Atom. In other words, of the tendency of digital culture to make us value non-digital forms more, rather than less, tenderly.

So when, exactly, did computers start thinking tenderly about paper? I suddenly remembered the moment I first noticed it. I was at a party in Paris in 1996. It was in the studio of graphic designers Kuntzel and Degas. The pop group Sparks were there, and Ariel Wizman was DJing, playing his old Perrey and Kingsley records. On a Mac some kids were playing a Japanese CD-ROM called Pop-Up Computer, a series of games, scenarios and puzzles immaculately and playfully rendered by creator Gento Matsumoto as an A-Z pop-up book. Perhaps we can see Gento as the Abraham of Superflatness and his Pop-Up Computer as the Genesis of all computer paper-tenderness.



Addendum: in the comments thread I found out about Mojib Ribon, the 2003 release from the creators of Parappa the Rapper, a game which develops the paper metaphor by focusing on calligraphy and features shamisen music with robot rap over the top. Great stuff! Thanks, brandonnn!

Comments

What about "by default"?

[(Anonymous)]

Superflatness-by-necessity doesn't interest me here. It's when we get superflatness-by-design that things get intriguing; that moment when we abandon power-mania

What about postmodernism-by-default? If Japan has no indigenous concept of "high art," why do they get credit for flattening the difference between low and high when it's all essentially imported the same way? Isn't "superflatness" in Japan historically determined not intentionally designed?

Marxy

katamari damashii

[wenchboy.livejournal.com]

I actually bought Katamari Damashii a few months ago. I'm also familiar with Takashi Murakami and the whole superflat movement, but I didn't think to connect them. I guess I just found the things that appealed to me aesthetically without really connecting the ideas behind them. A good thing to mention with K.D. is that the music in the game is actually really great. There's a lot of jazz influence and I even found a cover of the theme song by the American band Corey vs. Corey (http://www.coreyvscorey.com/ Notice the genki hats on the main page). That follows with the notion of a seemlessness between the "high" are of well-composed jazzy music and a video game that could appeal to a five-year-old. Also the simplicity of the gameplay is deceptive, because very quickly it's obviously how detailed everything is. As you collect different objects you can access them from the main menu, and each has a small description as well as making a sound and interacting with its environment in a specfic way. The detail and precision that went into was obviously intense. In a way I think this is taking superflat to a new level of practice outside of Murakami's theory. When I first became familiar with superflat art was at an art show in Seattle. K.D. and the other things like it take it out of the art shows. The reason postmodernism has become so huge is because no one saw it coming. As games and other popular media like this seep into culture it ingrains it with a postmodernism that is unavoidable.

On a different note, I've been reading a lot of occult writing by Christopher Hyatt, Aleister Crowley, Isreal Regardie, as well as about the self-proclaimed pomo chaos magick. I was thinking just a few hours ago how this postmodern leveling of morals and destruction of judgement on what is high/low, evil/good, etc. (the elimation of the either/or as you put it, and moving into the yet/also) has actually enabled me to become involved in spirituality rather than hindering. Hmm, I don't really have a very distinct idea of how it has done this, but it's there in my head. It's like there is an elimation of mystery in life when all things become equal, so instead of becoming wrapped up in the illusion of life I can transcend it.

I think the most important aspect of postmodernism and superflat theory is that nothing can be taken seriously. It's all just a big joke and once you're in on it life actually transforms itself.

Re: katamari damashii

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Another way of saying that is that pomo is radically egalitarian, anti-hierarchical, and playful.

I'd be interested if you could explain the spiritual point more, though! Maybe it relates to the "micro-spirituality" I've noticed in Japan, where the absence of a focal spiritual point (a monotheistic God) allows a diffusion of the spiritual into tiny gestures like wrapping a gift or drinking tea.

Re: What about "by default"?

[imomus.livejournal.com]

The distinction between by-design and by-default doesn't really excite me much. It's a bit like nature-nurture. We're all influenced by things consciously and unconsciously. What I have heard advanced, though, is that the Japanese are more open to the many-sidedness of their motivations than people in the West. In the West we tend to intellectualise, to rationalize post facto, to try and show ourselves as consistent and passion-free in our arguments. Japanese arguments tend to justify things with appeals to many different factors: to emotion, to custom, to reason, to the feelings of others, and so on.

Re: katamari damashii

[(Anonymous)]

Another way of saying that is that pomo is radically egalitarian, anti-hierarchical, and playful.

I was looking through some Japanese magazines today - namely Sound and Recording and Boon - and comparing them with Dazed and Confused. The former two show you step-by-step how to dress/make music in the "proper" way, allowing anybody access across the artificial barriers of "natural coolness" seen in Western fashion magazines. By breaking down ideas of "innate fashion sense" or "authenticity," these magazines are indeed radically egalitarian, BUT the one implied necessary ingredient to these adventures in style is capital. Large sums of money are required to function at the "proper" level, which makes these magazines essentially only targeting the upper-middle class. However well-meaning, Japanese pomo ultimately discriminates in its lack of class consciousness.

Marxy

Re: katamari damashii

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Well, we could look at the difference between western fashion mags, with their ultra-snobby designer values and their stylist-led, top-down, class-distinguishing traits, and Japanese fashion mags, which tend to provide How To and Where To information, and pay much more attention to grassroots fashion: what the kids on the street are wearing. Sure, expensive designer labels and snobbism are not unknown in Japan, but since the downturn I'd say it's been perfectly possible to follow fashion by running things up for yourself at home with a sewing machine, or putting looks together with secondhand gear. In fact, secondhand (retro-thrift) culture is the most "postmodern" kind of fashion there is, and many of the big-name pomo designers are basically getting their ideas from thrifting. So I don't think we can say that pomo relies on "large sums of money". It does rely on globalism, but the copious flow of information and goods and ideas actually flattens the playing field. You still can live a pomo life with next to no money. I know I do!

[sonambulo.livejournal.com]

rrrrr i love parapa

[(Anonymous)]

Unconvincing.
Flat != Superflat.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Could you make your flat rejection of my argument a little more, er, 3D? Obviously flat does not equal superflat, but there's a very close relationship between them, as art magazine BT outlines:

"Superflat is a concept being proposed by artist Takashi Murakami, whose paintings deal with two dimensional spatiality rendered somewhere between traditional Japanese painting and modern anime. The phrase, though coined by Murakami for his art, has recently drawn attention from young scholars due to its connotations: 'devoid of perspective and devoid of hierarchy, all existing equally and simultaneously."

[33mhz.livejournal.com]

Along what lines is Katamari being considered superflat? Is it just the whimsical, flatshaded, geometric style of the art and characters, or is it informed by superflatness on a deeper level?

[imomus.livejournal.com]

http://glitchslaptko.blogspot.com/2004/03/katamari-damashi-superflat-video-game.html

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Here's Robert Duckworth arguing that case on Neomarxisme:

"nick said: Anyone who knows anything about either video games or superflatness knows that the two were already very familiar with each other back in 1997, eight years ago, with Parappa The Rapper. I'd have thought someone with Bobby's Jinglish skills would know that even the name "Parappa" comes from the words "paper thin" -- in other words, almost literally "superflat".

and i say: nick, it is PRECISELY because of my japanese skills that i didn't choose to cite "parappa". why? well, while what you say about the meaning of the word "parappa" is SEMANTICALLY accurate ("paper thin"), the nuance that you (or is it hisae -an expert on hip-hop no doubt- that i really should be addressing this to?) are missing is that this basically means that this rapper is a "pantywaist" or that he isn't "hardcore" or even "a featherweight" if you will.

so sure, while his handle might appear to you two bedbugs over there to have something to do with superflatness, it is in NAME only i'm afraid. now obviously what i'm going for is an aesthetic manifestation of the phenomenon of 'superflatness'. i don't really care what name it goes by on the box, what i care about is how the game actually FUNCTIONS. since it may have been a while since you've actually played this game, nick (you HAVE played this game, right?) perhaps i should give you a visual refresher...

http://katamaridamacy.jp/download/wp_jacket/wp_jacket_s.jpg

now here is a TEXT-based refresher, taken of course from your own article on superflatness...
http://www.imomus.com/thought280600.html

"...paintings deal with two dimensional spatiality rendered somewhere between traditional Japanese painting and modern anime. The phrase, though coined by Murakami for his art, has recently drawn attention from young scholars due to its connotations: 'devoid of perspective and devoid of hierarchy, all existing equally and simultaneously." BT Monthly Art Magazine, Japan, Issue 5, May 2000

so based on this little working definition, i see the 'katamaridamashi' visual milieu -where bovines 'stick' to rainbows and then rainbows get 'stuck' to oh, say...the Eifel tower and then to a fugu-fish and so on ad absurdum- being much nearer to the murakami/hiroppon concept than anything even slightly related to the visual world of "parappa", not to mention the ACTUAL way the game FUNTIONS...

just for your benefit, nick here's a link to a google image search (in japanese) for "parappa"

http://images.google.co.jp/images?hl=ja&inlang=ja&lr=&ie=Shift_JIS&q=%83p%83%89%83b%83p

now i'll ask the kids out there to join in and to compare for themselves another google image search (again in japanese) for "katamaridamashi"

http://images.google.co.jp/images?hl=ja&inlang=ja&lr=&ie=Shift_JIS&q=%89%F2%8D%B0

and now it should be pretty clear that i've deflated your understudied little crit of my posting on video games, which if you think about it is a pretty laudable feat in and of itself, since everything you brought up as evidence was superFLAT right from the git-go...heck, i guess now you've been imploded!

the highest of fives,
bobby"

Vib-ribbon

[(Anonymous)]

Vib-ribbon is a game which would be a more apt example of Superflatness. Both character and environment (being made of the exact same vector material) are given the exact same weigth, occupying the same plane at all times. Background and foreground are removed. What is also interesting about this game is the synergistic relationship this creates between character and field. As one loses, the character devolves into lower and lower forms, until eventually both it and the field completely break down. Dismantled and unified.

I can see this game's concept of space as a spiritual predecessor to KD, but KD's emphasis on mass (really, that's the whole game) in the game underscores it's ability to be truly Superflat.

Parappa does not truly exemplify Superflatness either, but it's a tougher one given the self conscious flatness -both stylistically and gameplay-wise. I think the concept of space in this game is the real problem. Maybe weight too. I need to think this though more. Sorry for the anonymous posts.

[33mhz.livejournal.com]

Oh the polemics!

Thank you. I'm pretty intimately familiar with the game, or at least the English version. The argument that it reduces rainbows and, in fact, rain itself to the same status as buttons and paperclips is pretty convincing. I was instead looking at the framing story with the King of Cosmos screwing up the heavens and forcing the long-suffering prince to reconstruct them.

That, and there's a definite hierarchy of big fish/little fish. Once you reach .75 of the size needed to roll up another creature, it takes notice of you and actively bullies you if you come too close. Get a little bigger and it knows enough to leave you alone. Bigger still and it bolts in panic when you come too close.

While the game allows you to become the very biggest fish, rolling up entire islands as though they were postcards, on this level it doesn't strike me as fundamentally different from western narratives of, well... making it big.

[cargoweasel.livejournal.com]

I know authorial intent is irrelevant to pomo critique but here's a panel from the Game Developers Conference (http://www.gamespot.com/news/2005/03/11/news_6120232.html) with the creator of Katamari Damacy, Keita Takahashi, that some might be interested in.

"I don't think technology has played a huge rule in increasing game content," he stated, dismissing better graphics and sound as "minor improvements." He argued that "as one form of expression, the [video game] field seems to be really narrow," and therefore proposed that we focus on making software richer instead of trying to design the next-generation console.

But the panel wasn't all serious criticism and analysis. Takahashi made the audience laugh more than a few times with his humorous slides. And he even began the lecture by placing a Katamari stuffed doll on an empty speaker pedestal.

[(Anonymous)]

Sorry to stab in like that. I was referring to the flatness of Parappa being primarily a stylistic consideration. Space is still handled in a very traditional (though not "traditional Japanese painting") sort of way. It's more like a diorama. Though there is obvious flatness, the material still adheres to 3D notions of foreground and background. This leads to a problem with weight. If truly Superflat, these things would have rested on a single plane (space) and would not adhere to a conventional sense of gravity (weight), allowing them to appear weightless. These characters, though occasionally twisting to convey an impression of flatness, are still weighted in a 3D way. Though they may be paper thin, they are not image thin, and like early Richard Tuttle pieces, that paper still has weight.

I made a post about Vib-ribbon, which is much closer stylistically and conceptually to Superflatness.

Sorry for the anonymous.

Re: Vib-ribbon

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Yeah, good point, I was thinking of including Vib-Ribbon in my survey. First experience of Vib-Ribbon was Cologne, 1999, at the house of the synth-player from Kreidler, Andreas Rheise. So yes, there are parallels with bands and their retro-analog synths to make there too. The reason I left Vib-Ribbon out is that it's all about vector graphics rather than things that look like paper, and I wanted to concentrate on the paper-thin thing. But the paper theme doesn't really bring in Katamari Damacy very well, apart from the printable pdfs of characters they provide. And I agree with you that as it's a game about weight rather than space, it's not really about superflatness. Maybe we should invent a whole philosophy of Superfat! I can just see the essays now: references to the "Supersize Me" documentary, polemics pitting Superfat America against Superflat Japan, etc etc...

[sarmoung.livejournal.com]

It might be a rather moot point, but I think that Katamari is so much better than Murakami's work. For a start, its character design isn't stuck in the popular bug-eyed anime/manga conceit. Yawn! Also, there may be some points to connect the two, but flatness really isn't one of them. KD is all about rolling in three dimensions, from tiny household objects all the way to planets themsleves. It's a simple child's idea (what if I could stick everything to this ball by rolling it around) and not at all to do with flat. Super or otherwise. If I wanted flat, I'd go for Viewtiful Joe (http://www.capcom.com/vj/spots/viewtifuljoe2.mov) (QuickTime).

Music for Robots (http://music.for-robots.com/archives/000567.html) still has some Katamari mp3 up. But be careful, as these are dangerously catchy tunes!

On an unrelated note, I picked up a New York guide edition of Brutus just as I was leaving the place. I'm back in a few days and looking forward to exploring the city through that particular lens. It's just a much better visual aid than anything I've seen in English. For example, comparative cross-sectional comparisons of hamburgers. None of which look too appealing, I must say.

[honeychurch.livejournal.com]

My initial reaction in reading your post was to reject the idea of KD as "superflat" - while I'm still not convinced entirely, though, I feel as though I can give it more thought. On the one hand, it is true that in the game objects such as rainbows and primitive, 2-dimensional clouds (they aren't three-dimensionally "puffy") are given the same status as cows and trees, but, in general, I'm not convinced that this means the game is superflatness-in-action. However, where my mind opens up a bit is not in the game itself, but in the opening credits of the game - that may seem odd, but in thinking about the game as connected to superflatness, I am reminded of a moment near the opening (one that causes me an absurd amount of joy - unfortunately, I can't find a screenshot) where the image is composed of three trumpeting ducks' heads on one side, three geese on the other, while a rainbow arches in the background in front of a mountain, and am elephant and giraffe each pass with the kind of movement I would associate with a paper shadow-puppet - thinking on it, it does give the composed image a quality of superflatness in motion (a quality that carries through the credits, which do-but-don't look like the game itself). Perhaps I'm splitting hairs - and, of course, the opening credits don't have the added quality of the player's control, which offers more room for thought - but there is something about the sequence that looks very different (to me) from the gameplay, without the same sense of three-dimensional movement.

[my icon actually has been the King of All Cosmos for some time - after a friend introduced me to the game about a month ago, I got hooked, and altered my lj appearance accordingly]

Stay in 2-D!

[sparkligbeatnic.livejournal.com]

Fourthly, because visiting a past stage of media evolution is an interesting form of media time travel.

This is what Douglas Coupland (http://www.scn.org/~jonny/genx.html) might call dimensionality slumming.

I assume you are familiar with classic tale of inter-dimensional experience
Flatland (http://www.alcyone.com/max/lit/flatland/)

Re: Vib-ribbon

[cementimental.livejournal.com]

Superflatten Me.

Interesting post! yeah, I think Vib Ribbon would fit nicely in there too...

P.S - Katamari hats:
http://mad-teaparty.net/hats.html

Greenblatt

[steviecat.livejournal.com]

I remember Rodney Greenblatt's lovely artwork for They Might Be Giants' Rough Trade L.P. - many years ago now.

[33mhz.livejournal.com]

I agree with you about the opening scene, which is why I asked whether the assessment of Superflat

I was doing some research on superflat just now and I found a revealing quote from Murakami himself, specifically addressing 3D graphics in videogames that suggests three dimensionality and superflatness are not mutually exclusive:

Murakami first arrived at the concept of superflat as it pertained to his own art. "I'd been thinking about the reality of Japanese drawing and painting and how it is different from Western art. What is important in Japanese art is the feeling of flatness. Our culture doesn't have 3-D," he says. "Even Nintendo, when it uses 3-D, the Japanese version looks different from the U.S. version. Mortal Combat in the U.S comes out as Virtual Fighter in Japan and it's different."

There he contrasts the photorealistic appearance of Mortal Kombat with the flatshaded geometric maquettes that you use to fight in Virtua Fighter. Come to think of it, the human characters bear a striking resemblance to characters in Virtua Fighter, except they are generally even less articulated.

[brandonnn.livejournal.com]

Not to be pedantic, but that's "Rodney Alan Greenblat" and "Masaya Matsuura." Stylistically, I'd say KD owes more to Doubutsu Banchou (http://www.nintendo.co.jp/ngc/gdbj/index.html), another Gento Matsumoto title, than anything Murakami's ever done. The superflatters might want to look toward Mojib Ribbon (http://www.playstation.jp/scej/title/mojibribon/) (off the top of my head, I could probably dig up more apt examples given time) for their gaming fix.

[kojapan.livejournal.com]

The Chicago Museum of Science and Industry has an exhibit called 'The history, culture and future of video games'
http://www.msichicago.org/gameon/index.html
and I will be oh-so-nerdily checking it out. Thanks for the discourse on superflat in games- I doubt that will be covered in the exhibit.