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.

[sonambulo.livejournal.com]

rrrrr i love parapa

[(Anonymous)]

Unconvincing.
Flat != Superflat.

[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?

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.

[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.

[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]

Greenblatt

[steviecat.livejournal.com]

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

[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.

[warhooligan.livejournal.com]

Ironically, this entry was directly below your post in my friends feed:
http://www.livejournal.com/users/fightingwords/318125

I love that game.

[qscrisp.livejournal.com]

I don't know if this has already been discussed somewhere, but is there some link between superflatness and ukiyo-e? Lack of depth in ukiyo-e was actually something that fascinated the impressionists, if I recall aright.

Sending things to Earth....

[brentturbeaux.livejournal.com]

Maybe of interest, maybe not... An ode to the Price of All Cosmos, and his Katamari world, can be found here:

http://www.thesecretmission.com/Boxes_Katamari.mp3

As someone who works in the video game industry, I'm fearful of the day when technological limitations no longer exist. From the beginning of digital games, the limitations of the home console have spawned some of the most creative and exciting games. The Atari 2600's lack of a frame buffer influenced the direction of the entire catalog of games, just as today's PS2 will visually favor cartoonish fantasy over photorealism. It can't be underestimated how many "creative" decisions in games are made simply because there's no way to coax the hardware into handling what was originally intended.

[junkerr.livejournal.com]

why, i own that Pop-Up Computer Book!
this is quite a strange coincidence if I do say.

[robotar.livejournal.com]

Really good entry. I'm currently working on the fat cat now! Have you done any of the folding projects? I'd be curious to see your work.

[vinylboy20.livejournal.com]

Also, Katamari Damacy is an amazing game. The gameplay is ingeniusly simple. It's more of a toy than a game. The goals are not important. The emphasis is on the playing.