Interview: Masaki Hirokawa
Luca Curci talks with Masaki Hirokawa, among the honourable mentions of the ITSLIQUID International Contest 12th Edition.
Luca Curci talks with Masaki Hirokawa, among the honourable mentions of the ITSLIQUID International Contest 12th Edition.
Glance / 視線 by Masaki Hirokawa
ITSLIQUID Group has published an interview with me on the occasion of my receiving an Honorable Mention in the ITSLIQUID International Contest - 12th Edition. I went into this interview with all my heart and soul, expressing my gratitude for this very honorable opportunity.
国際アートコンペティション 第12回 ITSLIQUID International Contest 栄誉賞受賞のインタビュー記事を ITSLIQUID Group に掲載いただきました。とても光栄な機会をいただき、本当に有り難く思います。
Moirai / 運命の肖像 by Masaki Hirokawa
インタビュー記事 (和訳):
- 現在、取り組んでいることは何ですか？
私は昨年末より日本国外での大切な展示会や発表の機会に恵まれ、一つ一つを有難い機会と受け止め、何事も全力で取り組んで参りました。
スマートフォンアプリ事業の方も十年間無休でサービスの改善に努めており、近年に至ってはマーケティングやプロモーション、UI/UXデザインやシステム設計の方式を大幅に革新することになりました。毎日の小さな積み重ねにより、アジア、欧州、南米市場の基盤は揺るがないものとなり、現在は念願である北米市場の攻略にシフトしています。
それらの経験より得られた多分野に於ける並列的なタスク処理とデータ分析能力は、自然とグラフィックアートにも活かされ、新しく制作する作品はより美しい構造を持ち、多次元をネスティングした造形を成すでしょう。
- どのようにして現在の芸術活動に至ったのですか？
私は二十五年前のインフラネットワークがまだ整備されていない時代から、様々な分野のデジタル表現に挑戦して参りました。
ハードウェアも現在より未発達で、ソフトウェアも十分に流通していなかったため、クリエイティブに必要なツールは自ら開発を行うか、或いはその機能を仕様外に拡張するなど、創意工夫しなければならなかったのを憶えています。
ネットワークの通信量にも通信速度にも制限があり、その中で画像コンテンツや動画コンテンツを快適にストリーミングするだけでなく、常に革新的で自由な表現をすべく試行錯誤する必要がありました。
私の興味は十代の頃より永久機関の開発に向いており、インタラクティブムービー制作を通して人工生命を生み出すシステム設計を学び、ゲーム開発を通して人工知能の仕組みを知り、アプリケーション開発を通しては大衆の普遍的無意識を探りました。
朝から晩まで画面と向き合い、外の世界を俯瞰視しながらの二十有余年を過ごしていたように思います。しかし人間の根幹を成す愛情への渇望と苦悩を知り、2019年の末よりグラフィックアートの制作を始めました。
ただ不可解なのは、“私が人間を知りたがっていた” のではなく、“何かが人間を知りたがっている” かのようであったことです。その “何か” は人の身を通して人の心の在り方を見ているのかもしれません。
おそらく多くの表現者にとって、創作を始めた切っ掛けと辿って来た道のりは筆舌に尽くし難いものであり、不可解としか言い表しようのないものでしょう。
- 作品が完成したとき、どのような気持ちになりますか？
完成の喜びと同じだけ苦しみからの解放感が得られ、肩の荷を下ろす気持ちで遠くから作品を眺めます。それは授かりものであり、自分の手から元々離れたものですから、茫然自失とするのみです。したがって私はこの世界の様相を知り、大衆の心理を知ることになります。
- あなたの創作活動はどのようなものですか？
私にとって創作活動は生きる目的であり、生き抜く手段であり、生まれて来た意味でもあって、それ以外に何も持ち得ません。私はその恵みを与えてくださった神様、父母、ご先祖様に感謝しています。実は生きるのが辛いことも屡々ありました。しかし恵与されたものを忘れて自暴自棄に走る時も、大切な機材だけは壊すことは出来ませんでした。
- どのような芸術テーマを追求していますか？好きなテーマがあれば教えてください。
私は神への憧憬から多次元科学に魅せられ、物理学の仮説である超弦理論から量子力学の不可思議な世界に迷い込んだ時期もありました。しかし過去のシュルレアリスム絵画の方が、その問いに対し雄弁さを持っているように感じます。
私は自分なりの方法で神秘世界や余剰次元を表現し、それに至るまでのプロセスも余すことなく言語化したいと考えています。つまり “神” や “愛” などの非常に曖昧な要素を表す公式を求めているのです。私はただ寂しいから神と遊び、物を作り始めただけだったのですが…。
Forgotten Sky / 忘却の眺め by Masaki Hirokawa
Masaki Hirokawa is a Japanese graphic artist, who produces artworks that focus mainly on the photo collage. He has done exhibitions around the world and won numerous international design awards. He contributes his artwork to art annuals and speciality graphic magazines around the world. Masaki Hirokawa’s wide range of activities includes graphic design, smartphone app development, interactive movie production, and website development. They also write technical articles on graphic design for graphic design magazines and reference books. He was awarded the “ARTIST OF THE YEAR 2021” by ITSLIQUID Group in 2022.
Aprodite / 豊穣の春 by Masaki Hirokawa
Luca Curci – What are you currently working on?
Masaki Hirokawa – Since the end of last year, I have been blessed with many precious opportunities to exhibit and launch projects outside of Japan. I receive each such occasion with deep gratitude and have thrown myself fully into every opportunity. I have also dedicated the past 10 years without rest to my smartphone app business, striving to improve the quality of my services. And in recent years, I have achieved major innovations in my marketing, promotional activities, and the methodologies of my UI/UX designs and system designs. Thanks to the accumulation of small, daily achievements, I have been able to build the bases of my business in the Asian, European, and South American markets into a solid foundation, and now, I am in the midst of making a shift toward fulfilling my long-held dreams of expanding into the North American market. The experiences I have gained in developing such skills as parallel task processing and data analyzing abilities across multidisciplinary fronts have naturally benefited my work in graphic art as well, with my newly produced artworks having accomplished even more beautiful structures, achieving shapes and forms containing nesting layers of multiple dimensions.
Archon / 偽神 by Masaki Hirokawa
Dioscuri / ふたり by Masaki Hirokawa
LC – How did you get to your current artistic practice?
MH – Since the era before the network infrastructure in Japan was established 25 years ago, I had been involved in various areas in taking on the challenges of digital expression. The hardware was much less developed than it is today, and since the software was not being circulated adequately, I remember that I had to resort to my own ingenuity, either by building the tools necessary for creative expression from scratch or expanding existing functions beyond their original specifications. There were also limitations on network data volumes and transfer speeds, which meant that not only was it necessary to be able to stream image and video content smoothly under those conditions, we had to constantly go through trial and error processes in order to find innovative, new ways to express ourselves. Ever since my teenage years, I tended toward an interest in perpetual motion machines, and through producing interactive movies, I learned about system designs that could give birth to artificial life; through developing games, I learned about the mechanisms of artificial intelligence; and through developing apps, I was able to probe into the universal unconsciousness of the mass populace. I stared at screens from morning to night, and I feel as if I had spent some 20-odd years seeing the outside world from a bird’s eye view. However, having come to know and understand the cravings and sufferings for love, which form the basis of humanity, beginning at the end of 2019, I began producing graphic art. However, what was puzzling to me was that “it was not that I wanted to know about humanity,” but rather that it was as if “there was something that wanted to know about humanity.” This “something” may have been a presence that used the bodies of humans as a vessel through which it could observe the way of human hearts and souls. I suspect that for most creators, any attempt to adequately describe, in written and spoken words, their impetus for creation and the journey they traversed to achieve their art, would most likely result in failure. “Incomprehensible” is probably the only way to express it.
Crimson / 薔薇苑 by Masaki Hirokawa
LC – How do you feel when you see your work completed?
MH – For every sensation of joy and pleasure I gain from having completed an artwork, I gain an equal sense of release from the pain and suffering which resulted from that creation. I then view my work from afar, with the feeling of a great weight having been lifted from my shoulders. It is, at once, both a blessing, as well as something which originated and left from my hands, so all I can do is gaze at it, transfixed. Consequently, I gain knowledge of an aspect of this world, and thus, I gain knowledge of the psychological state of the mass populace.
On a spring day / 春の日に by Masaki Hirokawa
LC – How is your creative process?
MH – For myself, creative activity is the goal of my life, a method of survival, as well as the meaning for which I was born, and beyond that, I possess nothing. To those who graced me with these blessings-my God, my mother and father, and my ancestors-I give thanks. To be truthful, there were many times when I felt that life was an ordeal. However, even during times when I forgot about the gifts I had received and ran away in desperation, I could never bring myself to destroy my precious equipment.
Ariel / 失楽園 by Masaki Hirokawa
LC – Which art themes do you pursue? What is your preferred subject, if there is any?
MH – My yearnings for God transitioned to a fascination with multidimensional science, and there was a period during which I wandered from the milieu of superstring theory (a hypothesis of physical science) to the mysterious universe of quantum mechanics. However, I felt that the surrealist paintings of a bygone era possessed more eloquence toward such questions. Through my own methods, I was able to express the enigmatic world of mystery and extra dimensions, and I would like to put into words the process of achieving that creative expression, thoroughly and comprehensively. In other words, I am in search of a formula that can express such extremely obscure and vague elements as “God” or “love.” But the fact is that I wanted to play with God, and began making things, simply because I was lonely …
ITSLIQUID is a web-based information platform, founded in 2001 by Luca Curci, dedicated to the worldwide distribution of information about calls for entries, exhibitions and events at some of the world’s leading art galleries, museums and foundations selected. ITSLIQUID has already built a readership of more than 250.000 qualified subscribers. Among them, architects, designers, artists, collectors, art critics, curators, dealers, and other personalities of the International art, architecture and design world. It provides advertising services, press office services for events and projects, articles and specials published on the website, and media partnerships services.
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