NAKED FLOWERS FOR YOU/NAKED meets Sen no Rikyū

Mr. Katanaka, who is involved in many projects, says that projectors are at the heart of the video techniques among NAKED's works. According to him, projectors used in art installations in particular are required to have features that are different from conventional usage. He says that, in the pursuit of systems that constantly use new technologies, FP-Z8000 is a projector that expands all possibilities. This time, we asked him about specific uses of FP-Z8000 in two projects. One is "NAKED FLOWERS FOR YOU" which opened as the first permanent exhibition at Yurakucho Marui in Tokyo in 2022 (as of April 2023), the other is "NAKED meets Sen no Rikyū" held at the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa in the summer of 2022.

First of all, I think, FP-Z8000 is a flexible projector that, despite its small size, can be used in mysterious and unique ways, such as a rotating lens, ultra-short throw capabilities, and a wide lens shift range. For this NAKED FLOWERS FOR YOU, we needed a projector with a wide range of motion or a small-sized projector due to the small space. In our work called "OUSAI", we concealed FP-Z8000 in a box at the tree trunk, projecting upward to illuminate the cherry blossoms. For "THE SECRET" OF SECRET GARDEN, we attached what we call projection film on a transparent acrylic material to enable the projector's images to be visible, and we used FP-Z8000 to project onto it. Projection onto an acrylic material requires a higher amount of light than when projecting onto a conventional wall, but FP-Z8000 has a brightness of 8000 lumens, so I think we were able to project it very brightly. I believe that NAKED FLOWERS FOR YOU would not have been possible without FP-Z8000, and it is truly an indispensable piece of equipment.

NAKED meets Sen no Rikyū is an art event that crosses over real space and virtual space. One of the works, "Tsukubai", required projection onto a table surface about five meters in diameter creating content that would trigger a response when the table was touched. If a shadow appeared, the moving images created by the touch would not be visible, so a flexible projector with a wide lens shift range was needed, and we introduced FP-Z8000 there. I also think that FP-Z8000 was able to produce very beautiful color rendition of the four seasons. We also created content that transforms the act of making tea into art, but the projection surface was vertical, and the visitors would come right in front of the projected screen, so to achieve this, we needed an ultra-short throw projector that could project vertically while being installed horizontally, which is a feature unique to the Z series, and I think this matched well and allowed us to project in a way that did not disturb the visitors. Even with various conditions, FP-Z8000 has a wide lens shift range and ultra-short throw capabilities, enabling a simple system setup. Also, I think it was thanks to the features of the Z series that we were able to install it in a way a shadow would not appear, even in an exhibition with many visitors.

We create various worlds using videos. With just monitors, we could only develop within a 16:9 frame, but with a projector, I think we can go beyond that frame and create worlds anywhere. Realizing our concepts without degrading them—that is why projectors are so important. When we come up with a new production idea that has never been done before, we first ask ourselves, "Can we do it with FP-Z8000?" If it can't be realized with the Z series, I don't think it can be realized with any other projector.

We at NAKED have always incorporated all five senses into our productions beyond just visual and audio elements, and I think that it is important now to further increase the resolution of that experience. We want to challenge ourselves to create a more immersive space than ever before with a work that combines virtual and real elements at a high resolution.