Kaori Tazoe

■01/16/2007

Notes of ‘Explosion’ works  

It was lucky for me that I could stay in New York for six months. I hoped I could  change my living style in Japan; however, I could not do it. Man is as such. I kept watching TV everyday which was the same life as before. In fact, one of my intentions was to make some images for my new works in New York.

Drama, Drama, Commercial, News, Commercial, sometimes Movie and Commercial. Anyway, there are a lot of commercials included many explosive scenes that I am interested in. They are shown at random. The explosive scenes like a splendid orange in the background of the hero who walks (or runs) dashingly. The decoration of the title background and the hamburger of the fast food shop also are shouldered with the explosion and the flame. Of course, most of them are an imitation of reality. Actually, the genuine fire is made by special effects that it looks so real. My meaning is a meaning of ‘Made-up’.

The United States has abhorrent fear to explosive images by terrorism and wars. And I had the experiences of receiving a security check for the terrorism prevention several times. The checking was thorough even though it had been reduced now. In news, a small Cessna thrust into the high rise apartment located in the Upper East Side. I saw the thrust image from the news report while I was staying in the office of my stay receiver. The atmosphere there became tense drifted with possibly feeling that it might be terrorism until understanding , saying that "Accident". I saw the same images with a lot of smoke coming out from the building in different TV channels with many Americans. And a lot of "Oh my God!" heard from my back. Of course, they might not say " Oh my God!" even if they see the explosive scene in a usual television program. Because the American drama and movie can be easily recognized that it is fiction and an imitation of explosion. The interesting one, those explosive scenes have been treated as an entertainment  amusingly, happily, and beautifully. In Japan, I can see many explosive scenes in the movies, TV programs and TV games; those special effects are made by computational graphic. 

Why was I interested in the explosive scenes happened in the United States? It was too abundant. I felt overwhelming. 

Two kinds of explosion, one is real and another is an imitation. But, should I clarify that it is real or imitation? Now, I think that it is not necessary. Even the explosive scenes jumping into my eyes from the always-on TV in the United States, those may be real or imitation. Explosion is explosion, I can never see the real thing. 

I guessed that above things were exaggerated. Therefore, I began to work with this important feeling. One of my work, I made a leather work that consists of small pieces. This work required very particular technique and material. The explosive scene was drawn and tooled gently on the leather. The material and technique used could tune down the seriousness of explosion. It produced a new scenery, as well as the sketch of my another work. The another one was a video work. The sceneries such as buildings were taken in form of picture by a night scope. The images looked like to be recorded by a security camera. Those recorded images have been synthesized with the images of explosion. I used some royalty free explosive images provided by a production company that made images for Hollywood movies. Therefore, the explosive images were really good. It was important that the images could be easily recognized after synthesis when they were made by "Made-up". It seemed to be real or imitated. So, the effect of explosion was highly in case of "Gorgeousness". Moreover, the synthesized images were shown on a Closed Circuit Television, it led the audience to see the work with objective eyes. The audience might wait for the next scene by witnessing the repeated explosive scenes. The realization of the fiction resulted with an enjoyable experience. This is my entertainment as well.