This short animated film was inspired by my personal interest in The Unicode Standard. Unicode, the world’s most comprehensive character set, has been developed over a span of four decades through international collaboration. The history of the Unicode project has been marked by numerous challenges, including reconsidering the application of information technology, which had long been shaped by Western-centric biases, and overcoming difficulties in building consensus across regions and cultures. In recent years, I have spent a lot of time reading its specifications and reflecting on the efforts of those who dedicated themselves to standardization.
The track of this animation is a Japanese tongue-twister song by the well-known band MONO NO AWARE, remixed by producer imai. During the creation process, I researched the history of character encoding with advice from my friend, graphic designer Tezzo Suzuki. I also used deep-learning-based software developed with AI researcher Nao Tokui to sort characters by perceptual similarity to construct the animation, then printing them on paper with pen plotter frame by frame.
I was both surprised and deeply honored that Tokyo TDC recognized this attempt. This project is, in many ways, an homage to those who have worked tirelessly on the evolution of written systems and digital representation. I hope to continue exploring and expanding this theme through various forms of expression.
