Plable, created by 29 year old Yumiko Tanaka, is a table with a normal surface on the topside and an ‘imaginary’ playworld underneath. The idea is that children can build their own playland underneath the table while adults interact by moving objects – a cup of tea or a newspaper – on the topside to trigger events underneath.
Tanaka is a studet on the MA Interaction design course at Londoin’s Royal College of Art and the Plable design won the RCA Society and Thames & Hudson ArtBook Prize 2006 and is currently on the final list of the ‘Design for Our Future Selves Award.’
Of Plable Tanaka says: “Adults and children live in their own imaginary worlds despite the fact that they are living in the same space. Their everyday lives are sometimes incompatible and their physical differences can form separate territories in the same space.
“Plable is a table, which has a normal tabletop and an imaginary world on the underside.
With this table, children can build their own imaginary world on the underside of the table, which is their secret special place, with opposite gravity. Adults can use the surface of the table as usual.
“The movement, such as moving tea cups, that happens on the tabletop will be a trigger of the happenings on the underside. They can show children some exciting tricks and do their own things at the same time.
“The connection of the surfaces gets children and parents together.
It also might help children and adults to play together more often through their normal activities in the everyday environment.”
My questions (obviously): when, where and how much?!
It’s the first comic I’ve read by a woman, which was something I didn’t give any mind to until I was already deep within the story, looking around and realised how different it was to all the others.
Of course, the heavy hardcover edition stamped attractively with a faraway tree/ nursery rhyme illustration on the front cover would be more at home in a 1950’s children’s library than on a sweaty Forbidden Planet store shelf – but it’s not just this distinction from the dark and muscle of most graphic novels that sets it apart.
Neither is a story told in the visual language and setting of a child’s world but injected with adult themes a particularly novel concept. Rather the feminine bias of these themes – wife-abuse, unwanted pregnancy, subjugation, misogyny – and the way that the story somehow retains enough innocence and sparkly-eyed hope so as not to disappear into base and ugly Frank Miller territory – marks this as a different breed of comic.
The story (or, more accurately, stories – this is a most meandering series of partially linked tales) starts by borrowing Sleeping Beauty’s castle as a backdrop and her story as a scene setting. Then Medley races at breakneck speed through that well-worn classic narrative (albeit adding her own distractions) in just a handful of pages. Sleeping Beauty is quickly aged from cursed babe to irritatingly uppity teenager to sleeping beauty and lastly, past 100 years in a pane, to revived heroine by the kiss of a tender but brave prince. The couple scurry off into new life leaving an empty castle awaiting new heroines, antagonists and stories to fill its otherwise cold walls.
And from there on not all that much really happens. The story works more like a gentle soap opera, taking time to explore characters and back-story after back-story so you sometimes have to check which layer you’re currently in at any given point in the Russian-Doll of narratives. There’s no particularly shadowy looming point being made over the story arc either and this loose structure is a little unsettling at first. Indeed, at the end of the book you’re left with your expectations of a Grimm-like ending (all threads tied up and morals laid out neatly in the sun) mostly confounded.
I know lots of people that would probably hate this. In the light of say Alan Moore’s Smax, which similarly draws heavily upon the fairytale canon and convention to delightful effect, Castle Waiting seems remarkably tame in its parody. Also, there just aren’t enough really clever moments of story-craft to surprise you and, probably worse, characters are almost all too black and white to ever be deeply interesting (bar perhaps the little demon terrorist).
So in attempting to apply mature themes to an immature landscape Medley falters a little. That said, in its favour this is an extremely cute and lesiurely ride, nearly always quietly inventive and it’s certainly a tale I’d like to read to my kid when the time is right. Indeed, the mutinous creativity and lightweight rebellion would probably blow an Enid Blyton-reading child’s mind and ensures the book should become a favourite in any gently-subversive pre-teen home.
For adults, it’s the normality and believability of the lives told here, all superimposed on a fantastical, exuberant fantasy-land backdrop, that’s of real interest – not necessarily brilliant – but nevertheless always interesting and mostly entertaining.
I’m off on holiday this week. As two of my favourite pastimes are recommending brilliant things to brilliant people and having brilliant things recommended to me that’s what I thought I’d do. After all, there are no blasted videogames to review this month.
So here’s my side of the deal: Ten brilliant things for you to watch, play, read, listen to and think about over the summer month. In return please recommend me something in the comments, send me an e-mail or tell me when you next see me.
Also: Enjoy the sunshine but don’t get cancer.
1. Videogame
Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door for Gamecube. This is my holiday videogame. I probably really should have finished it by now but I quite like having a videogame I only play while away from home; sweet association or something I guess. It’s occasionally clunky but the Fisher Price RPG charm coupled with Nintendo’s loveable cast and perfectly imperceptible giggly translation is delicious. It makes me happy and being happy in a darkened room while it’s sunny outside is what holidays are all about, right?
Buy Paper Mario: The Thousand year Door for £25 here
2. TV Show
Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip. OK. So it’s slightly inappropriate as a British summer recommendation as this is an American show that doesn’t even start airing until September 18th there. Nevertheless, the pilot (sadly now viciously removed by NBC from Youtube), from beloved writer of The West Wing, Aaron Sorkin, is amazing television. Set in and around a Saturday Night Live-style political comedy show, the pacing and dialogue of this first taster is brilliant and has got me polishing bit torrent in anticipation of the first series. Whether it can maintain the same startling pitch throughout the run is unknown but as it’s generally thought The West Wing managed it all the way to the bitter end, here’s hoping. Studio 60 on Sunset Strip will air on British television on More4 at some time before Christmas.
Before then you can see a long but slightly disappointing advert here.
If you’re at the Edinburgh festival then you can go and see Sorkin talk about the show.
3. Movie
Network. Having enjoyed Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip so much I had to then watch this film. Paddy Chayefsky’s extraordinary script (which is referenced many times throughout Sorkin’s similarly-themed pilot) is a marvel to watch unfold. A Halliwell’s Four Star Film, Network is a startlingly prophetic discussion of where television was and is headed. Made in the late 1970s it follows the story of Howard Beale, the “first known instance of a man who was killed because he had lousy ratings.” Thanks to Chayefsky the film enjoys a cast of the most improbably intelligently spoken characters I’ve ever seen – if only all real life conversations were so arresting. The film also stars the late William Holden, the man who had the Best Voice There Has Ever Been™.
Ghostwritten. I’m not quite finished but all I have read so far has been extraordinary. David Mitchell beautifully breaks the rules of identikit fiction writing, skipping perfectly formed distinct genre stones through his narrative. Just reading this stuff makes you think more eloquently and, it’s a marvel to watch his skill in slowly but deliberately tying up the initially disparate stories of each chapter.
Velvet Elvis. Ok, so it’s really another book but still – this is essential reading for anybody with even a passing interest in theology or religion. Subtitled ‘Re-painting the Christian faith’ author Rob Bell carefully and accessibly constructs a new vision of Christianity, cutting away the dross and unnecessary religious extremities and refocusing on lost truth and mystery. He’s clear, eloquent and helps apologise a faith that at once delights in the mystery of God but is still essentially practical. The religious right won’t understand it and the religious left won’t think he goes far enough. Nevertheless, this is a book far more concerned with dialogue and truth than political positions. Simply the best lay theology book I’ve read.
The Ballad of Halo Jones. It’s old, drawn in scrawled black and white and the futuristic language that Alan Moore creates is initially off-putting. But as this beautiful, funny, harrowing and melancholic story unfolded I was spellbound and now it’s one of my favourite pieces of work by Moore. Apparently, Halo Jones is even more remarkable when you take in to consideration the climate into which is was released in the early 1980s as friend of Chewing Pixels, Waddie, explains: “It debuted in Prog 376, alongside Judge Dredd, Rogue Trooper and Strontium Dog strips. Okay, they always had a subversive undercurrent to them, but on the surface at least those strips are all about tough, male, superhuman characters shooting things. And if you look at the other British comics of the time – Battle, Wildcat, Eagle, etc. – they were mostly the same, only often without the subversive, erm, -ness. And often bordering on outright racism in the case of Battle (the portrayal of the Japanese in Darkie’s Mob, for example, is pretty horrendous). I think it’s remarkable that a sensitive story about an ordinary girl in extraordinary circumstances was released against that background.” So there you go.
Domino Run. Youtube has succeeded where precursors Google video et al largely failed, showing that those who refine ideas can still be more successful than those who birth them. Those still waiting to make their millions from the Internet have to take hope in that right? Here’s an example of the kind of unique material that finds it’s way onto the site. As friend of Chewing Pixels Coyote puts it: “The highlight of this is Toast”.
8. Graphic Design
Katsumi Komagata. Originally just meant to be children’s books, Komagata’s work is starting to catch the attention of both aesthetically-conscious parents and the design crowd too. His delicately tactile publications are intended to stimulate visual awareness in children but they are also completely awesome. Komagata say: “Adults need to stop being so busy and experience books with their senses, eyes and touch rather than just seeking out information in them.” So read these after you’ve finished Ghostwritten and Velvet Elvis I guess. Little known in the UK his books are due to be released soon in the UK with a retail cost of £20 each. Komagata has also developed a large range of three-dimensional collages, which are made to order, signed and dated by him and will give your wall a x1000 beauty stat bonus. I will buy one soon.
You can visit his site here. Katsumi Komagata’s books will be for sale at the London Artist Book Fair, ICA, 3-5th November 2006
9. Photography
Guy Farrow. Yes he’s professional and works for all manner of multinational corporations but that doesn’t stop his work from being startling and beautiful. After all, it takes some skill to make a plastic bottle of Elf Motor Oil look emotionally complicated. Go to his immaculately designed website, enjoy the heart-tugging images and think about how much he’d cost to take your wedding snaps for you.
10. Music
The Go Find – Miami. The Go Find is Dieter Sermeus from Antwerpen, Belgium. This album is, in short, incredible. A perfect blend of dusty Rhodes-soaked accessible pop and glitch-complex electronic undercurrents these are proper melodies housed in proper songs wrapped in exquisite production paper. Dieter is good friends with other Morr Music ‘stars’ such as Styrofoam and Lali Puna but I like this album more than theirs. A new album is allegedly being finalised but until then, and, thinking about it, after then too, this is pretty much the perfect music.
The oldest and most prestigious poster competition, the International Poster Biennale in Warsaw has announced its 2006 winners.
Warsaw, considered to be the spiritual home of the Polish poster, has since 1989’s embrace of Western capitalism and break from communism paradoxically seen its famed creativity and ubiquity of street posters sidelined. Once street posters with striking designs and fierce ideological points to make lined the streets and minds of Warsaw’s inhabitants, all now replaced by the identikit big business advertising seen in every other contemporary Western city.
So this competition represents one of the final outlets and forums of encouragement and recognition for a unique cultural tradition that found its most expressive and successful expression in pre-capitalist Warsaw.
The first Biennale poster competition took place in 1966 under the chairmanship of Academy of Fine Arts professor Josef Mroszczak and has grown steadily year on year. Contemporary artists now struggle to find clients to commission poster work and, indeed the places to show it in. The Biennale competition then provides a modern space for the artform to continue and flourish – albeit within the confines of established galleries rather than on the streets. As a result, while only 9 of the 2383 posters entered this year won main prizes, 647 of them were awarded a place in the accompanying exhibition and catalogue.
The winners are below.
Should you be in or near Warsaw, then you can view an exhibition of the posters curated by the Magdalena Ciesielska Poster Museum in Wilanow, Oranzeria Palacu Wilanowskiego, ul. St. Kostki Potockiego 10/16, Warsaw until 24th September 2006.
Group A: Ideological Posters
Gold: “Positif?” by Michael Quarez, France
Silver: “Global Warming” by Norito Shinmura, Japan
Bronze: “Buying Sex” by Anna Reponen and Teemu Ollikainen, Finland.
Group B: Posters Promoting Culture and Art
Gold: “100 years of the Ruhrlandmueum Essen” by Uwe Loesch, Germany
Silver: “Victim” by Reza Abedini, Iran
Bronze: “100 Years of Power Engineering in cracow” by Kuba Sowinski, Poland.
Group C: Advertising Posters
Gold: “Vivero zoo. Furniture Animals” by Aimo Katajamaki, Finland
Silver: “Decoration Laforet” by Ruyosuke Uehara, Japan
Bronze: “Studio Ghibli CD of Instumental songs” by Yumiko Yasuda, Japan.
Additional prizes:
The Henryk Tomaszewski debuts
“Being a Woman” by Aleksander Czyz, Poland
The Icongrada Excellence Award
“Carmen” by Stephan Bundi, Switzerland
The Honorary Prize of Jozef Mrosczak
“Merry Down” by Paul David, USA
The Honourary Prize of Jan Mlodozeniec
“Graphic Design Show, the 10th Anniversary of Visual Cmmunication, Future, 2010″ by Haichen Zhu, China
Tanaka is a studet on the MA Interaction design course at Londoin’s Royal College of Art and the Plable design won the RCA Society and Thames & Hudson ArtBook Prize 2006 and is currently on the final list of the ‘Design for Our Future Selves Award.’
