WORK

This exhibition was presented by Yashironi, a kimono manufacturer and wholesaler founded in 1720. It is the second installment of the project "YSN: Slowly, Thoroughly, Enduringly — A Study for Thinking about Kimonos", an ongoing initiative looking ahead to the company’s 350th anniversary. The project aims to “explore themes that should be considered today from a free and open perspective.”

Titled “Moving, Overlapping, Becoming Kimono”, the exhibition develops four lines of inquiry around the keyword “wearing”: movement and wrinkles, variations in ways of dressing, visualizing the sound of wearing, and how kimonos are stored. Through these perspectives, the exhibition focuses on the relationship between kimonos and the people who wear them.

As technical directors, BASSDRUM led the project from the early ideation phase through to the concrete design and implementation of the exhibition, supporting the project both technically and creatively. Building on Yashironi’s past initiatives, we began by posing fundamental questions, such as what we should investigate and which phenomena should be observed. We then shaped the overall direction through ongoing discussions with Yashironi director Shinya Yashiro and exhibition director Shinichi Suda.

For this exhibition, we developed three primary exhibits.

The first is a kinetic object inspired by passive dynamic walking. Planned, designed, and developed by BASSDRUM, it physically recreates a structure that mimics human walking. It invites visitors to experience the relationship between gait, bodily movement, and the motion of fabric. Through this, visitors can intuitively grasp what gives kimono their distinctive sway.

The second is a comparative walking analysis using motion capture and slow-motion video. By combining inertial motion capture with image-based AI motion capture, the exhibit visualizes differences in hip angles, foot placement, and gait. In addition, the fabric’s sway and the movement of the hem are captured in slow motion, allowing visitors to observe subtle differences that are difficult to perceive with the naked eye.

The third exhibit centers on the question, “Are wrinkles really a bad thing?” Using physical property data of textiles obtained through the fabric hand evaluation system KES®, this exhibit presents the distinctive crisp texture of Omeshi fabric through a glasses-free stereoscopic display. Numerical data such as fabric stiffness and recovery are translated into an intuitive, experiential form, avoiding a purely report-like presentation and are instead presented in a way that can be felt and understood intuitively.

Across the three exhibits, numerical values and data were treated not as objectives in themselves, but as clues for posing questions. BASSDRUM took on the role of translating the act of “investigation” into a technical and experiential form, working across concept development, data acquisition, hardware development, filming, and software development.

Finally, BASSDRUM participated in a related talk session held alongside the exhibition, introducing the background of gait analysis using motion capture and discussing how the various “studies” were shaped at the intersection of data and human perception. By sharing the production process and the intentions behind the experimental approaches, the session concluded with an invitation for the audience to reflect on the relationship between kimono and the body.