takafumi ide

Author: admin

  • Japanese Twitter account

    Just reminder of my activity… well this is not “real” activity as a visual artist(?), but something. 日本語99%のTwitter始めました。@tkfmide でフォローしてください。I finally add another Twitter account in Japanese. I separate this from current Twitter account @takafumiide because I still feel my English is terrible… ( or I should say as an instructor in a college level), I am not satisfy with my way of expression in English. You agree it? Then why I keep updating this web in English?

    I noticed the fact that I have stressed out not being able to write what I was thinking in past three months. So my way to solve this problem is to express what I am thinking in Japanese!! Yeah! Then, what? Why it is not in this site? For me, this web is very much similar to my art, which is not easy to understand without explanation, navigation, or even help. But I actually like it. I like the ambiguity in my writing in English. You have to use your noggin to figure out what Takafumi says. ha ha ha. I want to keep this vagueness between you and me here.

    I think once art leaves from the artist, the art starts to walk by itself. Similar example is interview. More than 10 years ago, I had an interview in Japanese. The contents in an interview are totally uncontrolled after it’s published. “Oh, no, what I said was totally altered!!” I supposed to check the contents before published… It was interesting experience, but I felt “Takafumi Ide” became something else, not me, in the magazine.

    I try to explain, but I can’t do it well, even in Japanese. Sometime I take a long time to figure out what I depicted at that time. In text, I put words in lines. You may be able to take and replace them whatever you think “this is what Takafumi is thinking.”

    ..

  • 3 months since Japan Earthquake

    It has been three months since Japan Earthquake. Every “11th” day of month, many people in Japan pray for the victims. For three months, I have looked at many different sources to find out what is rumor and what is fact. Unfortunately, the rumors turned out the real things, and the fact became the lies. Only good thing is that the disaster prove the fact that supplying electricity through nuclear power plant is dangerous to all over the world.

    What artist can do, which has been my question since 911 in 2001.
    I found one of good examples in this earthquake is Naoto Nakagawa, who helped to depict portraits of victims in tsunami disaster in Iwate Prefecture. The most victims lost their photo albums and their memory in the town…

    New York painter draws portraits of evacuees –
    AJW by The Asahi Shimbun http://ow.ly/5fo6u

    I am thinking of depicting future event.
    I am thinking about children.
    We have to save their life.

  • Heart breaking news

    I have been looking for something that I can do for the victims of Japan Earthquake.
    Frustrated because I felt do nothing. Felt useless, and I still don’t have a clear answer.
    Have been thinking, and still need to think. There may be no answer of what I am looking for.

    Positive thing is that I have been imaginary composing several songs to response the incidents recently. I hope I can take some notes of music that I am listening in my mind.

    Now more people, at least 300 people, were killed by tornadoes and violent storms in a wide area of southern parts of the United States.

    I need time. More time.

  • Prep for OCC exhibition

    In the Twitter and facebook, I said, “think about #egypt, obviously, can’t ignore. (Feb. 3)” And later, “editing sound for a drawing installation. (Feb. 17)”

    I wanted to create something that I can support the people who are fighting for their rights. For this project, I recorded some sound/noise of the events from AlJazeera, BBC, CNN, YouTube in order to create one sound file, which represents the timeline of Egyptian Revolution with my wish for peaceful ending in their future.

    I collected the materials and edited them in one file. I edited the sound not only for hearing of noise and chant of crowd, but also seeing of sound, which I wanted to prepare for next step: drawing. The sound waves are placed in chronological order. In the middle of this sound file, I kept “quiet moment” that is my hope for a peaceful moment. Meanwhile, it divides the timeline between the instant before and after the leader stepped down. I used the sound from the cheerful chant in the last part.

    In the above snap shot, the yellow sound wave is the one that I traced for a drawing.
    The photograph below shows how I set up the overhead projector and the transparent film paper for tracing.

    The total length of sound file is 34 seconds. The total length of drawing is 270 inches, which are divided in nine 30×22″ papers.

    These pencil drawings will be hang in the main gallery space in The Gallery at the Ann Felton Multicultural Center at Onondaga Community College from today until April 5th, 2011.