How did you come to Japan?

Amy: I think, last time Shift interviewed Futurefarmers, they asked “What do you wanna do if you could do anything you wanna do,” and I said “I wanna design clothes.” And then we did this Holding Pattern(s) exhibition in San Francisco and I sent Mayumi some pictures, and they said “Can we have this for a wedding?” And I said “Sure, but it’s gonna cost a lot of money. Because it’s a very complicated thing. It’s hard to shape. Like realistically it’s just a crazy project. And she said “OK! Tell us” and I wrote down and she was like “Oh……. we’ll try, we’ll try, we’ll try” and it’s just like kind of evolved e-mails like coming, making an installation and clothes and it’s kind of like a dream like “Come! Do Futurefarmers world!” It’s pretty amazing. And so I was like “OK, with my favorite people to work with. I can’t do it alone. So Michael and Sascha. and I called Sascha.

Sascha: I was just….. I’m always waiting for a phone call. I know always which is gonna be fun.

Amy: We had this great job for Swatch too, right before we came here. So “Sascha is coming!” The work on Swatch made some money to go to Japan!”.

So you’ve just finished the work for Swatch?

Amy: We’re still……

Sascha: We finished the first face. It’s kind of like…

Amy: They came to us for lots of creative direction. Not like solid design so we did like shockwave demos of ideas that we… I can’t really talk about it. But they were really happy.

Do you always work together like this?

Sascha: Sometimes we work over the net, but it’s not much fun. It’s more fun when you are actually two bodies in one place. It works over the net but it’s a different thing.

Amy: Because last night, we sat together.

What do you think about Japan? and/or Sapporo?

Sascha: I love it!

Amy: I love it too!

Sascha: I love the mentality like that people are careful of each other and very polite.

Amy: There is not fear like, in San Francisco, you have to always protect yourself, not only physically, but mentally. Like there are so many crazy people in my neighborhood Futurefarmer’s across the street….

Sascha: There’s a lot of aggression. I think people are crazy here too, but in a different way.

Tell me more about the wedding thing.

Amy: Basically we wanna create experience. There’s an environment but also people that come to the party are involved in it somehow. And they add to the environment and take away from it. So Sascha and I are doing a CD-ROM, that’s gonna be a gift. And it’s packaged in this little transparent bag. There’s gonna be 250 bags and gonna be like a big sculpture and people take it away as they leave. And Aya expressed that she likes cherries. So she said that one of her favorite child memories was with cherry trees somewhere in Osaka. So making kind of a conceptual cherry tree, it’s does not look like a tree but with using this transparent fabric and sawing it on to these arched tubes so a kind of tears and cherries hanging from them. And the cherries are little glass balls that have chocolate fish inside of it. And some gold dust. And 250 of these hanging, I think it would be beautiful. And then we’re designing a projection screen. That’s going to be in the middle of the room, there will be projection of secret things that we can’t talk about it, but natural beautiful 3D renderings of nature. And there would be suspended between two posts and below that there will be a big huge carpet that we’re making, it’s kind of like a place we want people to sit down and hopefully most people sit, eat and drink. And then there is a band, they’re gonna play Airking sound. Airking designed two tracks of sound and Kuniyuki Takahashi‘s gonna play. We’ve designed the costumes for all the band members. And then there’s a see-saw that we built. It’s gonna be in an entry way and so people can play on a see-saw. And the see-saw will pull different sculptual things up and down. That’s kind of the general direction. But as we’re making things, we will think something new.

How about the CD-ROM?

Amy: Secret….no, that’s a sumo game.

Sascha: It’s gonna be a game. Some other more or less interactive pieces.

Amy: Just fun sound pieces.

Why sumo?

Amy: Because I love sumo.

Sascha: Sumo is a pretty Japanese thing.

Amy: There’s no play like traditional sumo probably. It’s got some other weird things planned to happen.

Have you seen sumo before you came here?

Sascha: Just very briefly….

Amy: Just pictures.

So you enjoyed sumo here in Japan?

Sascha: Yes, I think so.

Amy: Yeah… every time I go to the restaurant, they play it and I’m like, yeah!

Sascha: But it feels so normal here. Like I watch it in Germany, it’s so far away and I can’t really feel it. Here, I can understand it better.

When you start working together, you discuss first?

Amy: I think it’s probably a little bit frustrating at the beginning. Because I have no real direction and it is just kind of like “make something” and Sascha’s like “Do you have anything?” and I’m like “not yet” and “Do you have any ideas?” and Sascha’s like “not yet” and then all explains like some weird ideas like, for the CD-ROM, I was like “I wanna have some weird sling shot” and “do something, do some program” and then he’s like go away and program for a while. And Michael and he, for three days we had math problems to this like sling shot and to hit these pieces a little connected and they do use just square and circles and I looked at it and “Oh! I wanna make this, these graphics to go with ???” and what is it a girl spinning round and get on it or his programming sparks some idea on me and then I push his programming and he pushes my graphics.

Sascha: When I see her graphics, I know how I wanna move the graphics and the other way round, I guess.

Amy: Yeh, when he sees my graphic, he say “Oh! I can do this” and sometimes I see his programing things, “Oh! I can do this!”