Manga, Mushrooms, Museums

SOMETHING of a creaky awakening, but an awakening nonetheless, and a phone call to Phillip Island to speak with Joseph and Zebedee and Susan, who are down there over Cup Weekend. So good to hear their voices. It's a long weekend here too: well, at least it's a public holiday tomorrow for Culture Day. Perfect illustration of the difference between two countries? Or unfortunate coincidence? Please, you decide.

Kate, Mitsuru, Patrick, Cathy and I wandered down to Miraikan one last time to hear/be part of an event for the Science Agora. A 'science cafe' discussion on the use of popular culture in museums. The talk was by mycologist Doctor Tsuyoshi Hosoya from the National Museum of Nature and Science (nee The Natural Museum of Science) and was called 'Inside talk about Wonders of Fungi: a mycohistorical special exhibition featuring Japanese pop culture MANGA'


OVER three months from late 2008 to early 2009, his museum presented an exhibition entitled: 'The Wonders of Fungi - mushrooms, molds and their associates'. Yes, my associates: associates. Because the organising principle of the exhibition, the voice of the exhibition, the face of the exhibition was a manga called Moyashimon, by artist Masayuki Ishikawa. The main character in the manga is Sawaki (indeed the series is subtitled 'Tales of Agriculture'), a student at an agriculture lab at a university, who has special (or, as the good doctor described them, 'unnecessary') abilities: he can see, hear and talk to microbes (see above for my versions of the microbial characters). This manga began in 2004, just as Doctor Hosoya was starting to plan the exhibition, and wondering how he'd get people along to look at lichens, molds and fungi. Conicidence? Or an argument for a curationist universe? You decide.



IN the end, his exhibition averaged 2000+ people a day. As he said, "Not too bad for a fungi exhibition." The exhibition design was all of cardboard, and looked great in the film he showed us - the manga artist himself came in and drew little extra surprise pictures of the microbe characters on the walls.




CLEARLY, the exhibition worked for the museum, got the people in, got the message across, worked well. What followed was a discussion about the use of pop culture in general and manga specifically, by a geographically wide ranging group: Russian, Korean (from KOFAC, the 'Korea Foundation for the Advancement of Science and Creativity', I mean, WOW), Chinese,

IMELDA from the Phillipines (above), and us. In the end the best point was made by Mitsuru, who's doing his PhD at ANU in, as far as I can tell, the media formation of public perception of science. He highlighted the fact that the success of this fungi exhbition was not due to the fact that manga was used but that a successful manga was used. In fact, before the speech began, he had been telling me that a manga that he read as a teenager, 'Slam Dunk' had spurred a huge interest in basketball. Incredible: comics that actually change mass behaviour! That's like, that's like, popular culture or something... Whereas, most of the comics I know, even 'successful'
western comics occupy more of a niche culture position.

Which is okay by me.

WE made our way back to the vast Grand Pacific Le Daiba, which I'm getting very used to as my home base and will need to leave in a couple of days (no more room laundry, no more buffet breakfasts, no more room cleaning: how will I cope?) for our final lunch to be shared by the Japanese and Australian teams. There was business card-swapping, there were translated conversations, and there were gifts and cards. I got some smoke in my eyes. Which surprised me.

Which surprised me.

AT Daiba station on the Yurikomome line we said goodbye to lovely Mami, solid Akihiro, and smiling Motozugu.

Hm.

ANYWAY, luckily there were PASMO comics in the train stations to take our minds off things. In the above, a daughter jaunts off without her travel pass. Mother yells at her to come back, she says oh no, I'll just buy one at the station. Mother and cat, apopleptic with rage: "Think of the environment!"

Along with stickers reminding us of the rudeness of talking on your mobile phone on the train (Melburnians please take note) we are reminded that it is also not okay to flash your compact around when the rest of us are trying to TRAVEL.

GETTING off at (I think) Takebashi station, we emerged into Another Green World (a little Brian Eno reference there, provoked by me listening to some Music For Airports that I've found on YouTube, which is Not Helping with the old eyes/smoke problem, which is persisting), a cooler and more vegetated Tokyo.

Above: Pete strides underneath the boughs of the cherry trees while the crows caw in Japanese.

We were there to visit the Kagaku Gijitsukan, or

and our friend Madoka-san, who put on a special demo for us about sound and speakers and copper wire and magnets and resonance. The little kid in the cap and his dad took my mind off the departure of my Japanese friends by bringing to the fore how much I was missing my sons.

THE museum was a classic hands-on kid's science museum, with some great interactives, but I wandered off to the History of Bicycles exhibit and the 'Electro Hall - Auroral Science', the visual equivalent of Brian Eno.

Hiromi found something for me though: a robot dinosaur!

MADOKA-san then led us to Akihabara, (electrical goods and manga), down some alleys and into NaRiKa, a shop full of science toys: 'science is just there'.

Below: nerds in heaven.

AND on the geek streets of Akihabara.

AT Akihabara station we bid farewell to Coco and Megumi - Kate travelled back with them to the hotel, from where they would go home. Hm.

The rest of us jumped into another lift and found ourselves in another upper restaurant, this time eating food off stones.

AND looking down onto the street far below. Rain fell. All we needed was some Vangelis and a few spinners and a mumbled voiceover.

CATHY and I were talking to Hiromi about national cultures - what IS Japanese culture, Hiromi?

"I think... Japanese culture is silent. I think it is the colour of this, of skin, a plain colour."

A remarkable description. A listening culture, that wants to know your mind before talking. Also, one that take its cues from gesture, from the visual. Whereas the Australian culture, perhaps, is one of talking, of garrulity. During this exchange, the Japanese participants became more communicative, and the Australians, more attentive. And that change, that turning of attention to each other, that is surely where the achievement of this program lies. Not in the performance yesterday, which in trying to straddle 'science' and 'performance', got caught in between both. Not that the ideas weren't good - they were - but to deliver them well we would have needed more performance rehearsal time, I think.

No, it was this subtle, enormous shift in both sets of participants that was seismic.

That's what I realised, up there on the 8th floor, up above Geek Town.

And then, back down at the trains, saying sayonara to Nahoko Ando: she and Noriko, both of them from Miraikan, have been such movers and shakers in getting the whole exchange happening and then keeping it going while we have all been here. Three cheers for them!

Shall I be Mother?

Another great big day, and big great day. Some of us were over at Miraikan at 8.30am, test-driving rockets, but me I ambled over for the 9.30 start with the rest of the crew. We got right into it, with Yuko keeping a firm hand on the timetable tiller. Our first task was to pull each of the experiments, or 'demos' as they're called in the scientific communication world, that were located in each setting in the show, under a common theme expressible by a Japanese character, or kanji. Below, Akihiro and Megumi help Kate to write the kanji for 'change' and 'water'.



The garden part of the show uses the kanji for 'air' and the third part, 'explosion'.
All this time, of course, and all throughout the process, everything that is said needs to be translated, from Japanese into English, or vice versa. Also this particular day it struck me that there were a couple of words that have double meanings in the strange science performance world we are in. 'Character' refers to both kanji and the fictional people on stage. 'Reaction' decribes what people do and what chemicals do. While this was going on, I did a drawing I like to call "Hairstyles of the Scientific and Performative':



Though it all, Yuko kept transcribing our babble of Babel into charts and lists of actions and story and experiments and transitions and characters and characters and reactions and reactions.


Some time after lunch, a cheer went up as the giant smoke ring box appeared: constructed by the Miraikan technical department over the last day! There WAS a little worry for a while that we wouldn't be able to get the smoke machine going,

but then we did,

with magnificent results.

A fairly shambolic (to be fair, it's to be expected at this stage in the process) walk-through of the show ensued. I must say, I am always a bit downcast at this point, in every show I do, because all the great writing and ideas up to that point DOES NOT, not ever, immediately transform itself into great stage material. That metamorphosis is always a difficult process. And that, hopefully, is what will happen tomorrow Saturday.

Luckily though, Megumi made friend with Minmi, the dinosaur doll puppet that I used in the presentation last night. And some casting got done, with Cathy as the grandfather

And I was cast as...

After this long day, with workmen putting the stages and booths together down on the ground floor of Miraikan for the Agora, starting tomorrow, we trucked out again to the 100 yen shop for last minute supplies: rolls of fake grass, check, kilos of corn four, check, frilly apron for me -- nowhere to be found. Hmm. Maybe tomorrow.

We ate dinner at a place called 'Pasta and Sweets: DUCKY DUCK on the beach' and while there, Coco talked me though a drawing of Azuki Terai and then she drew/wrote in the characters:

Back at the station (310 yen fare back to Daiba), Pete, Motozugu and Akihiro put their feet up...

Okay, who's here to work?

This morning, both parties of the exchange breakfasted together in the 'Sky Lounge' on the 30th floor of the Grand Pacific Le Daiba. As I slurped down sweet potato rice porridge, Coco ate adzuki beans and told me about the character/demon/ghost Adzuki Arai, a little old bald man who spends his time washing beans, made famous in a manga by Mizuki Shigeru. Will have to track that one down when I visit Akihabara.

What with the view and the demons, we were 5 minutes late in getting to Miraikan for our first session. Never again: Yuko (below left), our process wrangler, was so politely disapproving that it chilled us to the marrow. Tomorrow, five minutes early.

But it was time to hit the floor, to start writing the show. Yuko kept us moving at a clip, and we arrived at a setting (a house) and characters (a family), to help us to tell the story of 'familiar science', the brief which has been set for us.

Then it was time for small group work to start to generate scenes. Below, Hiromi reports from the 'bathroom' group - from left Yuko, Patrick, Motozugu, Hiromi, Mitsuru and Chris.


Can't see Motozugu? Here's a sketch:



Below, Mami reports on the 'garden' group's progress - Cathy, Coco, Mami and Pete.

And below is our team, with the stirling interpreter Naoko doing the pointing either just before or just after Aki's report on our progress with the kitchen scene. Naoko, Kate, Megumi and Aki.

At 4pm we were joined by Matsuda Suzuki from the National Science Museum of Japan, which we will be visiting on Monday arvo. She was one of the attendees at last year's inaugral exchange at Questacon in Canberra. She performs science shows from Hokkaido to Kyushu. She made the point that Japanese science performers do not do so much character work/acting, but that after last year's exchange she was putting more emotion into her shows.

She brought her own matches:

and liked to make things burn.

After her demonstation, which examined oxgen and fire, she and Patrick got up and spoke about their experience last year in Canberra.

After which (heck, I think it was after which - wow, it was only 7 hours ago and I've forgotton the order of things: I do feel a bit brain-fried at this point I must admit) Patrick delivered a talk featuring snippets of show from each of the Australian performers. Cathy (Questacon) did Newton's third law for 3 year olds, I did part of a show from Melbourne Museum called 'A Fly in Your Eye', aka 'What Poo Do you Do?', Pete (Queensland Museum) did film canister pop rockets, Kate (Scitech) did fire-in-a-flask/pressure change/water filled balloon sucked in, and Chris (CSIRO) did a Tesla Coil/PET bottle detonation. Bang!

Then, was it time for an official welcome dinner? It most certainly was! Up we went to the 7th floor where we were congratulated on being selected and welcomed to Miraikan by Doctor Mamoru Mohri, the Executive Director of the museum, who recalled his happy years studying at Flinders University in Adelaide. Mohri-san is an astronaut who has been up in the space shuttle.

In amongst eating and drinking Australian wine (thanks Embassy!) and Japanese beer, there were more demonstrations from the participants, both Japanese and Australian. Static electricity, annoying noises, centres of gravity, sound waves, dinosaur nativity,

a bit of a custard powder fire ball from Kate,

and a big yellow balloon kept up in the air by Aki.

Who can? Miraikan!

On my post-breakfast stroll this morning, I came across this guy who beckoned me to cross the street. They don't all wear hats, the crossing guys, but some of them do, and as you can imagine, the number of those who do is in direct ratio to the amount of goodness in the world.


Post-stroll, we were met by the lovely Noriko and we walked though the warm autumn Odaiba Island morning to... Miraikan! Where we were met and welcomed by the Director of Operations,

then given a briefing by Noriko and Nahoko and Yuko, after which we explored the museum for a while.

I was struck by the use of affective (ie emotional) techniques being used in the communication of scientific concepts and ideas, even in panel descriptions (ie words on walls) and the frequency and ease with which metaphor was used as a tool, and the visitor's imagination was called on to engage with the exhibits. Miraikan, in short, seemed more playful than an Australian museum.

After lunch I had a coffee (and a piece of cheesecake, if you really must ask) on the 5th floor and pretended to read but watched and drew people. Japanese men do a lot of suit-wearing, and this fellow, clearly on a day off, was wearing his well.

This woman (from a letter to John Murphy, yet to be sent) travelling down to the 4th floor, probably didn't have quite such broad shoulders as depicted here...

In the afternoon, we met our Japanese Science Performer collaborators! Very exciting! Yoko got us to play a getting-to-you game, and then the whole gang caught lifts, walked down corridors and visited rooms for an hour or so. Below, you can see Motozugu Ueno on the left and Akihiro Kumagai on the right, looking up. That's Patrick's chin, far right. Or perhaps Pete's...

Almost finally, we went up to the restaurant on the 7th level where tomorrow night Thursday night we'll be having a dinner at which many of us will be presenting bits from shows from our museums. I will be hatching a dinosaur, which I hope works... from the left, Mizhuo ('Coco') Awakawa, Mami Ikeuchi, Megumi Osashi, Mitsuru, Nariko, Patrick, Yuko.

Finally finally (well, before we all got on a train and went to Toyosu, where we visited 'Seria: colour the days', a 100 Yen Shop, and bought scads of possible props, which activity was followed by a barbecued feast at a Japanese/Korean restaurant) we visited the space where we are going to perform on Sunday.

It's actually even bigger and of even vaster space-shuttle hanger dimensions than this picture indicates. It's huge, which is very exciting. Can you see the weeny ants there, on the left hand side of the picture? People. Japanese and Australian people. Japanese and Australian Science Performer people, both terrorised and exhilerated at the thought:

'And WHAT will we fill THIS with, in four day's time?'

Luckily, after dinner, outside the hotel, Patrick performed a quick science trick which turned all our minds to other things...

Namely, taking photographs.