TRACK 02 - VECTOR SCAN
Ryota Kuwakubo is a media-artist and the inventor of Bitman. It's the name of a series of different products. The common denominator is lo-fi-graphics and interaction of some kind.
The portable Bitman is intended for "Home or Club use". When moved or shaked, Bitman moves and dances to your moves. The Video Bulb is a plug for any TV-set, when applied it shows different Bitman animations on the TV. Vomoder Message Recorder mimics your voice. In a similar way, the DuperLooper repeat rhythms you knock on the table.
Mr Kuwakubo goes to Akihabara (Electric City) every day to buy components for his products. Kuwakubo learned about electronics when working extra assembling mobile
phones. Besides all small gadgets he is also creating huge media-art works, like floor lighting that changes depending on how people in the room move around.

TRACK 03 - PAPERO
Mr. Yoshihiro Fujita is Senior Manager at NEC Central Research Laboratories, which "contribute to the integration of state-of-the-art technologies and to progress towards an advanced information society". It's also where Papero is being developed. Mr Fujita says inspiration for the robot's design derives from Astroboy, a very popular and classic japanese cartoon character by Go Nagai. Papero can talk, listen, dance, recognize family members, switch TV-channels and look up information on the Internet. When you ask Papero to make tea, the robot turns away and cries. Papero is not for sale but can be borrowed for research. It seems to appeal most to children and elders.

TRACK 04 - HARUKI NISHIJIMA
Concept artist and painter. His Electronic Insect Collecting Kit looks like a real insect collector but collects 1-second-samples of telephone calls and stores them inside a laptop on his back. The samples are then used later in art installations where they seem to fly around like insects in the room. Took 10 years to develop fully. Next project is called Video Gun and is meant to look like a real gun. The gun will sample photo/video shoots of people in the city. The different colours of the images will be transformed into trees. The gun is inspired by ethnical wars, different skin tones and social problems with mobile phone cameras. Haruki has a complicated relationship with Pachinko-machines. He says they are both nice and gives him a "sneaky feeling".

TRACK 06 - SEGA
Their car-racing games are based on real environments in different parts of Japan, mainly mountain roads. Soundtrack is therefore adjusted to fit the taste of music that people in the countryside listens to ("hillbilly music"). The game Cosmic Smash was a title for the now late game-console Dreambox. It was a mix between a futuristic Squash game and classic arcade game Breakout. The aesthetics was inspired from Prada Sport and the 80's movie TRON. Destroying objects in the game is supposed to give a good feeling, not a negative destructive feeling, Mr. Jun Taniguchi explains.

TRACK 08 - MANGA CITY
In the suburbs of Tokyo, there is a place called Manga City, where many cartoonist's studios are to be found in the same area. We visited Mr. Togawa K. Honjyo and his crew. He says they rarely leave their studio, all they do is work against deadlines, maybe 14-17 hrs a day. Only when he needs to do research on animals, he packs his tent and goes to the woods for a few days. He likes stories that are about animals helping out humans. He has only one western cartoon magazine at home: Conan the Barbarian, a yellowish 70's issue. Mieko Tachibana works as a freelancer manga artist in her home. Her specialty is manga targeted for a housewive-audience, and the stories usually are about getting in love and having a family of their own.

TRACK 09 -SUBURBAN HAPPINESS
Parco Kinoshita is an artist and manga cartoonist. For the exhibition Suburban Happiness he decorated an entire room with pictures from his cartoons. Suburban Happiness was part of the art project Tokyo Designers Block Central East, where artists take over old houses in the central east parts of Tokyo. During the regression there has been a slower tempo in building new. Many old buildings are left empty and in the Central East areas this has lead to social problems, higher crime rates, but also a climate that seem to attract artists and new galleries.

TRACK 11 - COMPLETE FINESSE
"Entirely Director" Takashi Izumiya is behind the clothing company Complete Finesse. He also produces House music-mixes under the name DJ IZU. Complete Finesse is one of the Japanese street-clothing brands typical for the cool Harajuku fashion scene. They have their own store in the heart of Harajuku, naturally hidden away on the second floor. IZU started out as the Japanese agent for Stüssy but found it was more inspiring to create his own brand.

TRACK 13 - GROOVISIONS
Groovision makes the fictional character Chappie. Jun Okazaki of Groovisions says they are the "managers" of Chappie, and that their concept is to let Chappie be known all over the world. The measures of Chappie is the result of many meticulously developed prototypes to have the shape, color and size of what they think the average Japanese person thinks is the most "well-balanced" proportions to their standards.

TRACK 15 - FINAL HOME
Kosuke Tsumura, the founder of Final Home, agrees that "US people" in general does not understand their special kind of humour. He likes Europe more. Kosuke is interested in the way clothes are a form of protection against the outside world. Final Home is most famous for the jacket for homeless people. Kosuke himself has spent time on the streets stuffing the numerous pockets with paper to keep warm. Many of their products have names which can be interpreted in different ways. The Macky Mouse-helmet is a Mickey Mouse-shaped motorcycle helmet with alterated Macintosh-logotype. The Homeless Barbie doll is what it sounds like, complete with trashy magazine paper, the famous M-16 Cushion and teddybear inside. The Nirvana Bleach-record was re-made with mink-fur. The fur is of the kind that the fur-industry usually throws away. By glueing them to a Nirvana-album Kosuke Tsumura hopes that the dead minks will be sent to paradise.

TRACK 17 - EXONEMO
Media-duo Exonemo combine live performances with Internet savvy tricks. Yae Akaiwa and Kensuke Sembo studied art together and started to collaborate in 1996. Their invention Video/Hack/And/Slash/Mixer consists of three video projectors streaming movies from the open-source-archive of Rick Prelinger on the internet, in real-time. The projectors are equipped with physical propellers to slash up the movies when projected. To the propeller engines they've attached guitar microphones that amplify the monotone sound of the propeller engines increasing and decreasing their speed. The toy ~Tank is attached with a mouse sensitive to movement. When the mouse moves a bit, the ~Tank jerks a bit, and so on.

TRACK 19 - VJ IKUNISHI
Ikunishi is Japans' hardest working video-jockey today. When not working on his projects at his cramped apartment he likes to take the train somewhere, where he says he can get new ideas. Often works together with other artists, like Kuknacke (the name is from a Swedish punk-band) and Exonemo as well. Here he has one of his shows at Liquid Room, Son of a Loud #7.

TRACK 23 - KENNICAM
Kennicam is Kenny Boy's company. Kenny is a fashion- and model photographer working with clients like Neighborhood and Real Mad Hectic. He is also a passionate SAAB-savvy, and the proud owner of a SAAB 900 Turbo, a very limited edition, only 300 + cars. He is of course familiar with Trollhättan in Sweden, headquarters of SAAB.

FINAL TRACK - KEKKOU KAMEN
"Kekkou Kamen hides her identity under a red mask, and uses her beautiful body as a weapon. Using her special battle techniques, she beats the bad guys." Director Takafumi Nagamine has adapted the comic book heroine made by Go Nagai into this erotic ninja-comedy feature. Mr Nagamine says he knows Ingmar Bergman's works, but sleeps involuntarily when watching his movies. At the same time he also enjoys when that happens.