Spread, 2013-
Since 2004, we have been working on Life Stripe, a project which uses twenty-one colors to record daily activities over the course of a 24-hour day. The idea was inspired by a friend who had withdrawn from society. To help our friend maintain a regular routine, we started to exchange a daily activity journal, which eventually led to recovery. This inspired a new project in which we recorded the daily activities of different people and converted them into colored bands that could be displayed as graphics. Seeking assistance from a psychologist we knew, we conducted statistical research on human activities and determined twenty-one categories of activities to record. Next, we performed a statistical color study to determine which colors should represent each activity. We followed the results of the study for all activities except for work/study. Although many people associated work/study with dark colors, we decided to assign the category a lively red, as these two actions form the foundations of daily life. In this way, we collected records from a diverse group of people, animals, and even insects, whose daily activities were converted into colored blocks and presented as Life Stripe. The goal was to encourage people to recognize that each day is beautiful for having been lived. This initiative is ongoing. At present, we have collected data for a single day from over 150,000 people. The artwork was presented in Japan for the first time in 2006 at an art project held in the parking lot of Yokohama Bay Quarter shopping complex. This led to a solo exhibition at Tokyo’s Traumaris gallery in 2011 following the Great East Japan Earthquake. In 2012, we held the charity project Live Colorfully!—A Creative Support to Tohoku at Spiral. After that, the project was featured in Milan Design Week for three consecutive years from 2012. In 2014, a successful large-scale exhibition was organized with the University of Milan and the University of the Republic of San Marino. That same year, we were invited by Rappaz Museum, a private art museum in Basel, Switzerland, to hold an exhibition for Life Stripe. In addition, the project has made appearances in numerous other exhibitions, including our 2015 solo exhibition at the Japanese Embassy in Switzerland, Kenpoku Art 2016 in Ibaraki Prefecture, and the Red Dot Design Museum in Singapore.
Two years later, our friend, who had been the inspiration for the project, successfully reentered society.
Artwork: Spread / Photography: Ooki Jingu
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