Computer graphic artist Masayoshi Obata has a thing for organs....
Computer-graphic artist Masayoshi Obata had a lot of organs left over when he finished working on a computer animation of the human body for a Japanese company. Obata had always been fascinated by organs: In elementary school, when other kids sculpted little cars or figurines out of clay, Obata made livers and intestines. "The teachers were always very surprised, but they had to admit the organs were very beautiful," Obata says. It seemed an absolute waste not to recycle the glistening virtual organs he had made for this rather boring medical film. So he constructed a house of organs.
The image shown here is a still from a five-minute animation that Obata cooked up after five weeks of painting. None of the 80 organs in Obata's art are texture-mapped - copied from real or photographed samples. Instead, they are computer-painted and deformed, starting from a blank cube. In the video the organ walls throb and the "air-cushion" chair - made of inflated stomachs - pulsates. The black lung hatrack in the corner doubles as a clock. At the appointed time, the lungs swing open and a little heart pops out like a cuckoo bird. An esophagus looped into a ring forms the edge of the side table. "Doesn't all this make people squeamish?" I ask Obata. "At first, yes," he says. "But there's no blood in my pictures. Blood would make it look dirty."
The character sitting in the chair has no organs, Obata says, "because all his organs are in his house." All that's left of his body are a brain and large neurons for feet. What more does one need in the digital age? For his next challenge, Obata would like to make an "Organ Park" with organ dinosaurs munching on organ trees and chasing organless visitors.
Masayoshi Obata, Tokyo Japan: fax +81 3 3481 9413
