The enlightenment are four guys from Tokyo, known for artistic expositions and many different manifestations, specialized in visual works. Theire website doesn't explain exactly who they are but is possible to have an idea about theire works: http://www.elm-art.com/.
The 1st of December the did a big show in a music festival in Osaka: World out. They use to work with Shinichi Osawa during his sets and releases presentations. During the set of the 1st that I assited to, they placed 3 huge screens behind the stage and presented a visual show related to the music that Osawa was playing.
It was really impressive, the images were going very fluid with the music, it was a sort of live music-video one hour long. The techniques used seemsed to be really futuristic and well made. So, the show was enjoyable and kinda new compare to the usual dj set.
So, do they rapresent Japan? In wich way? From my point of view I think they rapresent the new Japan era. In theire videos there was nothing about japanese culture (at least during the Osawa set), the images were futuristic as told before and I think the technologies used were at the level of the Japanese fame. The images were good, going fluid with the music, but there was not really a sense of them, many were stolen from old videos or famous artistic images, others were confusing because to much elaborate. The thing I didn't like the most was that in certain points the video was going to a TRASH direction. Skulls, white tigers, girls licking random stuff....we've seen this stuff in the 80's and is kinda trash now the use of this stuff.
Basically, is the syntesis of the image of Japan that I have now after 4 months: new technologies, really impressive ideas, different fashion, many lights and work hard on the thing you're working on! But sometime all this new fashionable stuff, new things that can be seen around, seems to me to be a copie of something that I have already seen, but with lot of more stuff added to it and with a big touch of trash. Isn't the Tokyo tower an example of what I'm trying to say? What about the name given to that Osaka area: america-mura. And all the music bands that try to imitate the american or brithish ones...don't they looks a bit pushed to look western and fall into ridiculus?
So....Japan is great, but I think Japanese lately should look more at theire past history and look less behind the ocean. But yes...I might be wrong!
