On August, face enlarging boxes were put on exhibition at the Maker Faire Tokyo. The following month, we took those very same boxes on a trip to Austria.
They were put on display at the Ars Electronica that was held in Linz, Austria.
To put it shortly, they were as successful as they were in Tokyo.
Both Japan and Austria share the same kind of humor when it comes to enlarging someone's face.
We truly felt that both humor and region can get too restrictive.
Ars Electronica is a media arts centered festival held in the small town of Linz, Austria.
Since it focuses on media arts, you won't see the usual oil paintings or sculptures on display, but rather art pieces made with computers or projectors.
For example this one.
A huge trumpet that shoots bubbles (it does make a sound too)
天井から床までの光る棒
Stones sliding on top of a diagonal board
There was a sculpture too but the one carving it was actually a robot
Although media arts is still a rather new field, the ceremony was attended by the town mayor along with members of the EU, with everyone formally dressed. They were drinking cocktails at the lounge as well. Rather than counterculture, it was super main culture.
Also, there are some awards held at the Ars Electronica. Up until now some of the only Japanese winners have been Maywa Denki, Rhizomatiks (who take care of Perfume's performances), and Ryuichi Sakamoto. What I want to say with all this is that "It's extremely well done".
The ceremony stage. It seems they were holding an end-of-the-year jumbo raffle.
Why was I at Linz?
It's not like we won a pass to the Ars Electronica (we didn't apply), we were invited. Some staff member happened to see the large face masks workshop we presented in April at Osaka. At first they asked if we would like to put the same thing on display.
Make your own face with papercraft workshop
However this is a workshop that takes about 2 hours per participant. Besides, the instructions must be given in German to the Austrian visitors. It seemed impossible to achieve.
If this was in the style of a NHK professional it would go like "I will take the job" and then a narration would begin, but in our case we just ran away.
For the Maker Faire Tokyo we created face enlarging boxes made with lens so, we told them that we had something even better and they allowed us to change the contents of the exhibition.
And that is how we managed this. Hayashi, our tech expert Yoshida, Ando, Betsuyaku
We couldn't manage to take a group photo so we just put individual pictures together, but it ended up looking like an Outrage movie poster. Everyone with huge heads.
Austrians too, make weird faces when their heads get huge
We prepared a total of 18 head enlarging boxes. You must be this ready if you're visiting the hometown of the House of Habsburg (I studied some Austrian history before our trip. Once there, I realized I should have studied the language).
We placed them on the floor so people could try them out freely
This is our new face enlarging box model, we made a version with 4 sides.
Your face will look big from any side
Not only the front side of your face, but also the sides and back of your head will be enlarged. The sides look very funny when you slowly turn around. We went with it and enlarged even the back of the head.
And so into the real deal. The exhibition was held on September from the 9th to the 11th.
This is how our booth looked during the 3 days of the event.
Seeing people from a foreign country having fun putting cardboard boxes over their heads gave us a very strange feeling of accomplishment. I thought the same when we did the banknotes bathtub in San Francisco but, I'm glad we could interact with such a distant and foreign country like Austria.
You can also see me making a smug face in the background on the picture above. About 500 people tried our boxes over the course of the 3 days, I think.
Check out this short compilation video of people having some laughs with them
Girls too
As well as boys
Parents and their children
Elderly couples too (Austrian elderly couples get along very well)
Together with the Austrian Hebocon organizer
Two beauties
The one next to me in the left picture is the Hebocon organizer from Austria. As you would expect from the person managing Hebocon, he just went on to put a box over his head and struck a pose. I wonder if he would like to become a writer for Daily Portal Z.
The girls to the right were quite the beauties so our tech expert Yoshida talked them into trying the boxes (what a gallant man), although it's hard to appreciate their good looks with such huge heads.
いったん広告です
It's funny to see familiar faces in such huge sizes
People would show some smiles when seeing me approach them with a huge head but, it's no surprise that they would laugh the most when seeing the familiar faces of their lover or friends become huge.
It was the same for Japan, although I saw a kid laugh so much at the huge face of his mother that I thought he was going crazy.
I wanted them to show off pictures of their huge heads to other people
Showing someone's huge face to a child
The fun multiplies when the huge face you are seeing is a familiar one. It's also much more fun to listen to the bad singing of a close person in the karaoke than going with a professional singer, maybe it's the same thing.
How it blended with their own inside jokes was part of the charm. It's a good thing to learn.
A strange nature shows itself
And also, just like Japanese people, they would start making weird expressions with their enlarged faces. Some sort of strange nature would show itself.
That's not to say there was no trouble
The Ars Electronica exhibition was full of wonderful stuff but that is not to say we did not meet with any trouble.
1. The cardboard boxes wouldn't arrive
We had the cardboard boxes needed to make the head enlarging boxes sent beforehand but they were held in customs. I heard the reason was that they thought just sending some cardboard boxes seemed unnatural and wondered if we were planning to sell them.
At first I thought "Why the heck would we resale cardboard boxes!?" but we settled for buying some more at the home center store nearby and forgot about the whole deal. We should have done that from the start.
Just by looking at these pictures I could feel a psychological distance shorten between us. One would be left thinking "Huh? Was Linz some sort of place running along the Chuo Line?"
Also, some boy who looked like he belonged in the Vienna Boys' Choir really got into the boxes, he came to try them like 4 different times in a single day. I was relieved to find out young boys enjoy doing silly things no matter where you go.
That's not to say there was no trouble
The Ars Electronica exhibition was full of wonderful stuff but that is not to say we did not meet with any trouble.
1. The cardboard boxes wouldn't arrive
We had the cardboard boxes needed to make the head enlarging boxes sent beforehand but they were held in customs. I heard the reason was that they thought just sending some cardboard boxes seemed unnatural and wondered if we were planning to sell them.
At first I thought "Why the heck would we resale cardboard boxes!?" but we settled for buying some more at the home center store nearby and forgot about the whole deal. We should have done that from the start.
Cardboard boxes with the name of this local store printed on them: Bauhaus (what a name!)
The cardboard boxes finally arrived after we paid the additional customs fee.
2. We had no idea what was written anywhere
We could understand each other well enough speaking in English (like with the taxi driver or at the shops), however, the instructions were all written in German.
We have no idea if it says "Please press" or "Absolutely do not press"
The espresso machine overflowed because we carelessly pressed the button without reading the instructions
There aren't any relevant photos left but there's a bunch of sausage pictures. I was surprised to see it become some sort of Instagram album.
The sausages and the potato salad were good but the parsley in particular was surprisingly delicious.
You could take camera sample-like pictures with no effort
I tried to say that we faced some trouble too, but in hindsight they weren't a big deal. The townsfolk were very kind and the taxi never tried to rip us off so it felt like a very safe town.
Detailed info about how to make a face enlarging box
We got asked a lot how these BigFace boxes were made so I decided to write out the instructions in detail.
Take a look at this and try it for yourself. Of course, that doesn't mean that this is the one right way to make them, I would be glad if you tried out many alternatives by changing the size of the boxes or the lens.
We made a website dedicated to the BigFace Project which includes both the face enlarging boxes as well as the papercraft ones from before.
Its design has a very nostalgic good old Internet feeling to it.
Next expo will be the Maker Faire Shenzhen
We are planning to exhibit Big Face Box in various places.We will inform you of BigFaceBox page and Twitter account of DailyPortalZ.
Please come to make your face bigger.
We are also preparing non-reflective versions and ones with only your face appearing from the dark