Welcome to the Tsukuba Space Center! Thank you for coming today.

I was actually very impressed as I walked through the facility. While we were walking around, you spoke about “creating space on earth” and, when I think of the progress made since this facility was constructed in Tsukuba 50 years ago for that purpose, I'm amazed all over again.

Fifty years ago, the United States had already put men on the moon with the Apollo program but Japan's space development was still toddling along. We decided then to launch a satellite into space, and constructing the facilities necessary for satellite development and operation marked the beginning of the Tsukuba Space Center. Space is a harsh environment for human beings, but the environment getting from Earth to space is even harsher, so a major issue at the time was building satellites and rockets capable of withstanding all conditions they would encounter. In order to simulate that environment, it was necessary to bring space down to Earth.

The answer is that we tested it by suspending the antenna. We tested the gradual unfolding of a folded and suspended antenna having weight. The most important thing to remember here is that, even if the antenna deployed cleanly, gravity might have supported the deployment, so we created an environment on the ground harsher than that in space and tested it there. Another challenge was that deployable antenna parts like those on KIKU-8 are made of soft materials such as cloth, so it was difficult to predict what shape they would ultimately take when placed in a zero-gravity environment. The soft materials caused many problems during the ground tests, with parts getting stuck and the antenna not opening, so we made adjustments each time this happened. In other words, human imagination compensated for the portions of the design that could not be simulated by technology.

That's right. If a malfunction were to occur on the ground, we could go repair it immediately, but this is not the case in space. I think the real appeal of space development is always assuming the worst and then verifying equipment in extreme environments. Thus, the various test facilities we showed you today can be said to be locations for creating an environment harsher than that of space.

I enrolled in my university's faculty of science with the intention of becoming a scientist, and started on the path of studying chemistry. Then I thought again about what I liked about science, and I realized that I also enjoyed design related to science and technology. Chemical formulas, the periodic table of elements, the NASA logo, the Voyager spacecraft record disc, science museums' signage planning -- they were all cool and beautiful, and it was at that point that I became interested in design and video, which led to my career as a video director. Even now, though, I feel grounded in science. For instance, when I think of a beautiful parabola, the source of my ideas when I'm considering videos is scientific, and my mind always seems connected to science and technology, going back and forth between that and videography.

I've seen several of your videos, and “UNIQLOCK” stuck strongly in my mind. First of all, the images are beautiful. My specialty is engineering, and I've been developing satellite systems at JAXA for many years. When developing satellites, I'm surprisingly conscious of rhythm and balance, and I felt a similar kind of rhythm and balance in the “UNIQLOCK” video.

Oh, really?

Space is an ultra-high vacuum environment with extreme temperature differences. There is strong radiation from the sun, and there are many other constraints when it comes to flying a satellite in space. For example, the center of gravity must be in the exact center of the satellite to keep it from moving unevenly, and solar panels must be attached. The design must also ensure that the field of view of the sensors used to observe Earth is unobstructed, and so on. The shape of a satellite is the result of eliminating various constraints, but there is a certain beauty in the inevitability of the shape. It can be very simple, regular, symmetrical, and so forth. I felt the same kind of rhythm and balance in the “UNIQLOCK” video. The alternating images of female dancers dancing to the sound of a time tone and then of clocks had a beauty that was structured within the video's constraints.

I'm so happy to hear that. I myself believe that design and creativity are about resolving or making the most of constraints. “UNIQLOCK” was a video and music piece, a website and a blog widget with a clock function, but it was shot in 2006, when the Internet environment was still in its infancy. Nevertheless, we wanted to compete with high-quality images and, since it was a clock, we wanted to be able to stream it 24 hours a day, seven days a week. After thinking about what to do, we chose to alternate between a five-second programmatically-rendered clock and a five-second dance segment. It is very data-intensive to play the full HD video all the time, but the dance segment is actually being downloaded while the clock is being displayed. Doing this allows us to create content that delivers beautiful images forever without interruption. Order emerges from all of the elements ticking away the seconds, and this was exactly the beauty created through structuring.

I see. That's interesting, because making use of coincidence is not easy to do in space development. There's one more thing I wanted to ask you. A moment ago you mentioned saving your mistakes and failures; how do you go about recovering from those? Space development involves repeated trial-and-error, and what I have paid most attention to in developing satellites are the lessons learned from this process. I regard all my failures and regrets as feedback and try to make use of them to prevent recurrences the next time I develop a satellite. Do you usually follow a pattern of utilizing such failures when pursuing subsequent projects?

Tenacity and commitment. That is exactly what exploration calls for. I think space development is similar. As you saw in the test facility today, there is no way the initial test will be completed perfectly without any defects, so we have to struggle with all kinds of problems until we succeed. These cannot be overcome without commitment, and there is also the struggle with deadlines.

I have a genuine sense of that now, and once again I realize that space development is an endless world.

I think the process of editing images after they are taken is another creative endeavor. For example, our real work only begins after we develop a satellite, launch it, and obtain Earth observation data from space, and we are constantly researching ways of making that data easier to use on the ground. The observation data you saw today at the Earth Observation Research Center (EORC), for example, was not just visually-rendered sensor data from JAXA satellites but was instead a product of human imagination created from a compilation of multiple sensor data sets supplemented spatially and temporally to make the data easy to use while achieving as much accuracy as possible in the face of various constraints. The same is true for the visualization of raindrops in a three-dimensional structure. We are always looking for ways to inspire scientists and researchers, and to make users feel comfortable utilizing the data.

Indeed, a sense that something feels off is very important.

I believe in the video world it is precisely those places that have never been paid any heed that challenge us as videographers. If we can create a new sense of value there, the video will provide the viewer his own discoveries and experiences. This is why I always want to be the first one to discover incongruities. I studied catalytic reactions when I was a university student, and I found that it is often on the boundaries of different environments that the most unusual chemical reactions occur, and I found the gaps and boundaries very interesting. When I wander around such boundaries on a regular basis, I discover new feelings of incongruity and I think this leads to the videos I create.

I really enjoyed showing you around the Tsukuba Space Center. I could tell that you truly like science and space, and I was glad that your science background helped you understand our perspective. With the Tsukuba Space Center celebrating its 50th anniversary, it would be great if you could shoot some videos that look ahead to the future from the vantage point of different fields of science and technology intersecting to create a new chemical reaction.