Over 10 months of work came to a head last week at our Family and Friends event, where ASICS and Onitsuka Tiger debuted our new lifestyle collections as well as a handful of special collaborations at our temporary gallery space in Berlin. To close out the week, Donnis and DE DE MOUSE both took the stage at our closing party, providing what I’m told was one of the highlights of a week packed with events.

I feel like I walked through a whirlwind, but I have to extend my thanks to Dan Solomito and Yuu Kobayashi for being patient and gracious throughout the process, Elisabeth Ouni for joining us for the ride, Karl, the Illustrious One for helping us with the tapes and some word of mouth promotions, Yoske for bringing the venue to life, and of course to the whole ASICS/OT Family.

Pictures by Jack Morgan and Marco Dolo below:

A part of the Gallery

Another Wing of the Gallery

Kimono-wrapped Skateboards courtesy of Zillion

Human Tetris

Ouni at Work

Team Dinner

Why am I smiling? Because I'm holding the cash

Introducing DE DE MOUSE from Onitsuka Tiger on Vimeo.

Check out a short interview with DJ/Producer/Performance Artist DE DE MOUSE, and then listen to one of his contributions to Nippon Sounds here.

DE DE MOUSE will be performing at our Family and Friends event. All the cool kids will be there, you should be there too.

Donnis – All I Need (Produced by DE DE MOUSE & Luke Walker) by Nippon Sounds

I’m extremely, extremely proud to present the first song from our upcoming Nippon Sounds project. From the first time the idea was put on the table, we were faced with a lot of challenges and considerable amount of controversy, the least of which was engineering a collaboration between two artists from opposite sides of the world who didn’t speak the same language. Internally, there was a considerable amount of fear that we were presenting an idea of Japan and Japanese creativity that was too far from common ideas about Japan. On the one hand, we had Donnis, a rapper from Atlanta who speaks and raps in heavy drawl and on the other we had DE DE MOUSE, a DJ who describes his style as breakcore, and uses fragments of samples and lightning fast drums to create sound beds that are somehow both jarring and soulful.

Beneath the surface, one thing–maybe the only thing–these two very different artists have in common is fact that their identities as artists are inseparably tied to Japan. Donnis got his start as an MC in Japan, recording on a US Army base while stationed outside Tokyo as an airman, and in his own words, “Tokyo, Japan is the reason why I’m making music. Tokyo was somewhere that opened my eyes and allowed me to fully find out who I was.”

DE DE MOUSE, a veteran of the Roppongi scene probably DJ’d at some of the parties that opened Donnis’ eyes in Japan. Mysterious and fairly eccentric, nothing about the man or his music could be called ‘accessible.’ That said, the singularity of his focus on his art, and the obvious, maybe anal, attention to detail on display in his manipulation of sounds shows a uniquely Japanese type of craftsmanship.

To me, putting these two together was kind of a no-brainer, Donnis brings exuberance and big choruses, where DE DE MOUSE brings edge and a sense of avant garde innovation. By letting the two artists reinterpret each other’s work, we got a clear window into how they work, how they think about music and how they see themselves as artists.

All I Need is Donnis’ take on DE DE MOUSE’s Baby’s Star Jam the airyness and eery sample remain, but Donnis turns the record into a triumphant of platform to reflect on his accomplishments and the material accouterments that accompany them.

In a week you’ll be able to see how DDM reinterpreted Donnis first hit Gone as well as hear new music from Donnis produced by Joe Iron and Taku Takhashi when Nippon Sounds drops on July 4th. A couple of days later, DE DE MOUSE and a special guest will be joining us at Family and Friends in Berlin for an event that will be filled with sneakers and surprises.

Things by Ryu Itadani from Onitsuka Tiger on Vimeo.

And the campaign rolls on…
This was a very special piece for us, in addition to being very talented, Ryu is also extremely humble, and gracious, and I think this look into his artistic process shows that.
Creating art out of every day life, isn’t that what we all strive to do?

ASICS/Onitsuka Tiger will be back in Berlin this summer for Fashion Week to show off our newest collections, highlighted as always by our collaboration projects. As you can see on the flyer, collabs with Hanon, Shoes-Up, Tillman Lauterbach and more will be present at this summer’s gallery.

I also PROMISE some surprises at our closing night party.
Big, BIG surprises

My song from our Midori game created by TEAMLAB. TEAMLAB is a group of Ultra Technologists that have been active in Tokyo since 2001. The group consists of a wide diversity of specialists including; Programmers, Network Engineers, Designers, Robot Engineers, Architects, CG Animators, Mathematicians and more. TEAMLAB carries out activities across a range of media, from developing web and robot technology, to installation art, video art and spatial design, making the border between Technology, Art, and Design more ambiguous.

We did a little interview with their leader Toshiyuki Inoko to explain the project, see below:

What is your approach towards “interactive design”?

People often say that men who are good at listening are popular with women but people actually enjoy talking more than just listening “if they could speak well”. To take it one step further, people enjoy expressing something more than just viewing a representation produced by someone else “if they could express it well”.

In the era of the mass media, the job of a designer was to attain a form of expression that was perfect in its quality. That was because the only point of contact with consumers was through mass media channels. However, the advent of the Internet and the networked society is changing the role of the designer. Since consumers enjoy expressing something if they could do so well, I believe that design should be about creating tools that enable people who are not professional creators to create things that make them want to “share it with friends”. It should be about tools that make the process of expression itself, something that they once struggled with, into a process that’s fun and enjoyable. It should be about constructing an environment that allows users to share their creations with friends. That is what I think interactive design is.

How did you work on the Midori concept?

Personally, I believe that in Japan, dichotomies such as nature and high-tech, or traditional and contemporary become mingled up, and it is exactly that which makes Japan interesting. For this project, I focused on creating a world with the Japanese “midori [green]”, that green which colours the ambiguous season when spring turns into early summer.
When I was a child, I felt that I could change the world in any way I wanted with my own hands using my imagination. I was always thrilled and excited. Just like when someone buys a new pairs of sneakers and goes out into the world running. It’s that excitement which I’d like players to be able to feel.

How do you and Team Lab regard Onitsuka Tiger’s values?

In a pre-Internet society, I think the priority was to let consumers know about a product or to induce yearning for it by utilizing the mass media and famous celebrities, or by placing products in big retailers. In a society where the Internet takes the centre stage, users consciously collect and evaluate information and share their experiences with the world. Team Lab believes that by focusing on the essential issues, and creating mind-blowing things that address them, users will support products and that will generate distribution. For us, mind-blowing things are an aggregate of details. That is why the values that Onitsuka Tiger upholds resonate with us, and we believe they are crucial for the coming society where users will begin to play a central role.

Please tell us about the Sketch Piston series (about its background)?

I talked about this for the approach to “interactive design” already, but we believe that users have more fun expressing something “if they could do so well”.

We wanted to create a tool that would make drawing and scribbling as fun as it used to be when we were children. When we were young, we let our rich imagination free and drew worlds which we enjoyed exploring. The reason I started the Sketch Piston series was my desire to create a drawing tool that would work to compensate for the lack of that bustling imagination, one that would make adults who are not good at drawing create works that they would want to share with others.

The Sketch Piston series includes a diverse array of works. Some focus on animation while others present comedy-show-like humour. For this project, our focus was on music and the concept was to create a musical instrument that could be drawn and played. I want people to enjoy creating music freely just like when we were children, when everything around us like plates and cutlery could instantly turn into musical instruments.

I want people to draw freely led by their creativity and mischievousness onto the green Midori world of Japan, and enjoy playing with different sounds.

Family and Friends by Yoske Nishiumi from Onitsuka Tiger on Vimeo.

A wrap-up of our Family and Friends exhibit in Berlin last week, Koi Klub Founder/Curator/Onitsuka Tiger Collaborator Yoske Nishiumi talks us through the concept, how it came together and of course, having fun. Very inspiring.

The ASICS Europe team spent the week in Berlin for Fashion Week, where we not only appeared at the Bright and Bread and Butter Trade shows, but also gave a preview of our upcoming collaborations and high end collections at our now BiAnnual Family and Friends event. It was an incredible time, no shortage of meetings, but definitely no shortage of free alcohol. Thanks to Jack for the photos

See you Wednesday January 19th, in Berlin

This Friday, ASICS will be celebrating the release of a collaborative project with Amsterdam-based DJ Agency Robin Banks. The Can’t Run Like This EP features 14 tracks on two “sides” one side contains 7 tracks that sample Biggie’s “Gimme Da Loot” while the other 7 tracks sample Kris Kross’ “Jump.”

Sound Mind, Sound Body:
Stimulate The Brain With Music You Love,
To Make The Body Achieve Greater Things.
Mind and Body In Sync, At Their Best – Music As Stimulation.
Love, Music and Running. Get It…

Info on the event below:

Robin Banks 1 Year Anniversary & EP Release Party
Jimmy Woo
Korte Leidsedwarsstraat 18
1017 JW Amsterdam
Friday, the 10th of December 2010
23.00 – 04.00 CET