Book: 'Dentsu Inc. Design Talk Vol.2' Tomu Kawada × Mitsufumi Abe "Expanding Advertising"

The book 'Dentsu Inc. Design Talk Vol.2 ' is now on sale to great acclaim starting December 19, 2014.
This time, we present a glimpse from Session 2: a discussion on the "expansion" of advertising between Tomu Kawada—eldest of the AR trio, a developer who also writes with a distinctive style—and Dentsu Inc. Creative Director Mitsufumi Abe, known for the "What to Do? Aiful!" Kuu-chan series.

Planning & Production: Aki Kanahara, Dentsu Inc. Event & Space Design Bureau

Technology That ARs the World

Abe: Mr. Tomu Kawada will talk about the relationship between technology and advertising, but first, let me introduce myself. My usual work is mainly advertising creative direction for clients, but I also run a geek lab-like organization within the company. That said, this is a completely private organization with no particular backing from the company, but volunteer employees get together and voluntarily hold study sessions and exhibit at exhibitions. For example, we've exhibited several works at Maker Fair Tokyo, an event held around the world and organized by the publisher O'Reilly. This year, in 2014, we plan to exhibit a "Virtual Free Fall Machine." It's a machine that uses popular VR goggles, such as the Oculus Rift, to create a simulated experience of falling from a great height, using both sight and sound. We plan to name it "Houston." (laughs). I've met Mr. Kawada about twice, and he said to me, "It's interesting that you're doing this kind of thing, acting like a lab within a large organization like Dentsu Inc." That's how this conversation came about. Mr. Kawada is the leading figure in spreading "AR" in Japan. Many people may know him from his appearance on the TBS series "Jounetsu Tairiku" (Passion Continent).

Kawada: What I focus on day-to-day isn't stuff that feels overly serious like art; it's more about "how to make life more enjoyable." A near-future you can casually drop into wearing your everyday clothes. I think that aligned perfectly with the concept of AR – expanding reality. So, today's theme is "Making the World That." I just blurted that out on impulse, too. When Dentsu Inc. Design Talk vaguely asked me to decide a theme, I said, "Well, how about just 'That'?" And they actually adopted it—honestly, I'm freaked out (laughs). To make it sound somewhat fitting, "That-ing" refers to expansion. I'd like to share how I'm thinking about "That-ing" the world. It's pretty intense stuff we're doing.

Abe: Before we dive in, could you first explain what you mean by "AR-ing the world"?

Kawada: Sure. As a mini-overview, let's first talk about the difference with "Virtual Reality (VR)," which is often confused. AR stands for Augmented Reality, formally translated as "augmented reality." Virtual reality refers to the reality experienced within the frame of a screen, like the Oculus Rift headset. Augmented reality, on the other hand, is fundamentally a medium for the real world. It's a mechanism that allows you to experience an existing landscape in a completely different way when viewed through a screen. It's not about which is superior—the reality within a screen versus a screen overlaid on the real world. But in a narrow sense, that's the difference. When people think of famous AR, many will recall "Sekai Camera" created by the company Tonchidot. Looking through your smartphone camera at a real-world scene, you'd see things that weren't actually there. Roughly speaking, that's what traditional augmented reality was like. I started the AR Three Brothers in 2009, back when neither AR nor Sekai Camera had become popular yet. Technologically, though, the iPhone was booming, and PCs with webcams had reached about 70-80% market share. There was this feeling like we were on the eve of camera recognition technology finally becoming casually usable. But hardly anyone was using it in interesting ways.

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