The Curious Lure of PROFESSOR LAYTON

I think I've been overlooking games on the WIRE for far too long. It has taken some time to digest what is on offer and swimming upstream against media questioning the merits of the medium has stymied my progress.

And so I start with the puzzle-based series of games centering on the adventures of Professor Layton and trusty apprentice, Luke. As this last Christmas approached, the seventh for my son and with an unwieldy collection of action figures, bricks, vehicles, and boardgames, we decided to get him a Nintendo DS XL along with a pair of Professor Layton games.

This was spurred somewhat by the following from Charlie Brooker's blog at The Guardian:

"Don't be fooled by the children's book presentation: this is essentially an interactive detective story, although the story is just an excuse to present you with a series of increasingly challenging puzzles, some of which could cause even the most sophisticated brain to overheat. If I had children, I'd force them to play this on the basis that it would almost certainly turn them into geniuses."

Now, it's two months later and the entire household often spend spare moments working through the games. Across age and gender, these games have drawn us into its charming pan-European vision of England with its Japanese sensibilities.


It's greater than the sum of its parts which all work toward enhacing the other. The puzzles, animations, music, voice acting and quirky storyline is at once familiar and comforting while likewise presented in such a incongruous ways as to make something new. For example, accordian music which we tend to associate with France serves as the base of much of the soundtrack. It's a bit like giving Tolstoy a soundtrack of steel drums. Odd, but it works in this context.

The puzzles themselves remind me of puzzles that various teachers throughout my schooling would bringe in a couple times of year to challenge and delight, but each Professor Layton has 100+ enigmas. Each is delightful with a good balance of challenge(and occasional frustration) while offering an endorphine-releasing payoff that spurs the player on to the next puzzle.

Recently, Professor Layton and the Eternal Diva was released which is an animated film based on the series. Not as compelling as the games themselves, it does serve to buttress the series without detracting from its achievements. My son in particular was charmed by it.

Most of all, it is something that takes the medium and makes the most of its abilities and has a broad appeal, particularly among those who find little to no appeal in the usual fare offered by video games while likewise drawing in veteran gamers more accustomed to shooting zombies.


Links:
Professor Layton (Wiki)
Professor Layton (Official Website)

MOTOHIKO ODANI

Motohiko Odani has an interesting collection of work though I find the titles of his creations tend to fall short.

"Motohiko Odani has been celebrated for his meticulously crafted objects and visions of utopia and dystopia since the late 1990s. A main theme underlying his sculpture, photography, and video work is mutation of humans and animals. In his celluloid-colored video Rompers, a computer-graphic-enhanced mutant girl sings, idyllically, while eerie insects crawl around her. She is indifferent to them and seems to accept that she is becoming something other than herself. The work comments on the mutation of nature in an age of bioengineering while appropriating the innocent setting of the children’s TV program, Romper Room that originally aired in the United States in the 1950s. On the Japanese version that was shown during the late 1960s and the 1970s, toy bees and cute animals frolicked with children.

Motohiko Odani was born in Kyoto, Japan, in 1972 and received an MFA from Tokyo University of the Arts in 1997. In his sculpture, photography, and video works, Odani mingles human, animal, and futuristic anatomy, exploring the boundaries of reality and myth, and the physical and the spiritual. Odani’s creations are eerie, yet visually stunning. He currently holds the position of Associate Professor in the Department of Intermedia Art at Tokyo University of the Arts. Odani’s works have been shown in various solo exhibitions, including “SP4 ‘The Spectator’ in Modern Sculpture,” Yamamoto Gendai Gallery, Tokyo (2009); and “En Melody,” Marella Arte Contemporanea, Milano (2001); as well as group exhibitions that include “MI VIDA: From Heaven to Hell,” MUeCSARNOK, Budapest (2009), and “Skin of/in Contemporary Art,” The National Museum of Art, Osaka (2007)."

* Top image: Fingerspanner, 1998, Photo:HIROMOTO Hideki (Takamoto Gendai)

Links:
Motohiko Odani (Phantom-Limb.com)
Motohiko Odani (Tamamoto Gendai)
Motohiko Odani (Go Figure)
Motohiko Odani (ArtNet)

JITKA HANZLOVÁ

"Born 1958 in Nachod, Czechoslovakia, Jitka Hanzlová is currently resident in Essen, Germany. She studied photography at Essen University and has since worked as a photographer on her own projects. She was awarded the Otto Steinert Photography Prize in 1993 and European Photography Prize in 1995 and was shortlisted for The Citibank Private Bank Photography Prize 2000 and 2003. Hanzlova's work on “Rokytník” depicting the small Czech village where she grew up and her portraits of women in various countries in “Female” have won her acclaim in Europe and America. "

Links:
Jitka Hanzlová (Sutton Lane)
Jitka Hanzlová (Conscientious) source
Jitka Hanzlová (Steidl Books)
Jitka Hanzlova (Artforum/BNET article)
Jitka Hanzlová (ArtNet)

RICHARD AYOADE's "Submarine"

"I have been waiting too long for the film of my life. My name is Oliver Tate. This film will capture my particular idiosyncrasies, for example, the way I seduce my classmate Jordana Bevan using only my mind. Also, since my parents’ marriage is being threatened by a man who runs courses on Mental and Physical Wellbeing, the film will probably feature some elaborate set-pieces of me taking him down. There will be helicopter shots. There will be slow-mo, but also transcendent moments, like when I cure my father's depression. Knowing me as I do, I will be surprised if this film runs to less than three hours. Note to the press: appropriate adjectives to describe this film include "breath-taking" and "irresistible" as well the phrase: "a monumental achievement”."

Links:
Submarine (Warp Films)
Richard Ayoade interview (Guardian)

HIROYUKI MASUYAMA

"In this work, Masuyama engages in an exploration of passages across time, space and art history. These photomontages are made after the 19th Century painters Caspar David Friedrich (German, 1774-1840) and J.M.W. Turner (British, 1775-1851), who both traveled widely across Europe and documented their journeys in paintings. Returning to the sites that Friedrich and Turner captured over 160 years ago, before the invention of the camera, Masuyama takes several thousand photographs. With these images, he composes reproductions of the original paintings out of thousands of images, building the painterly atmosphere and light out of his contemporary photographs. The finished photomontage is mounted on a lightbox, illuminating his composite image from within.
Masuyama animates these historical, often iconic artworks with a new contemporary resonance, calling upon their shared universality while simultaneously pointing to the unique, individual lens of his own time and place. "

Links:
Hiroyuki Masuyama (official site)
Hiroyuki Masuyama (Galerie Sfeir-Semler)
Hiroyuki Masuyama (Studio La Città)
Hiroyuki Masuyama (ArtNet)
Hiroyuki Masuyama (Conscientious) source