Computer Technique Group (Tokyo, 1966–1969)

The Computer Technique Group (CTG) was a collective in Tokyo that made computer graphics and films from December 1966 until it disbanded in November 1969. It was founded by Masao Komura, Haruki Tsuchiya, Kunio Yamanaka and Junichiro Kakizaki, and six more members joined later.^1, 2 Its best-known work is Running Cola is Africa.

Designers and engineers at IBM

The group worked with IBM Japan, at the IBM Scientific Data Centre in Tokyo, where it had a large computer and a plotter.^1, 2 According to the Science Museum Group, its office was at once a design studio, selling graphics to galleries, and a "think tank with expertise in computer analysis".² Their works are credited by task: who had the idea, who prepared the data and who wrote the program. For Running Cola is Africa that was Komura, a product designer (idea), Makoto Ohtake (data) and Koji Fujino, a systems engineer (program).^2, 3

Metamorphoses

CTG took familiar images, such as a running man, a woman's profile or John F. Kennedy, and changed them with geometric transformations calculated by the computer.^2, 4 Running Cola is Africa (1967–68) is number 3 in its Metamorphoses series. In the words of ZKM in Karlsruhe, "A computer algorithm converts a running man into a bottle of cola", and the bottle then becomes the outline of Africa. The program was written in Fortran IV for an IBM 7090 and drawn on a CalComp 563 plotter; the print is a lithograph made from the plotter drawing.³

The diagram above shows the simplest way to compute such a change. Both outlines are described by the same number of points. For each step in between, every point moves the same fraction of the way, in a straight line, from its place in the first outline to its place in the second. The sources we read do not give CTG's exact formula, so the diagram shows the principle rather than their program.

London, 1968

In 1968 CTG was shown in Cybernetic Serendipity at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London, and the catalogue had a section on the "Computer Technique Group from Japan".^1, 5 The group's lithographs were published in London by Motif Editions; ZKM holds Running Cola is Africa.^2, 3 In 2005 the NTT InterCommunication Center in Tokyo showed CTG in Possible Futures: Japanese postwar art and technology.⁴