Bones about it

What is not to love about an exhibit that greets you with an ostrich skeleton and a chatty skull? The ostrich skeleton is real, and the human skull is even better: it was based on images of show director Shunji Yamanaka's skull and then made with a 3-D printer.


I suggest you go see bones at 21_21 Design Sight gallery in Roppongi.

Beautiful black and white photos of animal skeletons are the jumping off point for x-rays and extractions of the "bones" of everyday and extraordinary industrial objects. The next leap is bigger - interactive industrial design projects exploring what skeletons could be. What does the skeleton of your shadow look like? What if the skeleton of a bench showed you where it felt your weight?

The biggest wow was the interactive guide explaining the exhibits in English and Japanese. On a plain white table, an ordinary loose piece of white paper responds to its orientation and your touch to display information about the things in the room. (Yeah, you kind of have to play with it to get it.) It was the closest thing I've seen to the virtual screens in Minority Report.

It's not a big show. You could see it all in 15 or 20 minutes if nothing reels you in. It may have helped that I went with no expectations. I was killing time in Roppongi and feeling contemplative and it was right there. The underground gallery was cool and dark and almost empty. Soothing, subtle music was playing and strange to say, the place even smelled calm. I stared for a long time at titanium knee and hip joints in glass cases and imaginary spider bones in a rock garden and undulating amoeba arms that looked squishy but were hard plastic.

On til Friday, August 30,　￥1000 general admission.　Behind Tokyo Midtown (access map).