http://individuals.iii.u-tokyo.ac.jp/~yoichiro/profile/profie.html
CG artist
Professor of Tokyo University/GInterfaculty Initiative in Information Studies
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Born in Tanegashima Is, Kagoshima Prefecture in 1952. He graduated from Visual Communication Design at Kyushu Institute of Design in 1976. He received his Master degree from Tokyo University of Education in 1978. After teaching at Tsukuba University of Tokyo. Creating Computer Graphics since 1975, he is an internationally acclaimed CGI artist. He achieved a unique style using his "GROWTH Model", a model based on growth algorithm. Selforganinzing artificial life media metropolices and highly dense creations of primal wildness represent sailent characteristics of his work. Since SIGGRAPH'82, he consistently presents work in the United States.
Professor Kawaguchi is an expert on the "GROWTH model," a self-organizing method to give form to one's rich imagination or to develop one's formative algorithm of a complex life form. As the art or a time progression, a program generates a form and this form is allowed to grow systematically according to a set formula. Howwever, this "GROWTH Model" is not based on a static process that allows constructive mathematics to take its course.
Though observation of eddies and spirals, repetitions of simple form of inner mathematical principles, which are hidden behind the seemingly complex outlook of living creatures, are deduced. Placing subtle forms like that of a conch shell as a starting point, the shapes of ammonite, nautilus, tentacles, plant vines and coral become visual references for this model.
The most important concept of the "GROWTH Model" is the "recursive structure," which is a repetition of simple rules within complexity. By running a genetic program implemented with this structure, the computer continuously creates multiplying images until it maximizez its memory space. Beginning with an initial shape, the computer generates how the final image appears. Therefore, the "GROTH Model" is a way to give an unforeseen form to the progress of time.
The model is not intended to create or a faithful representations of reality but to produce a new bionomic pictorial space backed by an algorithm. A self-organizing form created by the "GROWTH Model" represents a creature that sesually moans and squirms and might have existed in the evolutionary past or that may appear in the distant future. It is a "life form of probability."
Alvy Ray Smith of Lucasfilm has commented, "Kawaguchi is one of the first of what I believe to be a new breed of artists:those adventures exploring the vast new medium of computer imagery. His unique works are evocative of organism, complex and dimentional, liquid and glassy and bulbous, both visual and aural treats. He is one of the brave indivisuals ready to grab the jaged horns of this new beast and extract its dreams for the rest of us.
