Dentsu Inc. announces that its Digital Creative Center1, an internal cross-functional organization, together with Dentsu Creative X Inc. will participate again this year at SXSW 2019 held in Austin, Texas. Dentsu will conduct exhibitions and presentations for a global audience at the Trade Show from March 10–13.
Notes:
1. A Dentsu cross-functional organization whose mission is to utilize a variety of methods, technologies and experiences to change the feelings and behaviors of people living in the digital age.
Concept
Pointless Brings Progress.
The concept Dentsu is promoting at this year’s event is “Pointless Brings Progress.”
(something whose value is uncertain is heralding the future). Ideas so novel that they go beyond a modern sense of value may be considered pointless (or meaningless). For this very reason, however, these ideas can trigger future innovation.
Exhibition Concept Main Visual
Combinations of two different shapes make the objects appear strange at first glance. This is meant to signify the way in which services and products can emerge by multiplying creativity with two different expertise, such as Dentsu, food, and biology. Given our present-day values, they may appear pointless (meaningless). Still, this idea represents a sense of taking on challenges in new frontiers without fear and the belief that it is possible to change the future.
Exhibition Plan Overview
1. SUSHI SINGULARITY
Demonstration of “food data transfer restaurant” aims to open in 2020.
OPENMEALS is a project aimed to revolutionize food by converting all kinds of food into digital data. At present, the team is engaged in a project to open SUSHI SINGULARITY TOKYO, a super-futuristic digitized food restaurant experience in Tokyo, and will demonstrate this concept at SXSW 2019. In the near future, OPENMEALS predicts that two revolutions will occur as sushi digitizes and becomes linked to the Internet:
1) Sushi will connect with people around the world, who will create, edit and share online, creating new sushi configurations one after another.
2) Sushi will connect with the human body; personal optimization of nutrients will be achieved based on health data such as vital statistics and genetic composition.
At SXSW, we will reveal for the first time in the world, the prototype of a food manufacturing machine centered on 3D printers and the concept design of sushi, which will be made possible by technology. In the future, we will build a “digital platform where we can store a myriad of food data” so people throughout the world can share and download food. This is the team’s newest project followed by last year’s SUSHI TELEPORTATION.
OPENMEALS
DENTSU / Yamagata University / Soft 3D Co-Creation Consortium / MagnaRecta / Advantest / Cykinso / Yukashikado / atali / amana / Hydroid / Tohokushinsha Film Corporation
2. RETHINKING TOBACCO
Can we avert the global food crisis? This project aims to realize the grafting of different plant materials using tobacco.
Did you know repurposing tobacco has the potential to address food insecurity? “Grafting” is a traditional method to improve the taste and the resilience of a plant by cutting a branch and connecting it to another plant of the same family. Our team discovered a process using tobacco as an intermediary that enables us to graft all plant types together, which was thought to be impossible up to now. By delivering cutting-edge biotechnology tools such as genome editing, we are developing disease resistant varieties and crops grown even in non-arable climates, “RETHINKING TOBACCO” is a project for bringing about future changes in food. The exhibition will be held in collaboration with “Todai to Texas” (TTT), an official program of The University of Tokyo, organized by Division of University Corporate Relations (DUCR).
RETHINKING TOBACCO
DENTSU / GRA&GREEN / Todai To Texas / PICT INC.
