Designs on art of ping-pong
Visitors play table tennis in exhibition honouring Japanese artist.
Ordinarily, the last thing you’d want in an art or design gallery is a working ping-pong table. Bats and balls and energetic games of table tennis aren’t good companions to fragile, rare or precious art.
But exceptions can be made when the table itself is part of an exhibition which honours the dual achievements of one of Japan’s most important designers. He’s Katsumi Asaba, a typographer and master calligrapher who also holds the title of sixth degree master from the Japan Table Tennis Association.
It means visitors to Ponsonby’s Objectspace gallery can view Asaba’s typographic posters then play pingpong on the “Asaba Table” — an interactive sculpture designed by Dean Poole of Auckland creative agency, Alt Group. Objectspace director Kim Paton says it’s an incredible tribute from one designer to another.
Poole, who’s known Asaba for several years, has reinvented the standard ping-pong table in a project he describes as part science experiment and part musical instrument.
Positioned in the middle of Objectspace, it looks like an ever-sosleek futuristic ping-pong table but there’s a welter of computer components, circuits and compressed air cleverly concealed beneath it.
Stand close to the table and balls magically levitate out of it. But it can also return a shot or spit a ball out at random; as soon as a ball connects with the surface of the table, sounds are produced. This reflects how pingpong got its name, derived from the sounds made by bat and ball.
The table is also a metaphor for collaboration and reflects Asaba’s views on design, life and ping-pong. He believes ping-pong says a lot about life and design because it’s a two-way communication between sender and receiver, across borders and cultures.
“Ping-pong is like design; you have to hit back what comes at you,” he says. “The same is true of the whole of life: hit back what comes at you.”
Seeing the table for the first time, Asaba, 78, gave it his approval by immediately beginning a game with Poole. The smiling designer described it as an extremely creative endeavour which he thought worked very well.
And Asaba should know. He’s been designing for 60 years, playing pingpong for 40 years and mastering calligraphy for 20 years; his art and sporting interests have long complemented each other. Playing competitively around the world, his art direction has altered the visual representation of the sport.
He was responsible for the change in colour of ping-pong tables from dark green to blue and the ball to yellow while many of Asaba’s posters record his playing of the sport, sometimes in extreme situations.
Asaba’s exhibition also includes typographic posters that explore different visual languages from around the world.
“Ping-pong is like design; you have to hit back what comes at you.” Katsumi Asaba, typographer, master calligrapher, sixth degree master in table tennis