Milling Stop-Motion (tentative) — Open Production
Statement
I've hesitated to exhibit videos.
Projected against a white wall, the images are not as vivid as on a smartphone screen, and the sound is mingled with noise from the surroundings. For videos played back on loops, people usually start watching from the middle of the video, and the stools are not quite as comfortable as the couch at home.
Above all, what I love most about video is its reproducibility—that it can be freely copied, streamed, even illegally uploaded, to be shared anywhere. So it just didn't make sense to me to create something that only visitors to the exhibition could experience.
At least, I don't think my videos carry the kind of aura that would make it worth "seeing them right there, in that place."
So instead, I decided to make the process of creating a single stop-motion music video into the exhibition itself.
Here, the milling machine takes the lead—a factory workhorse for over half a century, carving blocks of metal or wood into any shape with a spinning cutter. Normally the finished product is the goal, but in this work I turn the machining process itself into an animation. The process of machining becomes the video, and the process of making the video becomes the exhibition. I begin machining the first frame on the opening day and finish filming the final frame by the closing day, so the entire three and a half months are compressed into a three-minute video.
With a public museum as my studio, making a grinding noise, scattering dust all around, I will continue milling away, little by little.
A stop-motion animation made by milling blocks of material such as wood, styrofoam, and aluminum, bit by bit, with a milling machine (a kind of engraving machine), and shooting each stage one frame at a time.
Throughout Assembling Anew: Memories, Materials, Context, Technology — Contemporary Japanese Photography vol.23 at the Tokyo Photographic Art Museum, the gallery doubles as a workshop where shooting continues. A milling machine and a box-shaped camera rig about 2 m on each side sit in the room, and on some days you may catch the milling in progress.
By the end of the exhibition, there should be a video a few minutes long, set to music.
Exhibition
| Exhibition | Assembling Anew: Memories, Materials, Context, Technology — Contemporary Japanese Photography vol.23 |
| Venue | Tokyo Photographic Art Museum, 3F Gallery (Ebisu, Tokyo) |
| Dates | Sep 30 (Wed), 2026 – Jan 17 (Sun), 2027 |
| Hours | 10:00–18:00 (until 20:00 on Thu and Fri), closed on Mondays |
| Artists | 市田小百合, 苅部太郎, 野村在, Baku Hashimoto, 藤倉麻子 |
Open Production Schedule
On days marked ●, I'm in the gallery throughout opening hours, running the mill and shooting. On days marked ◖ or ◗, I step out for part of the day for other commitments. Times may also shift depending on how the work goes, and the machine is sometimes idle, so if you want to be sure to meet and talk, feel free to reach out however you like.
October 2026
| S | M | T | W | T | F | S |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 9/30 ● | 1 ● | 2 ◖ | 3 | |||
| 4 ● | 5 Closed | 6 | 7 ● | 8 ● | 9 | 10 ● |
| 11 | 12 | 13 Closed | 14 | 15 ◖ | 16 | 17 ● |
| 18 ● | 19 Closed | 20 | 21 ● | 22 ● | 23 ● | 24 |
| 25 ● | 26 Closed | 27 ● | 28 ● | 29 ● | 30 ● | 31 ● |
November 2026
I'll be away during these periods.
- Nov 7 (Sat) – 17 (Tue): artist-in-residence in Europe
- Nov 20 (Fri) – 24 (Tue): New Chitose Airport International Animation Film Festival
Production Log
原点復帰について
- WCO:
[G54:9.500,-992.000,15.800,-0.390,0.203,0.205]
$H=XYZ
$H=ABC
X0 Y500 Z0 A-90 B0 C0フォーカス
(Y, Focus Distance)
330, 0- Listened to Zai Nomura's talk
- Shogo Nakamura came by too
- Interim presentation for the Agency for Cultural Affairs' support program for media arts creators. The museum was closed, so I had planned to attend in person, but ended up joining remotely from the museum
- Photographed the installation alongside
- Assembled the ws-fanout board. The LEDs are acting up
- Tested connectors for gluing the cubes to each other
- Makiko Maruyama, Tomohiro Okazaki, Shogo Nakamura, M, and Kaori came by
- None of the curators were in, so a day off
- Mass-produced more 60 mm cubes at Shimachu, a home center
- The startup manual had gaps, so I went to the museum just to boot things up
- Worked the morning only
- Apparently imai came by while I was crawled inside the rig cleaning. Should have called out to me...
- Tokyo Citizens' Day. Crowded
- Lesson learned: the keep-out line has to run all the way to the edge, or visitors come in through the gap
- Taro Karibe came by
- Exhibition opens
- Flat milling at 2 mm, 1 mm, and 0.5 mm pitch. Unless it's around 0.5, the wood grain moves too fast
- Using an LY 3-axis
- Talked with FTD, Jun Kato, Rikako Takahashi, and others
- Installation
- Started work at a former aircraft hangar site in Tachikawa, with Ryuta Mori and Manae Shimizu helping out. A KitMill AST200 arrived from Originalmind
- Woke up to how interesting assemblability is
- Devlog: How far to previz
- Devlog: Mother machine
- Devlog: Making two CNC stop-motions
- Ordered the LED strips (WS2815) that surround the rig on four sides
- The V-Slot 2040 × 1500 mm extrusions for the frame arrived
- Started thinking about the structure of the box-shaped rig. Talked it over with Takuto Usami
Background
- Milling Stop-Motion (2022) — A logo ID made for Vice TV, and the starting point for this piece
- Additive and Subtractive — A two-part project using a 3D printer and a milling machine. This time I'm making only the subtractive half
- 6-Axis Box Rig — Design notes on the box-shaped rig in the gallery. I plan to open-source the design eventually
- Koma — The stop-motion app I built and use for shooting
- CNC, Rigs, and Film
- Strata-cut Animation
- #cnc_av — CNC experiments and work in progress I've posted on X
Old Notes
- Buying a KitMill RD300 (2018) — Notes from when I bought my first milling machine
- Pitfalls I hit using USBCNC (2018)
- On LED strips — From when I started thinking about the lighting around the rig
- CNC design to-dos — Notes on the controller board
Devlog
Credits
- Direction
- Baku Hashimoto
- Music
- Max Cooper
- Produced by
- Kozue Bessho (mimoid inc.)
- Technical support
- Takuto Usami, Nao Tokui, Tooru Takata, Manae Shimizu, Ryuta Mori
- Curation
- Kaho Yamazaki (Tokyo Photographic Art Museum)
- Special thanks
- Takeshi Usami, anno lab, Hironori Terai, Makiko Maruyama Ryuichi Ono, Yasuyuki Kanazawa
- Granted by
- SO-FU, METI Creator Support Program
- Supported by
- Project to Support Emerging Media Arts Creators, 2026
- Sponsored by
- ORIGINALMIND Inc.
