The “Yoichi Ochiai X Japan Philharmonic Orchestra Project”, which began in 2018, is now in its sixth year. This year’s theme is “The world is full of music.” In this ever-expanding time and space, we reconsider the physical festivity of music.

On July 16th (Saturday) and 17th (Sunday) 2022, WOW will contribute a video performance to the first chapter of meme nippon project: “Yakushi-ji Hikari-Hibiki-Yoru -inori-” ~An evening of Kabuki and light and sound~ taking place at the UNESCO world heritage site of Yakushi-ji temple.

From October 15 to 30, 2022 WOW will host an exhibition introducing brand-new original works for the very first time: “Unlearning the Visuals.” This is the second large-scale exhibition to display WOW works to the public, following on from “WOW Visual Design Studio: WOW animates the world,” a retrospective exhibition held in 2018 to mark the studio’s 20th anniversary.

This issue of WOW magazine will celebrate 200 releases. The WOW executive team, Hiroshi Takahashi, Mamoru Kano, and Kosuke Oho gathered at the head office in Shibuya for a three-way talk and discussed WOW’s origins, evolution, and future. Nobuyuki Hayashi, a journalist who has been covering WOW since its early days, will share the contents of the three-way talk in a special article as part of WOW magazine and WOW note.

We would like to announce that WOW will be participating in Expo 2025 (Osaka, Kansai, Japan) ’s Thematic Project “Signature Pavilion ‘null²’” under OCHIAI Yoichi, as the creation team covering all planning and video content creation and production.

WOW has been touring elementary schools in Japan as “BAKERU School” since 2018 in response to the adoption of the Agency for Cultural Affairs’ “Promoting the Development of Children through Cultural Arts Project - Tour Performance Project. From June this year, we will be touring Tokyo, Saitama, Gunma, Ibaraki, Fukushima, Shizuoka, and Gifu.

“Special Exhibition: You and Robots ― What is it to be Human?”, which opened on Friday the 18th March, is the most ambitious robot exhibition in Japan's history. 130 robots, of around 90 different varieties, have been gathered in Odaiba, Tokyo for the event. WOW was responsible for the planning, direction, and production of the installation found in the “You and Robots ― What Does the Future Hold?” zone.

Nagoya Midland Square will be holding an event for its 15th anniversary (Midland Anniversary 2022) based on the theme of travel starting from March 4 (Friday). WOW was in charge of planning, directing, and producing the main video that is being played on a special monitor imitating the boarding gate.

WOW's new art installation “Motion Modality / Layer”, which has the theme of "Giving form to videos", will be exhibited at the 14th Yebisu lnternational Festival for Art & Alternative Visions, starting from Friday, February 4th, 2022.

May this year be a great one! We look forward to your continued patronage in 2022.