Spread

Spread is a Tokyo-based creative unit founded by Haruna Yamada and Hirokazu Kobayashi. They combine the long-sighted environmental approach of landscape design with the vivid visual techniques of graphic design, incorporating the environment, living creatures, objects, time, glyphs and memory into their creative work. Colour is an important medium for Spread because, according to Haruna Yamada and Hirokazu Kobayashi, it has the power to stimulate the senses, emotions and imagination, which are the key to positive change.

Interview with Spread

In your project, you transform QR codes (of government websites) into colourful, abstract artworks. Where did the idea come from?
In this day and age, it’s very easy to access any kind of information. But are we actually able to assimilate and process all that freely accessible information? This question and the associated contradictions gave us the idea for this work – the idea of linking QR codes to countries around the world. The colours used for the codes are based on those countries’ national flags.

“Different Worlds” was created in 2022 during the coronavirus pandemic. Is it a project about a world in crisis?
During the pandemic, we spent a lot more time in the digital world, but this work isn’t a direct statement about the pandemic. At the same time, however, we were in the early throes of a “virus crisis” – no matter which website you opened, you knew it was about the virus, even if you couldn’t read the texts. One of the QR codes led to a website in Ukraine, and we remember the fears we had about losing one of the countries when the war started. It gave us a real opportunity to reflect on our actual question.

It’s an interactive project. How do you encourage people to engage?
On the one hand, we wanted to give people a fun encounter with these countries. When you open one of the many QR codes, you discover how much you haven’t seen or don’t know. People have a natural thirst for knowledge, and knowledge acquisition is an ongoing process. Also, when we expand our knowledge, we break down barriers and embrace diversity. We believe that, one day, this will bring about world peace.

Vibrant colours are a very important part of your work. What role do they play?
Colour is an unconditional source of joy. Even just the experience of different colours on a large surface engages people’s minds and awakens their intellectual desire. From a distance, the work looks like an abstract painting, but when you realise that it is made up of a multitude of QR codes, you ask yourself where all these colours are coming from. Then, when you discover that they were derived from the national flags of the countries, your interest in those countries is awakened. Colours are media of curiosity.