Katsuhito Ishii wants to help decorate your place with ‘U-BEE’

Katsuhito Ishii, the man behind films like Funky Forest: The First Contact, The Taste of Tea, and the recently-released “Yama no Anata” has spent 2 years working on a project called “U-BEE”. With the help of Tohokushinsha Film Corporation, he used HD cameras to capture footage of natural scenery in Japan and Hawaii which will be featured on a set of 3 DVDs entitled “Scenery” (135min.). The footage will be accompanied by customizable piano background music and natural sound effects in 5.1ch surround sound. The point of the project is to turn TVs into pieces of furniture that can be enjoyed without actually having to watch them intently, instead of just being a useless black square when not in use.

Renowned commercial photographer Tamotsu Fujii joined the project later and will have his own set of 3 DVDs within the U-BEE project entitled “Water Cycle” (180min.). The sets will be retail priced at 18,900 yen each (currently about $175 USD) and will go on sale starting June 27, 2008 in Japan.

Personally for 175 bucks I’d want the DVDs to last a bit longer than 45-60 minutes each, especially if I’m not supposed to be paying attention to them. It’s an interesting idea and I understand they didn’t want to over-compress the original HD footage—it just seems like it would have been better suited for Blu-ray at some point in the future.

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