Masahiko Sato, who established the Masahiko Sato Lab at the Graduate School of Film and New Media, Tokyo University of the Arts, and Masashi Sato of Tokyo design studio EUPHRATES, discuss the intellectual and artistic approach they took to channel the spirit of the Olympics for the Japan Olympic Museum – to mark the (currently postponed) 2020 Olympics.

In this video, the creatives talk through their unique, collaborative, research-based approach, whereby two teams split off to explore the brief. “Although I don't usually do this, we formed two teams within EUPHRATES to compete for ideas,” says Masahiko Sato. And to their surprise both groups came back with the same idea – to capture the essence of the Olympic spirit through the shadows of athletes in motion.

The creative treatment, inspired by Alexander Rodchenko's famous photograph of a Moscow tram, didn’t show a household-name athlete, rather it sought to capture the athlete's “excellence and passion”. The creatives talk about the technical thinking that went into capturing the shadows, but also why shadows were the perfect motif for the brief. “I thought the shadows were a great reflection of the truth,” says Masahiko. “Shadows can't act. That was an interesting discovery.”