Meet Emi Takahashi, a Japanese-French-Canadian artist and designer based in Toronto. With a diverse range of artistic pursuits, her creative endeavors know little bounds. Emi’s roots lie in graphic and glyph design, yet her art encompasses the realms of photography, animation, film editing, archiving, and art direction.

One of her latest projects catched our attention. What do you get if you put an image-making artist who specializes in glyphs, next to an experimental animator? A moving visual identity like no other. That’s exactly what happened when Emi got involved in the production of a music video for musician “ghost orchard”.

Animator Nik Arthur was commissioned for creating the visuals and music videos for ghost orchard's album. Lending her expertise in leaf printing and glyph design, Emi joined the Jessamine video project through Nik, evolving into a collaborative effort.

The magic happens when the glyph designs get chlorophyll-printed on 6 maple and grape leaf collages. Chlorophyll printing is an organic technique where images are developed on leaves through photosynthesis, leaving a shadow-like imprint on the leaves.

Next step: Animation. This is where the collaboration with Nik Arthur really takes its effect. The glyph patterns are designed in such a way they transform into a zoetrope-like spectacle when the leaves are expertly manipulated through stop-motion techniques. This creates the feeling of an animated performance taking place on each of the leaves, going on for a mere 153 seconds.

The organic printing technique combined with Emi’s glyph design, is more than compatible with ghost orchard’s fragile sounding “jessamine”. The ongoing breakbeat forms the ideal catalyst for the stop motion effects.