Born in 1983, Minoru Fujimoto has spent his life balancing two passions: the rhythm of dance and the precision of technology. What began in middle school with a Michael Jackson cassette tape evolved into a lifelong pursuit of movement, creativity and innovation. While training as a breakdancer, he studied engineering at Kobe University, where he discovered wearable computing – a field that would allow him to blend his skills in choreography with cutting-edge systems. That unique combination became the foundation of his artistic journey.
After a period of teaching at the Tokyo University of Technology, Fujimoto founded MPLUSPLUS in 2013, a company dedicated to transforming live performance through light and motion. From LED-embedded costumes and ribbons to programmable flags and even drone-based displays, Fujimoto’s work pushes the boundaries of what performance can look like. His light choreography took centre stage at the Tokyo 2020 Paralympic Games opening ceremony, where he helped create customised LED designs for athletes that celebrated individuality and inclusivity. International recognition quickly followed.
In 2022, he appeared on America’s Got Talent as both a director and a performer, unveiling the world’s first programmable LED ribbons. The performance earned high praise from the notoriously hard-to-impress Simon Cowell. Since then, MPLUSPLUS has collaborated with world-leading artists and brands, including contributing a dazzling LED dress to Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter tour.
Fujimoto joins LIVE to tell his story and highlight the creative ways in which we can look to weave AV into live performance.
Interview Verity Butler
I initially got interested when I was back in middle school. One day, I bought a Michael Jackson cassette tape, and the first time I listened to that it had a huge impact because it was the first time I had encountered dance music. As a result, I started going to dance classes to develop my breakdancing abilities.
When it comes to the technology side, my dream job had always been to create gadgets of the future. I therefore chose to major in electrical engineering at university, and that’s when I encountered and began to experiment with wearable computing. That’s how my hobby for dance combined with my dream job in technology, and ultimately became the core focus of my studies.
MPLUSPLUS’s tech has been applied in stages, stadiums and event spaces. Image: Yoshikazu Inoue
Wearable computing essentially means a computer you can wear on your body – for example, the Apple Vision Pro counts as a type of wearable computing, within the head mount display category. One of my first experiments was using acceleration sensors, like a gyro sensor in your phone. It tells you about direction, how fast you’re moving, etc. I would put these on different parts of the body and, by doing so, alongside choreography, you can turn these metrics caught by the sensors into lighting and designs that match the sound.
During university, I was learning dance and studying LED technology at the same time. That’s when I started trying out wearing LEDs on my body and essentially incorporating light into dance choreography – I called this role being a lighting choreographer. At first, I was doing this all by myself. I created everything, programmed everything, then wore it and danced with it myself. That led to me launching my career as a media artist and becoming very active.
While I continued in that direction, videos of my performances started to gain traction and lots of enquiries, both domestic and international, started to come through from different artists.
At that time, I became an assistant professor at a university, teaching about interactive art. With all of this happening, I was still gaining more interest from artists wanting to incorporate my tech into other shows and collaborations. That’s when I finally made the decision to turn it into a service by building a company: MPLUSPLUS.
Being a dancer myself has had such a significant impact on perfecting this technology. As a dancer, I know what syncs best when creating choreography.
Usually, with other lighting set-ups, there are sensors that transmit the signal afterwards. Essentially, when you move, the sensor catches that and then lights up, with a small delay.
But MPLUSPLUS’s system, both in terms of the hardware and software, is all developed in-house, so it’s able to sync up straight away.
Whether we use 100 devices or 1000, it will still sync instantly. Even if signal stops in the middle of a performance, due to frequency disruptions for example, the lighting will remain seamless from the point of triggering.
When it comes to LED control devices, the examples typically found in indoor spaces are big. But the LED control devices we’re using are each smaller than a piece of chewing gum, which makes a huge impact in terms of weight and overall effect on the wearables.
Introducing wearable LEDs into dance performances can spice up choreography. Image: Yoshikazu Inoue
The ability to create both the hardware and software ourselves is so important for achieving what we do. It gives us that flexibility to incorporate it into an array of wearable devices that don’t disrupt the performer’s movement.
Whenever we get offers or enquiries, we first try to get as many details as we can, which then allows us to create a CG rendering. This gives our clients as accurate a visualisation of the final look as possible.
For example, if the client’s environment is within a football stadium, we’ll in turn recreate that entire stadium in CG, but then incorporate our products for the clients to see. That way, they can get an understanding of what the show will look like, and with that comes our ability to offer customised products. Anything like that will be briefed in within the early stages – after that it’s simply a case of creating the hardware.
For bigger shows, there’s also the lighting and other dance elements to incorporate. So we communicate with all the teams involved to make sure that synchronised lighting programming for the entire show is sorted out.
There’s a Japanese fashion brand called Anrealage that has always been very innovative – incorporating a lot of new technologies into their fashion shows. This year, we got an enquiry that they wanted to incorporate something that includes light – something very new and cutting edge. That’s where our first ideas surrounding a full LED dress came about.
When I started MPLUSPLUS, the main initial service was offering lighting choreography for dancers – this actually reached a point where I directed 100 lighting dancers in one stadium. It was at this point that I thought sticking to just LED costumes and dancers wouldn’t allow the business to grow – especially since Japan is also a small market.
MPLUSPLUS’s LED flags were recently deployed at the LA Kings Crypto.com Arena. Image: LA Kings
That’s when I first pivoted and started looking into flags. They’re incredibly versatile, used in sporting events and many other live performance scenarios too. Then it just clicked that if you make the flag segment fully LED, it would have a totally new use.
Once we launched those, M Plus Plus became even better known and we started getting more international enquiries. With that came the launches of all our other subsequent products.
My old friend, who is a director, was head director for the Paralympics show. We met to discuss how they could incorporate about 20 lighting costumes into the show. Since it was the Paralympics, the athletes all had different disabilities, so we wanted to create something original for each one.
For example, if an athlete was in a wheelchair, we would transform the entire wheel into an LED display. Or if it was a runner with an artificial leg, we would decorate the entire leg with LEDs. So it was our mission to bring out their uniqueness and make it into something super special, depending on each athlete – something to be celebrated.
This goes back to my earlier point about MPLUSPLUS’s flexibility in designing all the hardware and software in-house. We can create practically anything from scratch – whether its curved LEDs or any other kind of shape – we have complete customisation control.
That definitely has to be my time as a contestant on America’s Got Talent back in 2022. This was one of our first – and biggest – global stage performances, and I was even one of the dancers. It was our first time using a new product – the world’s first programmable LED ribbons.
After completing our performance, Simon Cowell commented that it was like a Las Vegas live show, and hearing that gave me so much confidence in what we were doing. It also gave the company a huge boost in exposure, and catapulted us to where we are now.
Covid-19 definitely changed everything quite drastically. It created a time when no live shows were happening, and nobody was able to go anywhere. During that period, a lot of digital services like XR and AR rose to the forefront, but our company was a little late to adopting those tools.
Just after the pandemic ended, people were craving live experiences again, so everyone came back even bigger than pre-pandemic – particularly when it came to sports and music events. For those few years, people had resorted to watching live shows and videos on their smartphones and laptops.
Despite having XR and AR, there was a hunger for live performance because that simply wasn’t the same. Thankfully, those trends have calmed down a little now and it’s back to being all about the live experience.
For MPLUSPLUS, the bounce back was huge. We got enquiries from outside of Japan, including from American sports teams. As we speak, we have more than 30 enquiries from sporting teams, and the world seems to have re-focused on creating live experiences.
We went from creating LED costumes to flags and ribbons – these developments were achieved by making our hardware smaller and smaller.
Now that we’ve gotten the devices even smaller and therefore lighter, we’re even able to attach them to drones and fly them around – generally putting them in places and positions that weren’t accessible before.
Continually shrinking the size of LEDs allows for more complex applications
We’re also trying to challenge ourselves to create something that’s even bigger, as we continue to work on shrinking the hardware. A few years ago, we released a flying screen as a trial.
With each of these new developments, we’re able to challenge ourselves further, with 15-metre or even up to 100-metre scale LED productions.
To learn more about other industry icons, head to this article about Filipe Carvalho.
This feature was first published in the Sep/Oct 2025 issue of LIVE.
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