AN AUDIENCE WITH...GOICHI SUDA

Grasshopper Manufacture's founder talks creativity, counterculture, and becoming a "weird old dude"

- CHRIS SCHILLING

When Goichi Suda, alias Suda51, appears on our monitor screen, he’s sitting inside the cockpit of a Boeing Super Hornet. He isn’t actually flying it, of course; rather, he’s chosen the fighter jet from Top Gun: Maverick as his Zoom background for the call. It’s a typically Suda sort of entrance, and naturally we take the opportunity to ask a man who likes to keep his finger on the pulse of popular culture whether he’s seen the film. Not yet, he replies – but having just received a PSVR2 headset, he’s looking forward to watching it in VR. We think he’ll enjoy it, we say, and after his translator has relayed that message, he grins and gives us a thumbs-up.