Writes Kobayashi, "In 1972 I started a series of participatory performances where the first person performs an ambiguous action in front of a recording camera; the next person watches the recorded footage and imitates the action in front of a recording camera; the third person repeats the same procedure using the second person's video recording, and so on. Within the repetition of recording and action, the original gesture is transformed by the participants' misunderstanding, interpretation, and memory."

Hakudo Kobayashi was a central figure in Video Hiroba, a collective founded in 1972. Since 1979, he has worked with the Tokyo Video Festival, a competition sponsored by Victor Electronics. As a writer and an artist, Kobayashi has endeavored to promote video in daily life through community activities in Kunitachi City. In one performance of his work Lapse of Communication, 350 subjects participated.