Imaginary Soundscape

Nao Tokui is a Japanese media artist and DJ working on different projects researching soundscapes within visual systems. His latest "Imaginery Soundscape" web-based installation originally started as an exploration of how AI "imagines" a sound of any Google Street location using deep learning models. 

The research went further and currently runs as "Imaginary Soundscape" machine where you can upload any image or photo to get the generative sound map created by AI. You can find beautiful examples of how "deep mind" hears the art masterpieces on Qosmo website founded by Nao

Yayoi Kusama in Bloom

I saw the entire room, my entire body, and the entire universe covered with red flowers, and in that instant my soul was obliterated”, renowned Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama explains. This experience as a child informed her most recent work, ‘Flower Obsession’.

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Commissioned for the National Gallery of Victoria’s inaugural Triennal, ‘Flower Obsession’ is an immersive installation that invites guests to “obliterate” a room with flower stickers — and in doing so, to enact Kusama’s childhood memory.

Beyond the Limits by teamLab

The Japanese design firm teamLab has announced a 2,000 square meter exhibition at La Villette, Paris. It plans on forming a vast space allowing visitors to interact with a digital world through their own bodies. Named “”Au-Delà des Limites” or “Beyond the Limits,” the showcase blurs the lines of reality and creates multiple installations representing different realms. Visitors will be able to walk through virtual waterfalls and natural wonders.

The presentation will be available from May 4 to September 4, launching right before Japonismes 2018, a cultural event marking the 160th anniversary of diplomatic relations between Japan and France.

teamLab (f. 2001, Tokyo, by Toshiyuki Inoko) is an interdisciplinary group of ultra-technologists whose collaborative practice seeks to navigate the confluence of art, technology, design and the natural world. Rooted in the tradition of ancient Japanese Art and contemporary forms of anime, teamLab operates from a distinctly Japanese sense of spatial recognition, investigating human behavior in the information era and proposing innovative models for societal development

Human Nature by Rikako Nagashima

"In a deep-red homage to Anish Kapoor, artist Rikako Nagashima has tangled together HUMAN NATURE, an installation Kapoor’ish in scale, color and intention. HUMAN NATURE has been installed at two locations. Her work has been suspended through multiple levels of Tokyo’s MVRDV-designed eye of Gyre gallery, and has consumed the life of a concrete clinic-turned-art-gallery by schemata architects in japan — the latter of which is pictured here, tied-together."

"Anish Kapoor is believed by many to be an artist devoted to dichotomy. Blood, vortexes, voids — his works certainly convey paradoxes. Life, death, happiness, sorrow. they’re beautiful and ugly and they often tie into life and religions in india. as such, Rikako seeks to create a dichotomy of her own — an homage that draws inspiration from kapoor’s artistic execution, and draws dichotomies from her own culture’s philosophy, Yin and Yang"

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Sculpture by Toru Kurokawa

Japanese artist Toru Kurokawa sculpts improbable liquid and biological shapes from a variety of ceramic materials. What begins life as a mere lump of clay, the artist molds and carves into artworks that appear like arrays of honeycomb, undulating coral, or dripping stalactites. Last year Kurokawa had a solo show with Sokyo Gallery titled The Savage Math, and you can see more of his work on Artsy

Moving Creates Vortices and Vortices Create Movement

"For their latest dizzying interactive installation, Japanese collective teamLab (previously) brought the ocean indoors, creating a projected environment that reacts to the movements of visitors, all encased within the infinite space of a mirror room. Titled “Moving Creates Vortices and Vortices Create Movement” the work is inspired in part by the life cycle of the ocean, particularly the movement of plankton as represented by the reactive particle effects that spin like whirlpools as you pass through the exhibition space. The speed and direction of people’s movements are all factored into the projections and in the absence of motion the room gradually reverts to darkness." via Colossal

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The Vortices installation just opened at the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne, Australia where it will remain on view through April 15, 2018

Xhxix Art

Xhxix is a Tokyo-based artist whose digital paintings depict mostly gaunt young men in surreal states of mental anguish or physical injury. His subjects are inspired by niche models, such as Jacob Morton, whose pictures he gathers off the internet.

Tokyo Hikari - 東京 ひかり - SynthCity

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Photographer ZAKI Abdelmounim shares his neon view on the capital of the Risin Sun - Tokyo. During his 8-months journey, he was experimenting with various colour grading techniques that shifted from cyberpunk to vaporwave. We let author speak for himself below

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"Tokyo's overwhelming visual presence is an all-out assault on your senses offering a strong immersive cyberpunk experience. A lot to process and too much to take in from the flashing neon lights, the sounds of the busy streets and train stations, and the commercial signs of every building It's downright surreal and truly catches the spirit of what a cyberpunk city would look like. Easily getting lost offers an unmatched thrill and sense of discovery, but a certain follower emerges at night will keep your company during your stroll in the rain."

"It's the "Talking Lights" in the labyrinth of alleys. The dimly-lit neon signs of hiragana and katakana trying to communicate with the fast-paced walkers bring a nostalgic air, and it's a beautiful sight to behold."

A Cloud-Like Foam Installation By Kohei Nawa

Kyoto-based artist Kohei Nawa created a huge and immersive cloud-like installation made of small bubbles. Located in a dark room, the piece consists of floating foam that accumulates to form an ethereal structure that spreads across a space. In a statement about the artwork, Nawa says, “Each bubble cannot escape the cycle of birth and destruction, which is not unlike the way our cells operate as they metabolize and circulate.”

Kota Yamaji on Creative Debuts

DCN New Partners Creative Debuts presents

Japanese digital artist Kota Yamaji that has been graduated from Tama Art University in Tokyo 2 years ago. His successful debut at our Digital Decade 5 exhibition in London, where he was presented by event partner - Curioos, landed as a profile on Creative Debuts

Digital Decade 5

Special Artwork made for our exhibition "Cyberia" in London, August 2017

Photographer Cody Ellingham on ELLO

DCN Partners ELLO Creative Network presents

Cody Ellingham (@cbje_tokyo) - a Tokyo-based art director and photographer. 

Graphics works by Kota Yamaji

Japanese artist Kota Yamaji shares his latest graphic experiments worth to visit and adore

Makin' Moves by Kouhei Nakama

Japanese director Kouhei Nakama went high on creating this awesome motion piece

Direction: Kouhei Nakama 
Music: "Hella" by Broke For Free 

Disappearing Tokyo Storefronts illustrated by Mateusz Urbanowicz

As Me Kyeoung Lee documenting the 20 years of conventional stores in Korea, his colleague of illustration world Mateusz Urbanowicz does it in Tokyo, Japan. While exploring the city, Mateusz was surprised to see the perseverance of older, more traditional architectures in spite of the city’s rapidly changing face and its international reputation as a sprawling metropolis. 

Knowing all too well how quickly these buildings could be replaced with more modern counterparts, the artist set about illustrating the endearing buildings in a series rich with color, personality, and history.

INORI Prayer - Real-time Face Projection Mapping

Nobumichi Asai (previously) released a new experiences with real-time face projection mapping

Watch more of his recent works below

Mono no Aware

"Shot around central and southern Japan / Okinawa, the series by Gabriella Achadinha shows day and night photographs of spaces and individuals that stood out from the time there. Marlize Eckard has added her touch by creating the ‘fleeting impermanence’ via acrylic paint with additional strokes that create the smudging, lapsing memory."

Hacked Roomba Robot Paints like Pollock

Has no doubts we are close to robot revolution but meanwhile can enjoy things they do while manipulated by people. Japanese artist HYde JII has modified a robotic vacuum cleaner to paint on canvas. He modified the 15-year-old iRobot Roomba last year, which now goes under the name Head-kun (Mr. Head). 

He attached tubes and plastic bottles filled with paint to the Roomba and programmed it so it could shuffle about and drizzle paint as it went along. So far it's produced two abstract pieces, Spring Worm Hole (2014) and the rather fetching Spring Starburst (2015). 

Spring Starburst (2015). Photos by ATOM

Spring Wormhole (2014). Photos by ATOM

Keiko Fukazawa Sculptures

Keiko Fukazawa is a ceramic artist who is born and grew up in Japan. After spending 30 years in America, she dedicated her last three years in Jingdezhen, temple of porcelain since 1393.‘Made in China’ is a collection of playful works denouncing the effects of globalisation and consumerism in China.

Transcending Boundaries

Butterflies flap, a wild ocean rages and a waterfall cascades through the space in teamLab’s digital art exhibition, currently on show at Pace London.

In the mind, there are no boundaries between ideas and concepts, they are inherently ambiguous and influence and interact with each other. In order for ideas and concepts to be expressed in the real world it is necessary to have a physical material substance through which they are mediated. Boundaries are created when ideas and concepts are materialized in the real world.

Within the digital domain, art is able to transcend physical and conceptual boundaries. Digital technology allows art to break free from the frame and go beyond the boundaries that separate one work from another. Elements from one work can fluidly interact with and influence elements of the other works exhibited in the same space. In this way, the boundaries between art pieces dissolve.

teamLab (f. 2001, Tokyo, by Toshiyuki Inoko) is an interdisciplinary group of ultra-technologists whose collaborative practice seeks to navigate the confluence of art, technology, design and the natural world. Rooted in the tradition of ancient Japanese Art and contemporary forms of anime, teamLab operates from a distinctly Japanese sense of spatial recognition, investigating human behavior in the information era and proposing innovative models for societal development

Light Cave by teamLab

"Music Festival, teamLab Jungle is an experiential music festival in which a vivid 4D space is created by millions of dazzling moving light lines crossing each other. In the space filled with countless moving light lines that interactively change by sound, everyone can dance and intuitively make music."