The voices spoken into the entrance turn into lines of light that race along the paths on the table. Following each route, the lines of sound eventually reach the exit, where they change in many different ways—becoming higher-pitched, sounding like a robot’s voice, or resonating like a concert hall—before turning back into sound again. This is an interactive installation where you can enjoy the “journey” of sound by speaking into it in different ways. The name “Yukueon” combines the sense of voices changing tone with a chameleon-like quality, evoking the idea of sound taking different paths.

From a microscopic perspective, what emerges is an internal structure that seems both mechanical and alive. A geometric structure moves in sync with the sound, beginning to operate according to a single logic. This is the opening movie for a DREAMS COME TRUE live concert held by STAR CHANNEL.

I was born and raised in Tokyo. In “Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter,” I express the changing seasons by combining AI and generative art, focusing on flowers that are familiar in everyday life, under the theme of flowers in the city and flowers in memory. The reason I chose flowers as a motif is that I felt there is a commonality between flowers and digital signage, which is the exhibition format of “Poems in Code — The Present of Generative Art / Moving Images Generated by Programming.” When you go to the center of Tokyo, there are eye-catching signs everywhere, and even waiting for a traffic light can feel like it passes very quickly. In daily life, when walking outside, it becomes a habit to focus on “getting to one’s destination,” and we end up forgetting to walk while noticing the changing seasons. Flowers that color the seasons are very colorful and beautiful, much like the signage in the city. However, I think we rarely take the time to observe those flowers closely or stop to look up their names. Likewise, we also do not often stop and carefully look at what is written on or displayed by signage. In this sense, I felt that flowers in the city and digital signage have something in common. All of the 3D flowers in the work are created by first generating 2D images with generative AI, then measuring their depth using AI functions and converting them into three-dimensional forms. The images are generated to resemble real flowers as closely as possible. Generative AI is good at capturing the characteristics of what it creates, but it is not perfect. By comparing them with real flowers, observing the differences, and recognizing flowers anew, I chose realistic images in the hope that they could link with the viewer’s memory and sensations. In addition, the AI-generated videos in the work use images of seasonal flowers created with generative AI. By re-outputting them as video, the shapes and colors of the flowers harmonize and begin to look like new flowers, becoming nameless flowers. I felt this process was close to how flowers are recognized in memory, so I incorporated this expression. Flowers in the city may exist in our memories as something vague and blurry, like AI-generated video. I created “Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter” with the hope that even in busy times, there can be moments to stop and enjoy the present.

The work has a rough overall production outline, but its finer details were not fully worked out. It was created by placing its trust in chance, generated impulsively in the way dreams emerge when we sleep. The work uses AI image generation and glitch effects created by corrupting data. In particular, because AI still lacks reliable reproducibility in image generation, it was used to express the incomprehensible worldview one experiences in dreams.

Animation MV directed by Hodon, deputy representative of the video production collective “Kenja.” From “Kenja,” koya participated as an animator. A song in which different emotions coexist: a melancholy melody, crystalline vocals, and fierce drum and bass. In the visuals, fragmented memories of the past with family, recalled only in pieces, are carefully animated, while in the present timeline intense animation unfolds at a dizzying pace. Against the meticulous key animation by professionals assembled by Hodon, who primarily work in TV animation, koya’s fierce, untamed drawing style collides head-on. Bridging them are Hodon’s distinctive drawing-like special cuts, which function throughout the piece. On the compositing section, “Fukkun,” who has known “Kenja” for many years, took part. Combining broad knowledge with extreme ideas, he quietly handles the compositing process from an independent perspective. He pushes the material until the finished look is distilled to a point where one can judge how it should function within the video… all the way to the end… “Easy, because we’re putting everything into it.” When the video production collective “Kenja” first started, most of the work was directed by its representative, koya. Recently, however, more projects have been coming to Hodon, with koya joining in as an animator. It’s a lot of fun to leave things to the director and say and draw whatever we want, so please continue to support us, “Kenja.” 2024/04/20 koya

I directed and produced the music video for PASOCOM MUSIC CLUB - Day After Day feat. Mei Takahashi (LAUSBUB).

This is the music video for Gawr Gura’s "Tokyo Wabi-Sabi Lullaby."

Description: “Scuffin” refers to the lines etched into a bottle through repeated use. A returnable bottle requires the extra step of being returned in order to be used again. This is the story of a bottle journeying around the earth, marked with “scuffin” as proof that someone returned it. A web movie for Pocari Sweat’s returnable bottle. The scenes in which the bottle glows were filmed by shining projector light onto cut-paper artwork.

KOO-KI’s Keita Uehara directed the opening of SANCTUARY, the Netflix series by director Kan Eguchi of KOO-KI. The powerful physique of a sumo wrestler! The dynamic energy created by the scattering salt! To further amplify the momentum and tension of the main story, the opening was crafted with a bold, edgy approach. By the way, filming was done after removing the building portion of the sumo stable set at Toho Studios.

Opening animation for INTO ANIMATION 8, a film festival held by the Japan Animation Association (JAA) at the National Art Center, Tokyo, in the summer of 2023.

Original animation Mr. Neko, an animation director, and his assistant Nezukun work together making animations, but their work never seems to go as smoothly as they’d like. This animation depicts the everyday lives of Mr. Neko and Nezukun, with Mr. Neko, an animation creator, modeled on the artist himself. New works are being posted regularly on X.

This is a video work re-edited from liminal spaces and found footage, created in parallel with the exhibition “OFT.”