Emi Kusano: Exploring the Possibilities of the Latest Technology in the Art World

I have been invited to Geidai since 2019, and I give lectures on AI and NFT (Non-Fungible Token) art. Geidai students are quick to absorb information, but many still have prejudices against AI, and less than 10% had ever touched Stable Diffusion or Midjourney (generative AI drawing apps). However, when we invited AI experts for discussions, the prejudices were removed, and everyone was soon able to master them.

As a place for expression, the world of NFT art is currently one of the communities where the people I find most interesting gather. When discussing what is innovative about NFTs, the technology is often talked about first, such as "it can prove that it is the real thing," but I don't think that really resonates with people.

In essence, what is innovative is that the cause of supporting artists had an incredibly good compatibility with blockchain technology, and that a new market and culture are being born from it. That is the most interesting part.

There is a feeling of "the world might change," similar to the early days of the internet or when social media first appeared. People with an innovator's temperament are gathering from all over the world, and new experiments are beginning on how to utilize this technology.

Even if you just say "NFT art," it is a very multifaceted thing. It can be used like crowdfunding, it can be a ticket to a digital community, and it also has aspects like a fashion item. Everyone is bringing in various cultures and experimenting.

When people talk about NFT art, only high-priced items tend to attract attention, but there are many artists who make a living on a small collector base by putting art works on the blockchain on a small scale, such as one work per month. Like potters, they create works diligently every day, sometimes hold real exhibitions, and are economically independent.

Christie's and Sotheby's are also putting effort into NFT art, and the act of releasing works written in code on the blockchain, called "generative art," is increasingly being viewed as the artist's concept itself. Networks with museum curators are also being born. It is sometimes said that AI art and NFT art are not art, but in art history, such things have remained. I think art has the nature of expanding its meaning according to the times. I take pride in being at the forefront of contemporary art.

There are various definitions, but "generative art" mainly refers to art works generated using computational processes such as algorithms and machine learning. It is a field that has existed for a long time, but with the advent of NFTs in particular, the concepts of rarity and ownership of generative art have been strengthened, and it is attracting great attention in the art market.

Art Blocks is a platform that is attracting particular attention within generative art, using blockchain technology to create unique and rare art works. With high-priced works such as Dmitri Cherniak's being traded for approximately 800 million yen, generative art is coming to occupy an important position in the art market.

Actually, from that platform, I released my first generative work, . This is something where a different image is generated every time the screen is refreshed, and it is the most complex project I have produced to date. At first glance, they look like simple pictures, but they are all generated from code.

uses the motif of the magical girl anime that I liked as a child. Messages are layered as subtitles on the screen, and those words are also automatically generated by AI. The AI generates things that a 1990s anime heroine might say, and by crossing that with elements of gender stereotypes like "girls are like this," ironic words line up when viewed today. By creating these elements from code, visuals that no one has ever seen are generated. This kind of thing is probably what is generally called generative art today.

The charm of generative art is that by entrusting it to a machine, elements emerge that you cannot predict. The production of was a collaboration with coder Yurika Sayo, and it cost quite a bit to upload all the information. However, a market exists that is worth it. Artists around me say that because there is almost no code this complex, it will be a very rare work. 300 pieces sold out in 50 minutes, and it was a project that became a major milestone for me as an artist.

I would like to try that. Last year, when I released a photographic work called , a video version was exhibited at the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa and the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo, and people were able to see the work in a place beyond digital boundaries.

I love Japanese subculture and pop culture, and I have used these as motifs. Works with anime motifs are popular now, but I feel that many of them are from a male perspective. is strongly influenced by things I saw in my childhood like "Sailor Moon," "Rayearth," "Wedding Peach," and "Ojamajo Doremi."

Looking at these works now, I feel that the imposition of gender roles is strong. I feel that from overseas works like Barbie and Disney Princesses as well, but the fact that few people analyze and communicate Japanese culture from this perspective may be the reason why elements that empower women can be felt in my work.

In Japanese cyberpunk anime, there are many works I adore, such as "Ghost in the Shell" and "Evangelion." However, in many works, women with strong agency are not often depicted. was also a project I created with the idea of making a sci-fi where a girl with agency is the protagonist.

, which I released last September, is also a work with strong feminist elements. In this work, I expressed various portraits as mosaic or tile-like objects with pixels and cubes as motifs. It was the spread of i-mode and VCRs, or pink fliers—I wanted to pop-style reproduce the dark parts of Japan's 1990s media transition at night. I created it by reproducing the scenery of that time with generative AI, referring to novels and photographs set in the 80s and 90s that can be seen on YouTube.

I have a personality that is attracted to the era before I was born, and I feel that pre-internet culture in particular was largely created by mass media.

When I was in kindergarten, Amurer and Shinorer were popular, but there are countless such influencers now, and the culture where everyone imitates the fashion of a single icon is disappearing. The consumption of young people is leaning toward information. Within that, I have a strong longing for the 80s "vibe," where things were overflowing and people held hope for the future.

I want to be an existence that breaks stereotypes. I do business as well as art, and I am also a mother to children. I am conscious of showing a multifaceted way of life while relying on various people for each aspect.

In the West, political correctness has progressed over the last 10 years. Japan has not yet reached that level, but on the other hand, there are aspects where division has occurred because of the pursuit of social justice. Under these circumstances, people probably hold completely different truths and conflict or clash with each other. I believe that unless we take a more in-depth approach, we cannot move toward each other. I feel that I must express multifaceted aspects in a complex way in every respect.

For example, the movie "Barbie" is very multifaceted. Barbie has parts that have empowered girls, but also a history of imposing beauty standards, and it is an excellent work where Mattel acknowledged this themselves while turning it into a comedy. It is sparkling but also has a slightly dark side, and that is expressed with beautiful visuals. I want to create things like that too.

That's right. It is said that we are now in the era of post-truth, but when generative AI becomes commonplace, I think an era will come where everyone can probably generate the content they want to see themselves. Then deepfakes will also circulate, and in the flood of information, a day may come when a "Star Wars" fan generates and watches Episode 100 themselves. Even in such an era, will we still watch the news?

Videos of battlefields are circulating now, but we cannot actually verify them ourselves. This video might be a fake, but eventually we might stop even caring. I feel it is better to know that things are multifaceted and that the truth is different for each person, for when that time comes.

I think if I didn't have children, I probably wouldn't have gotten this into NFT art. I strongly wanted children while I was young, so having children was a priority. Within that, I came to the idea that it would be better to experience child-rearing during my student days when I had time. People around me asked if giving birth at 22 was too early, but on the other hand, everyone starts talking about marriage when they turn 25. I wonder what the difference in these three years is.

My second child was born three years ago. Child-rearing is of course hard, but there are many ideas to be gained from having someone two or three generations younger than me in the house. Especially regarding the metaverse, I was able to gain many insights while talking with my son.

My son, who was 8 years old at the time of production, was also very quick to understand NFT art. He had developed a sense of market prices through trading Pokemon cards, so he understood intuitively that everything has liquidity.

That's right. Since I was a child, my strengths and weaknesses in studying were uneven, and I realized early on that I should stop spending time trying to make things I'm bad at into things I'm good at. I'm relatively good at working while raising children, and I had the courage to rely on others, so I think I was able to commit to it.

I am the type of person who, in order to realize the world I want to express as an artist, thinks about teaming up with people who are good at that field to make better works rather than just working with my own hands. And I like it better when there are elements I cannot predict. AI and generative art also have that aspect, and I am taking in unexpected energy from collaborations with machines.

This collaborative nature was triggered by meeting Sputniko! during my student days. When we met, I told her I admired the magical girls of 80s special effects, and she said, "Why not make that world into a video?" But I didn't have the skills for video or songwriting. When I said that, she advised me, "If you have a clear idea of what you want to make, you should just team up with people who can do it."

From those words, I ended up starting a band called Satellite Young. In this activity, I worked on making T-shirts, deciding on CD jacket designs, and shooting music videos rather than music. I began to feel the charm of production through collaborations with creators.

Because I wanted to acquire business skills so that I wouldn't struggle economically as an artist, and because there were many things I wanted to do. SFC was interdisciplinary, and I could learn design and entrepreneurship while learning programming. The professors were all people active in society.

At SFC, there were unique people who entered through AO admissions, excellent people who entered through general admissions, people from the multicultural Keio Academy of New York, and international students, and there was a diversity where we stimulated each other. Some people were starting businesses, and some were publishing novels. I was really stimulated by an environment where it was normal for everyone to be doing something while being a student.

I have been doing creative activities in various forms, such as making music and installations, but in 2023, I began to release works under my own name in earnest within the context of fine art. As I held exhibitions overseas and interacted with local artists, I became more conscious of self-branding.

I began to feel that my profile, which I had been writing somewhat casually until then, needed the objectivity to easily catch a curator's eye, and I now consider building relationships with collectors to be an important skill as an artist.

Conversely, if you can do that, you can continue to make the works you like or even larger works. I hope that people who want to do expressive activities will also be conscious of such things, gain the freedom of production, and that everyone will be happy.