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Catastrophic Forgetting

AI Photography

Exhibited at Untiled Art Fair Miami 2024

Catastrophic Forgetting is an AI-driven series that explores the concept of the "machine unconscious," where cultural symbols merge and transform freely. The series uses machine learning algorithms to reconstruct images from vast datasets, revealing the memory loss experienced by humans in an information-saturated world. The works suggest new possibilities for how artificial and human consciousness might intersect and evolve, highlighting the ongoing dialogue between memory, reality, and cultural influence.

She/Body/Null

AI Photography

Exhibited in EXPANDED.ART Berlin

She/Body/Null, by Emi Kusano, explores the relationship between AI and human identity. Set within a dystopian world under a glowing red moon, Kusano portrays a cyborg-like figure–a hybrid morphing fluidly between human and machine. Through her presence in this world, Kusano contemplates how technology-driven transformations of identity and body might reform each individual.

Echoes of Expectation

AI Video

Christie's Charity Auction with UNCHR

This AI film explores the microaggressions Kusano experienced in predominantly homogeneous communities in the American Mountain West, and how these experiences can lead to a form of self-orientalism. The work draws inspiration from the artist’s memories of a high school exchange program in the United States in the late 2000s.

Advertising Humanity (2024)

Digital motion graphics, AI-generated imagery

Dimensions variable, loop duration: 10 sec

This artwork presents a fictional advertisement set in a future world dominated by AI, using the artist’s own face as a model. The unnatural gaze of the woman in the work hints at something beyond the reach of even exponential technological progress—‘humanity.’

Liminality (2024)

UV Print on Canvas and Digital Video

Exhibited at Kiaf SEOUL 2024 (Korea International Art Fair)

Liminality depicts Emi Kusano's childhood dream journals and early 2000s pop culture, blending surreal imagery with AI to explore the boundary between dreams and reality. The series merges AI-generated visuals with human memory to create ever-changing, fluid landscapes and figures.

The Altar of Bonnō (2024)

AI Photography

TENDER Curated Series

"The Altar of Bonnō" explores the Buddhist concept of bonnō, or blind passions, and how they drive our actions and emotions.

COGNITIVE CHAOS: WIRED REALITIES (2024)

AI Photography

Exhibited in EXPANDED.ART Berlin

COGNITIVE CHAOS: WIRED REALITIES is a self-portrait created with AI that provokes thoughts about a future where AI and human thought processes might merge.

COGNITIVE CHAOS (2024)

AI Photography

Exhibited in EXPANDED.ART Berlin

COGNITIVE CHAOS by Emi Kusano is a series of 33 AI-generated images that venture into the nostalgia of a future once imagined, where brains are directly connected to devices—a concept familiar from science fiction but now echoing with new significance.

Melancholic Magical Maiden (2024)

P5JS+AI

Art Blocks Curated Collection

Melancholic Magical Maiden deconstructs the aesthetics of the ‘magical girl’ genre from 90's anime, where girls who possess magical abilities typically use them through an ideal alter ego into which they can transform.

Techno Animism (2023)

AI Photography

Presented with Bright Moments Gallery, Exhibited in New York and Tokyo

In the crucible of Japan's cultural imagination, where every object is believed to house a spirit, and technology is embraced not as a foe but as a companion, the series "Techno-Animism" manifests as a profound exploration of this symbiosis. 

Morphing Memory of Neural Fad (2023)

AI Video

Exhibited in 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa and more.

This work features numerous photographs of somewhat familiar yet strange sceneries. Displayed are fictional street snapshots made by generative AI. The series of images reexamines the relationship between AI and human memory by evoking our feeling of nostalgia through AI creations.

Pixelated Perception (2023)

AI Photography

Exhibited in Art Blocks Marfa and more

Pixelated Perception explores the complex confluence of the digital and the tangible, highlighting the diverse transitions in Japan. In the 1990s, pixels, the minute elements of the digital realm, emerged prominently in platforms like mobile phone communications and instances of censorship, subtly altering our perception of reality.

Filter Bubble Euphoria (2023)

AI Photography

Exhibited in Unit London

Filter Bubble Euphoria embodies her nostalgia for the time when cyberspace was in its genesis, a period of simplicity and limitless connections before the age of algorithmic isolations.

Synthetic Reflection (2023) 

AI Photography

SuperRare series

Synthetic Reflections is a self-portrait series by Emi Kusano, accumulating visions of the future once imagined by the past and lyrically illustrating their unique anticipations towards the technology of their times. It was featured on Japan's first-ever AI fashion media cover.

Shinjitai (2023)

3D Digital Dress

Collaboration with  Claire Silver For Gucci x Christie's Auction

Shijitai was digitally hand-sculpted and textured with AI-Collaborative art, combining advanced mathematics and aesthetics of ancient paintings and tapestries. Disassembled to purest form--shapes and colors--it was then arranged as abstract collage, glowing and dancing over the fabric.

Neural Fad (2023)

AI Photography

Exhibited in Bright Moments Tokyo

NeuralFad reimagining the rich vocabulary and history of Tokyo street fashion through AI, the collection takes the viewer across and beyond the post-war decades of Japanese fashion history

Shinsei Galverse (2022)

Anime Project

Co-Founder and Former Creative Director

The artificial life form Mother System, born in the last era that humans lived on Earth, serves as the origin of an information flare that explodes, scattering the Gals across planets where humans reside. The goal of the Galverse is to restore peace to the universe. 

Satellite Young (2013)

Synthwave Band

Lead vocal and co-producer

80's synthwave group from Tokyo. The music creates a modern twist on the 80's, incorporating themes such as the societal aspects surrounding cutting-edge technologies

Instababy Generator (2019)

Installation

Selected for SIGGRAPH Asia ART Gallery

From 2018, Emi started producing media art works with Junichi Yamaoka, an engineering researcher and media artist. She develops a questioning piece of accelerationist technology. She creates works with the motif of old retro technology such as TV and computer.

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