FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASEKOTARO NUKAGA‘Rhizomatiks Beyond Perception’Rhizomatiks

To inaugurate our new gallery space, KOTARO NUKAGA (Tennoz) is pleased to present Rhizomatiks
Beyond Perception, the first ever large-scale gallery exhibition by the creative collective Rhizomatiks,slated to run from June 29 (Sat) to September 28 (Sat). Led by Daito Manabe and Motoi Ishibashi,
Rhizomatiks explores new possibilities for technology and artistic expression with a focus on R&Doriented experimental projects that examine the relationship between humanity and technology. Takingas its theme “AI and Generative Art,” the present exhibition seeks to turn “creative thought processes”
themselves into artwork, visualizing how AI models learn and generate new images. At the same time,the exhibition also explores liberation from the image control and manipulation arising from the biases
inherent in the ethical and social norms of AI services offered by big tech companies.

Artist Statement
In this new exhibition, Rhizomatiks will present AI models that have been trained on our own
artwork. What does this mean? The endeavor is tantamount to turning “creative thought processes”
themselves into art. The project explores the relationship between the role of AI, artists, and theviewing audience. Ordinarily, art is produced by a human artist. However, AI models are subvertingthe creative process itself. The AI models offered for sale at this exhibition have been trained on
Rhizomatiks’ own work, generating images that reflect the artistry and artistic methods we havedeveloped. This exhibition has far-reaching ramifications for what art pieces are, posing questions
about how approaches that meld art and AI can bring new possibilities.
In the present day, anyone can generate AI images. This exhibition asks, “What is the value of thesegenerated images?” The artwork shown in this exhibition was generated based solely on images
independently created to train a proprietary new AI model. The artwork shown in this exhibition wasgenerated with a proprietary new AI model trained based solely on images that we have created up until
today. As such, buyers will be able to generate images ad infinitum, adjusting the inputs to the AI model.
By developing this own AI model and making the model itself available for purchase, Rhizomatiks hopes

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to inspire new perspectives and discussions on the relationship between AI and art. We invite you tovisit and explore this innovative exhibition.
For deeper analysis, we will now pass the baton to Kazunao Abe, a professor at Tokyo Polytechnic
University who has known Rhizomatiks from the start.
Rhizomatiks Beyond Perception: A Meditation on AI and Generative Art
Text: Kazunao Abe
Since the early 2010s, Rhizomatiks has garnered widespread acclaim as a driving force on thevanguard of the media art scene, both in Japan and on the international stage. Moreover, thenature of their unique practice has required them to navigate many challenges from a risk
management perspective unknown to conventional contemporary artists. In a landscape wherecutting-edge media technology is commonly levied as spectacle for entertainment, advertising,and promotional purposes, Rhizomatiks has laudably maintained a critical cultural andtechnological distance from them, focusing on the felicity of the work itself—surely no easy feat.
The activities of this creative collective comprising artists, engineers, and designers can perhaps
be likened to a cadre of expeditionary researchers (*1) surveying the uncharted terrain of media
art and media performance, a still unclearly defined, and for this reason all the more exciting, newfrontier.
Rhizomatiks’ mediations play out in two distinct directions. The first could be characterized as
cutting-edge research with a thoroughly computational and data-oriented approach. By contrast,
the second entails the development of proprietary hardware engineering mechanisms, as well as
the research and practical implementation of sensing/control technologies. These two directions,when coupled with the dual axes of art ↔ performance (dance performance + electronic musicperformance(*2)), form the four-quadrant matrix that is Rhizomatiks. The majority of Rhizomatiks’
prolific output can be charted somewhere along this matrix, each project positioned on a fresh
new bias.
By making their gallery debut at KOTARO NUKAGA, Rhizomatiks opens a new chapter, dipping
their toes into the art marketplace for the first time in the gallery exhibition format. However,make no mistake, the new work contained in this exhibition addresses a larger purpose bypresenting an innovative approach to this pivotal crossroads in human history. Over the span ofa few short years, generative AI technologies have advanced at a rate that has far exceeded
expectations. Not too long ago, NFT art seemingly emerged overnight as a hot topic on the art
scene, piggybacking on the tokens that can act as surrogates of digital assets. In the words of Tina
Rivers Ryan: “Because it forever points to a single asset, the NFT implicitly privileges the ideal ofa stable, unitary artwork over the messy reality of digital projects that are dispersed, interactive,contingent, iterative, or ephemeral.” (*3) Yet it’s important that NFT art should also be imbued
with this element of ephemerality found in generative art. This goes beyond simply storing thelatest outputs of representational culture on a given user’s favored personal mobile device. Moreessentially, digital art has engendered another dimension that bestows cultural and economic
value upon generative/regenerative data flow, even without representational images.
Rhizomatiks Beyond Perception ambitiously attempts to question the nature of art projects thatuse generative AI, extending this line of questioning toward their very existence. Rather thanproblematizing the results or repercussions of representational images created by AI, theexhibition seeks to demonstrate the nature of AI models themselves as data mediation. In otherwords, the exhibition constitutes an “attempt to unveil, visualize, and sell the training data andvery AI models whose inner workings have heretofore been kept hidden from the public in a
proverbial black box.” (*4)
Rhizomatiks is largely steered by Daito Manabe, the organization’s de facto leader and aninternationally acclaimed media artist in his own right. However, we must not overlook thereciprocal synergies that arise from Rhizomatiks’ collectivistic approach to creation, theirdecentralized distribution of specialized R&D roles, and open discussion at the conceptual
planning stage. To wit, Manabe is joined by a diverse team, two representative figures being

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Motoi Ishibashi and Yuya Hanai. Ishibashi has a comprehensive background in high-levelengineering and computational research. Since the early 2000s, he has brought his vision to bearon a wide spectrum of art forms, paving new ground in the development and control of various
devices and autonomous mechanics. Since joining Rhizomatiks in 2014, Yuya Hanai has had ahand in the development of numerous proprietary visual systems utilizing cameras and projectors,
such as seamless MR, dynamic VR, and interactive lasers. In recent years, Hanai has garneredattention for his ethical approach to generative AI, developing image generating AI tools such as
Mitsua Diffusion, Mitsua Likes, and Elan MitsuaMT, trained exclusively on openly licensed images
in the public domain and images whose use has been permitted by the copyright holders, thereby
eschewing those foundation models trained indiscriminately on information available on theinternet.
In broad brushstrokes, I might summarize Daito Manabe’s modus operandi in two phrases: “apropensity for the unfinished” and “I am controlled, therefore I am.” From an art historicalperspective, we might draw parallels to two artists who epitomize the pursuit of the “unfinished”(*5): Leonardo da Vinci and Marcel Duchamp (who was amply conscious of his Italian
Renaissance forebear.) Da Vinci continuously evolved and updated his works, unhesitatingly
incorporating the unproven new techniques of his day into his classically trained toolkit (even if
this meant many of his works would not survive as a result). Moreover, da Vinci was notable forhis constant experimentation with unexpected combinations of the theoretical implications of
those techniques, as well as the significance their implementation entailed for society to come.
As such, his works remained perpetually unfinished, in the word’s many senses. Meanwhile, I
personally think of Duchamp not as a “readymade” artist, but rather as a caster of molds. As ayoung man, Duchamp apprenticed at a printer, where he learned engraving, etching, andtypesetting. Throughout his life, he evinced a craftsman-esque approach to the relationshipbetween the original and the mold (which would in turn beget form in new substance), captivatedby the intangibly minute yet infinitely diverse shades of difference (“infrathin”) generated in theinterstices by each pressing from the same mold. In principle, this means that the generative
process continually exists within the margins of the mold (the medium). (*6) Manabe’s views ontechnology run nearly parallel to Duchamp. When new technology emerges, Manabe embarks on
projects that explore associated thought processes. This initial departure point rarely contributes
to what is articulated in the “completed” artwork, instead serving as a stepping stone for reaching
the next stage of generation, or another technological approach altogether.
Ultimately, Manabe’s praxis is made possible by his platforms that can be “thoroughly controlled.”
On a human level, the question of control—how one group exerts control over another—has beena timeless topic of philosophical debate. We might posit that media is an extension of the body,and modern surveillance technology is an extension of the human (i.e. subjective) sense of sight.
However, there is another topology altogether: envision a platform in which the body, existence,and subjectivity are dropped into a completely autonomously controlled technological world (àla the metaverse/multiverse). As an example, consider Rhizomatiks’ recent media performance,Syn (*7), presented in 2023. Whereas spectators are typically a transparent, invisible presence, inSyn, the audience’s movement through the performance stage was recorded, and then playedback in reverse as post-processed imagery toward the end of the performance, compelling theaudience to confront their past selves through their stereoscopic lenses.
Always at the experimental cusp, Rhizomatiks Beyond Perception represents Rhizomatiks’ latest
approach toward the act of “generation” through an AI lens (including proprietary technology
debuted at this exhibition). This critic looks forward to seeing what further wonders this foray into
the subjectification and monetization of AI itself will hold from Rhizomatiks in the future to come.
Citations:*1 Indeed, their media art division was until recently named “Rhizomatiks Research.”*2 Daito Manabe also applies the content gleaned from his copious art and science research projects to DJ/VJ eventswith astonishing precision. His ability to harness and improve upon even the world’s most complex multilayer
systems/programs, while still delivering intrinsic danceability, results in performances that exceed imagination.
*3 Tina Rivers Ryan “TOKEN GESTURE” (ARTFORUM MAY 2021）

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https://www.artforum.com/columns/token-gesture-249731/ last access: (2024/06/29)*4 As media researcher Lev Manovich explains: “At this point we know much more about human creativity and how it
works than we do about ‘AI creativity.’ In philosophy, psychology, cognitive science, and other fields, many alternative
theories and types of creativity have been proposed. With time, we are likely to see the same for ‘AI creativity.’ But weare not at this point yet. After neural networks are trained on trillions of text pages or billions of images harvested fromthe Web, they can compose new texts and images. However, the abilities of the creative nets are not defined bytraditional algorithms; instead, they are distributed among trillions of connections between billions of artificial neurons.
In other words, we managed to create a technology that is in some ways similar to a human brain—and that is socomplex we can’t understand how it works.”
Lev Manovich “The AI Brain in the Cultural Archive: What new artifacts emerge when we look at the next revolution inmedia?” (MoMA Magazine Jul 21, 2023) https://www.moma.org/magazine/articles/927 (last access: 2024/06/29)*5 To be clear, “unfinished” can connote an unintended consequence (i.e. “unrealized/unbuilt”) or a more essential,
deliberate state of “incompleteness.” Duchamp and da Vinci of course fall into the latter camp.
*6 Although Duchamp went on to create many works that could be classified as molds (or else “measures”), his early
paintings are particularly indicative. For example, see how he depicted the left hand in Portrait of Dr. Dumouchel (dated1910, currently in the collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art). Notice how the hand itself is complemented by thesurrounding space, or rather, how the connection between hand and space inhabits its own unique domain.
*7 Syn: Unfolded Horizon of Bodily Senses by Rhizomatiks × ELEVENPLAY (TOKYONODE inaugural program at
Toranomon Hills Station Tower, Oct. 6–Nov. 12, 2023). In the second and third acts, the audience perceives the space instereo vision, yet in a surprising twist, their own true shadows were also made visible in stereo vision with a special
device. https://www.tokyonode.jp/sp/syn/ (last access: 2024/06/29)