About Artist

Naoko Tosa : Artist Statement　

The Principles of Genesis: Conditions and Systems of Emerging Form

In my work, technology is not the destination. It is the condition—the framework through which that which has no name manifests as form. Since the dawn of modernity, art has long journeyed alongside the question of “what to represent.” Depicting nature. Representing the body. Visualizing emotion. Presenting a concept. No matter how much the medium or format changes, an artwork is often understood as something that presents a pre-existing entity to the world.

However, I do not confront the completed image. I gaze into the realm before an image becomes an image, before meaning settles into definition—a realm where the world exists only as a vibration, a presence, a force.

I do not seek to reproduce nature. I do not wish to quote the iconography of Japanese culture, nor do I aim to explain emotions.

What I explore are the Principles of Genesis: how the myriad things of the universe (Shinra Bansho) rise into being. A voice, a sound, a breath, a heartbeat, the slight swaying of a body. Fluid vibrations, collisions, splashes, gravity, and chance. In my work, these are both the materials and the forces that trigger an “event.” Here, the artist does not impose a predetermined shape upon the world; instead, invisible energy discloses itself as form at a singular moment.

In Sound of Ikebana, no flowers are drawn. Nor is the flower quoted as a symbol. Instead, paint vibrates and leaps to the pulse of sound, blooming for a split second in mid-air. In that instant, we are not looking at a “flower”; we are witnessing the very conditions under which a flower is born. What appears is not an image of a flower, but the “finitude” of the flower-like emerging into the world.

The concept of Kata (form/model) in Japanese culture is not a fixed style. Kata is a vessel designed to catch the flow of life, nature, and time, guiding them into form. Ikebana, Noh, Rimpa, Zen, Sansui—these are not merely motifs or decorations, but a form of wisdom used to transmute the invisible into the visible, and intangible forces into tangible experiences.

My practice does not “reenact” this wisdom through modern technology. Rather, it is an attempt to use technology to reopen the moment where Kata breathes once again as a site of genesis. In this sense, an artwork is not a finished object to me. It is a field where a phenomenon occurs—an apparatus through which the world momentarily reveals its own becoming.

I do not create works of art. I design the site where art is born.

On this point, my work often approaches the realm of science. However, while science seeks to explain, predict, and control phenomena, my work allows us to experience phenomena and reopens them as something inexplicable. It is not about reducing nature to a comprehensible object, but about restoring the “sense of awe” that nature originally commanded. Technology here is not a tool for mastery; it is an interface for humanity to encounter nature, the body, and life once more.

Traversing video art, interactive art, artificial life, and Cultural Computing, I have shifted the moving image from a mere picture on a screen to an event where the body and natural phenomena intersect. While inheriting the questions opened by media expression after Nam June Paik, E.A.T., and Jikken Kobo (Experimental Workshop), my interest lies not in the media itself, but in how the world emerges through it.

Therefore, my work is not a simple fusion of art, Japanese culture, and technology. It is an attempt to reorganize them around the single point of the “Principles of Genesis.” The work is no longer something presented; it is something that happens. Art shifts from that which represents the world to that which allows us to witness the moment the world is born.

My creation exists in the midst of this transition. That which has not yet taken shape. That which precedes naming. That which appears only where nature, the body, and time intersect beyond human intention.

That fleeting instant is what I call my work.

Naoko Tosa | Biography

Based in New York and Kyoto. In the early 1980s, Tosa’s career began with two awards at the video art open calls held at Video Gallery SCAN, founded by artist Fujiko Nakaya. Her international debut followed with the exhibition “NEW VIDEO JAPAN” at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), curated by Barbara London.

Focusing on the “Principles of Genesis” within the universe, Tosa proposed “Cultural Computing,” a method of reinterpreting Japanese aesthetics as a structure. Her practice involves handling the very conditions under which form is born through sound, the body, and natural phenomena. Moving between creation and research, her central theme is the transition of art from “Form” to “Genesis.”

  • 1990s: Involved in education at Musashino Art University while conducting research on media integration and communication at ATR (Advanced Telecommunications Research Institute International).
  • 1999: Received a Ph.D. in Engineering from the University of Tokyo for her research on emotional voice dialogue using AI.
  • 2001–2004: Conducted art and technology research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Center for Advanced Visual Studies (CAVS) as a fellow of the Agency for Cultural Affairs. Created the work ZENetic Computer during this period.
  • 2005–Present: Engaged in education and research at Kyoto University. Currently researching expressions concerning the relationship between natural phenomena and humans at the Disaster Prevention Research Institute (DPRI).

Her early career explored the relationship between sound, the body, and the unconscious through video art, interactive art, and artificial life. She received the L’Oréal Grand Prix in 1997, and in 2004, ZENetic Computer was highly acclaimed in connection with UNESCO. In 2016, as a Japan Cultural Envoy, she presented Sound of Ikebana at New York’s Times Square, demonstrating the potential of generative video expression in urban spaces.

“My work inherits the lineage of video and media expression established by Nam June Paik, E.A.T., and Jikken Kobo, while attempting to displace it into the realm of natural phenomena and genesis.”