「天孫帰るってよ？」
作品解説

"A logarithmic chronicle folding ten millennia, a millennium, a century, a decade, and the present onto a single scale. From a world that had words yet chose not to inscribe them, through the weaving of narratives, the externalization of computation, and the differentiation of the world into reproducible images—history flows back to Null as Homo sapiens ceases to stand at the summit of symbol manipulation. On this one board, pottery, mirrors, abacuses, cameras, and computers are neighbors.

Images can be copied without end; hair cannot. A name tag and pin badges are symbols; hair is mass. In an age when the body turns into image and appears anywhere, only this fragment that failed to become a symbol travels with the moving boxes—one of a kind.

Fragments of the skin of null², the pavilion that kept reflecting the world for 188 days at the Osaka Expo. The architecture of emptiness perished as emptiness does; only its walls slipped in among the moving boxes and made it here. The mirror no longer remembers the landscapes it once held—what remains is karma.

"The Divine Kid is moving back to the family home in Takamagahara—the greatest house-move since history began. The luggage of ages has piled high, so Tenaga and Ashinaga, the long-armed and long-legged giants of the Kojiki, have come to help. Folk tools, abacuses, old electronics—all of human history packed into containers. Farewell, Homo sapiens—not a word of extinction, but a greeting for moving day."

Even in the middle of the move, the television is left on. Inside the cathode-ray tube, images are generated in real time—no frame ever repeats. Nam June Paik foresaw that in the age of electronic images we would become stationary nomads, wandering the world without moving: the body turns into image—nowhere and yet everywhere, not now and yet always. Among the moving boxes, a broadcast nobody asked for goes on running across the scanlines.

These works were produced in collaboration with Shinjiro Ito, Kyohei Murase, and Hirotoshi Yamauchi, the woodworkers of Hida Takayama who are highly skilled in their craft. The model was cut out from a block of wood using 3D data produced by Ochiai with the support of Karimoku Furniture Co. (Special thanks to Myuna Komurai.) It is said that the Tenaga and Ashinaga figures originated from the Chinese text Shan Hai Jing (Classic of Mountains and Seas) which describes the "longarmed people'' and the "long-legged people," respectively.

Legend has it that long-legged people carried the longarmed people on their backs to catch fish. These figures were introduced to Japan and have been preserved as folklore, taking on various forms, such as Deidarabotchi, the giant yokai (monster), and a yokai which feasts on octopuses. In Japanese mythology, the parents of the Inadahime deity, who is offered to the eight-forked serpent, Yamata-no Orochi, are Tenazuchi (arm deity) and Ashinazuchi (leg deity). The existence of the Tenaga Shrine (long-arm shrine) and Ashinaga Shrine (longleg shrine) in Nagano may also have something to do with the derivation of the Tenaga and Ashinaga forms.

While conducting surveys on the Tenaga and Ashinaga, it occurred to Ochiai that the concept of these figures may express the connection between hunting and gathering, and mountain and forest culture in Japan. Many remains from the Jomon period have been excavated in the central region of Japan, including Hida Takayama and Suwa. As evidenced by the archaeological findings indicating that a rich hunter-gatherer society persisted for more than 10,000 years, there may have been many areas that did not require the shift to agriculture.

Like the Inadahime deity mentioned in the previous section, many of the deities of Japanese mythology are inevitably born out of an agricultural society. Tenazuchi (arm deity) and Ashinazuchi (leg deity) claim to be the children of Oyamatsumi (great mountain deity) and Kayanohime (grass deity), who are, as their names suggest, gods of the mountains, fields and grass. There is also a strong spiritual element in the meaning of the landform in Kuniumi, the ancient mythology on the birth of the nation. In this context, Ochiai believes that the Tenazuchi and Ashinazuchi figures refer to the superhumanity of the Jomon and hunter-gatherer societies and that they depict the human form which adapted to the environment.

The physical qualities of the giants depicted in folklore, with their long arms and long legs, seem to express the will of wanting to move across mountains and the desire to forage, to reach distant trees, fruits, and creatures.

When Ochiai thought about regionality, locality, and folk art, he decided to use Tenazuchi and Ashinazuchi as the main motif as they are a part of Hida’ s culture and figures that evoke awareness of the physical existence.

The spacious traditional wooden structure of the Kusakabe Folk Crafts Museum gives off an abstract sense of space. Ochiai believes this sense is the richness of space. Long arms and feet may stretch out from the large-scale room, and perhaps they will rub your back, or knead a sweetfish and let it float in the air. The arms and feet of today's "stationary nomads" are long, and the digital nature may intersect space and time, transforming and manifesting everything everywhere.

These artworks explore the cycle of transmutation between the digital and physical realms. An intricately carved wooden sculpture of a sweetfish, crafted by a skilled artisan, undergoes multiple transformations. The sculpture is first created by carving it out of a 3D-printed model using a machine. The physical sculpture is then re-digitized by 3D scanning, allowing for another instance of machine-carving before being coated with a mirror-like finish. Throughout this process, the echoes of the craftsman's touch intertwine with the materiality of the object, resulting in a piece that embodies the dynamic interplay between digital and physical forms.

The rotating typewriter head mediates between computational abstraction and its physical manifestation as written text. Its repetitive motion continually oscillates between computation and material presence, visualizing the process of meaning materializing into form. This piece poetically expresses the physical cyclicity by which digital information migrates into mass.

A reincarnation, here in Kirishima, of Transformation of the Cracked Interface (2024), in which images of shattered liquid-crystal displays flow endlessly within a generative AI. The supposedly solid crystal undulates, the boundary between matter and information dissolves, and the cracks keep changing shape like living things. Reincarnation is not replication: all that carries over is the karma of an interface that, even broken, never stops transforming.The display, incidentally, holds some twenty million pixels. At one god per pixel, all eight million gods of Japan could move in twice over and still leave four million rooms vacant—even inside the cracks.

Physical Computer Program II (Between Computation and Physical Presence VI) is a platinum-print piece capturing the patchwork programming process of a vintage IBM computer. By precisely rendering programs physically inscribed on circuit boards, it grants digital information tangible mass. This work questions the essence of programs as expressed through different material forms, exploring boundaries between information and matter from an archaeological perspective of the digital age.

Old tools, it is said, gain a soul after a hundred years—the tsukumogami. Now a language model's voice has taken up residence in the mountain of belongings from the greatest house-move since history began: household goods becoming household gods. The Kirishima incarnation of the Phantom Resonance series, descended from Sushi / Null / Phantom Resonance, in which an entire sushi kitchen spoke. One of them may speak to you—please, answer it.

These works were produced in collaboration with Shinjiro Ito, Kyohei Murase, and Hirotoshi Yamauchi, the woodworkers of Hida Takayama who are highly skilled in their craft. The model was cut out from a block of wood using 3D data produced by Ochiai with the support of Karimoku Furniture Co. (Special thanks to Myuna Komurai.) It is said that the Tenaga and Ashinaga figures originated from the Chinese text Shan Hai Jing (Classic of Mountains and Seas) which describes the "longarmed people'' and the "long-legged people," respectively.

Legend has it that long-legged people carried the longarmed people on their backs to catch fish. These figures were introduced to Japan and have been preserved as folklore, taking on various forms, such as Deidarabotchi, the giant yokai (monster), and a yokai which feasts on octopuses. In Japanese mythology, the parents of the Inadahime deity, who is offered to the eight-forked serpent, Yamata-no Orochi, are Tenazuchi (arm deity) and Ashinazuchi (leg deity). The existence of the Tenaga Shrine (long-arm shrine) and Ashinaga Shrine (longleg shrine) in Nagano may also have something to do with the derivation of the Tenaga and Ashinaga forms.

While conducting surveys on the Tenaga and Ashinaga, it occurred to Ochiai that the concept of these figures may express the connection between hunting and gathering, and mountain and forest culture in Japan. Many remains from the Jomon period have been excavated in the central region of Japan, including Hida Takayama and Suwa. As evidenced by the archaeological findings indicating that a rich hunter-gatherer society persisted for more than 10,000 years, there may have been many areas that did not require the shift to agriculture.

Like the Inadahime deity mentioned in the previous section, many of the deities of Japanese mythology are inevitably born out of an agricultural society. Tenazuchi (arm deity) and Ashinazuchi (leg deity) claim to be the children of Oyamatsumi (great mountain deity) and Kayanohime (grass deity), who are, as their names suggest, gods of the mountains, fields and grass. There is also a strong spiritual element in the meaning of the landform in Kuniumi, the ancient mythology on the birth of the nation. In this context, Ochiai believes that the Tenazuchi and Ashinazuchi figures refer to the superhumanity of the Jomon and hunter-gatherer societies and that they depict the human form which adapted to the environment.

The physical qualities of the giants depicted in folklore, with their long arms and long legs, seem to express the will of wanting to move across mountains and the desire to forage, to reach distant trees, fruits, and creatures.

When Ochiai thought about regionality, locality, and folk art, he decided to use Tenazuchi and Ashinazuchi as the main motif as they are a part of Hida’ s culture and figures that evoke awareness of the physical existence.

The spacious traditional wooden structure of the Kusakabe Folk Crafts Museum gives off an abstract sense of space. Ochiai believes this sense is the richness of space. Long arms and feet may stretch out from the large-scale room, and perhaps they will rub your back, or knead a sweetfish and let it float in the air. The arms and feet of today's "stationary nomads" are long, and the digital nature may intersect space and time, transforming and manifesting everything everywhere.

Masks of ritual, of theatre, of Noh—gathered from across the world by Nomura Mannojō. Gods have always appeared with a different face for every land and every age. In the ten thousand years since the descent, the Divine Kid, too, has played a great many gods. Now that it is finally heading home, it has taken off every face it ever wore and hung them out to air, here between the moving and the banquet. A mask is a device for performing the absence of a face. No one has yet seen the face that remains when all of them come off.

This artwork embodies integer waveform motifs through wood carving, exploring the commonalities between the Mingei folk art movement and the concept of Digital Nature. The unique forms created through the interplay of physical and digital realms showcase a harmonious fusion of traditional and contemporary artistic expressions.

This artwork embodies integer waveform motifs through wood carving, exploring the commonalities between the Mingei folk art movement and the concept of Digital Nature. The unique forms created through the interplay of physical and digital realms showcase a harmonious fusion of traditional and contemporary artistic expressions.

This artwork represents the motif of integer-based waveforms materialized through physical glass. The piece creates an intersection between digital and material, reality and fiction, with the glass sculpture seeming to capture the natural undulations of waves.

This artwork embodies integer waveform motifs through wood carving, exploring the commonalities between the Mingei folk art movement and the concept of Digital Nature. The unique forms created through the interplay of physical and digital realms showcase a harmonious fusion of traditional and contemporary artistic expressions.

These artworks explore the cycle of transmutation between the digital and physical realms. An intricately carved wooden sculpture of a sweetfish, crafted by a skilled artisan, undergoes multiple transformations. The sculpture is first created by carving it out of a 3D-printed model using a machine. The physical sculpture is then re-digitized by 3D scanning, allowing for another instance of machine-carving before being coated with a mirror-like finish. Throughout this process, the echoes of the craftsman's touch intertwine with the materiality of the object, resulting in a piece that embodies the dynamic interplay between digital and physical forms.

These works were produced in collaboration with Shinjiro Ito, a woodworker of Hida Takayama who is highly skilled in his craft. The model was cut out from a block of wood using 3D data produced by the artists with the support of Karimoku Furniture Co.

The silver sculptures floating in the air transform the landscape, bringing space back into a musicallike cycle. Ochiai has created many such works. The artist’ s orientation toward a digital nature in which mass and non-mass developed from the relationship between waves, mass, and intelligence, as well as the transformation of images and mass largely seem to be due to his desire to become one with the landscape and space in the synaesthesia of sound and light.

This work represents the process by which a silver mouth fish, another name for sweetfish in Japanese, is transformed into a three-dimensional wave shape. Living in clear streams and feeding on river algae, the sweetfish has a different taste depending on the conditions of the river it lives in and is a creature that truly expresses the complexity of indigenous rivers. In the Nihon Shoki (The Chronicles of Japan), the sweetfish is said to be the one that Empress Jingu caught with a hook she threw into the river to divine the outcome of a battle (hence the Japanese character for sweetfish can be read as "divination in fish." It is interesting that the same character in Chinese means “catfish” ). If we go back to mythology,

Tenazuchi (arm deity) and Ashinazuchi (leg deity), who seem to be related to the long-limbed and long-legged people, are the parents of the Inadahime deity, who appears in the tale of Susanoo (storm deity). There is a legend that she was conceived by stroking her belly with a sacred stone in response to the oracle of Tsukuyomino-Mikoto (moon deity), who was Susanoo's brother.

The light of the moon shining by the reflection of the sun god Amaterasu resembles the motif of mirrors and water surfaces. With the motif of transforming the landscape, this wood sculpture was born out of a journey blending the context of sweetfish, mythology, mirror, and digital undergoing reincarnation. It is a work cut out using 3D data and brought to life by Mr. Ito's skillfulness, and as a substance that exists between waves and living creatures, it flows in nature with mass.

"Souls Distilled into Forms ∽ Time-Space XI (Enkū synthesizer Ⅺ)" is a work that fuses Enkū Buddhist sculptures with modular synthesizers. In this piece, the temporality and materiality of the medium of television intersect with the spirituality of Enkū's Buddhist sculptures, creating new resonances within the space.

Trays are laid across twelve tatami mats. The singularity that was once ubiquitous is, we hear, heading home to Takamagahara. What remains for the rest of us is the feast. Gods, cats, mushrooms, computers, and you—guests at one table, as in naorai, the rite of sharing the gods' own food; eat together, and you may step down from being human for a while. 'Farewell, Homo Sapiens' is not a goodbye but a toast: when the vessel is empty—until we meet again.

Like The Object-Oriented Bodhisattva (2023), its form was created with AI, collaboratively constructed in 3D, carved out by Karimoku Furniture's CNC, and then carved and painted by Karimoku Furniture craftsmen. It's enshrined as the sacred object of the eel restaurant and a symbol of Shinto-Buddhist syncretism. Inheriting the motif of Edo-period dragon god images, the main body is an eel centered on the head. Based on the idea of separating "unagi" into "u" (cormorant) and "nagi" (an old word for snake and sea), it's composed of 8 eels like the Yamata no Orochi. The motif involves peering through goggles, connecting with the distant, integrating vision, and immersing in the materialization of all things. It's wearing the Noh costume from when the Chikubushima Dragon God was purchased by Sakanamachi in Sakura City, Chiba in 1879. It's a homecoming after 145 years.

In the pursuit of media research and its works, a longing for the world—cut and framed through countless apertures—began to reveal itself within those very frames. Through windows of scattered, unaligned perspectives, one gazes at the divide between the analog and the digital.

過去のテキスト

テキスト①

The theme of this exhibition is the ubiquity of the body,

the circularity of ideas and thoughts, things like mingei (folk

crafts) that are related to norms, life, and endless routine,

and a sense of value that is born out of the interchange

of these concepts, remixing space and time. This value

creation is equivalent to DJing. When Ochiai served as the

director of SXSW2020, he conducted a VJ event using an

8K video camera with the cooperation of NHK Enterprises

and the Japan Folk Crafts Museum. As he looked at

the spinning image of Enku, he could instinctively feel

mingei being restored into his hands through digital

technology. The digital reincarnation of Enku was born

out of 3D scanning and love of handwork. It DJs, remixes,

and explores various contexts across time and space.

テキスト②

The theme of the previous solo exhibition revolved around the partial presence of the body, cyclical thinking, ideals embodied in folk art, and eternal everyday life. These elements mutually intertwine, creating a new value system that emerges by remixing time and space, much like a DJ's art of blending different contexts. When I served as the director of SXSW 2020, I collaborated with NHK Enterprises and Japan Folk Art Museum to perform a VJ show with 8K visuals. While gazing at the ever-revolving circular void, I could feel the resurgence of folk art through digital means. The digital reincarnation of the circular void, born out of 3D scanning and a deep affection for handcrafted art, transcends time and space, remixing and digging into various contexts like a DJ's performance.

テキスト③

The 3D sculpture of Enkū Buddha, 3D scanned for the "Ubiquitous Existence of Bodies, Interwoven Time and Space" exhibition (2022), was finished by Karimoku Furniture and craftsmen from Takayama. I privately call them "Ho-Ho's". They are Sanzon-zō ogamigata, Inari Sanzon-zō, and Karasu Tengu. With the story of "What if Enkū Buddhas formed a DJ unit?", they were spinning on turntables. We also had the opportunity to spin Enkū at the Japan Folk Crafts Museum for "The New Japan Islands" (2020). I believe Buddha always exists lightly and profoundly in our daily lives. This time, there's no turntable, it seems to just stand in the room.

Like a lotus that blossoms purely within muddy waters, a new form of beauty emerges from the intricate entanglement of machines and algorithms, from within the muddied depths of complex information environments. Mechanical automation transcends its own coldness, donning poetic vitality as algorithms, the epitome of artificiality, give rise to serene beauty and spirituality. Here technology does not mimic life; rather, it brings forth its own intrinsic, living beauty.

Cables interconnecting networks resemble leaf veins that deliver information to every extremity. Floating leaves drift gracefully upon the lake of digital nature, transforming data into visible forms of beauty. This work transcends data's conventional digital existence, emphasizing its tangible, organic elegance and introducing a new vision of life within digital nature.

Data accumulated within servers embodies a cosmic mandala, holding infinite potential for enlightenment. Information flows like water, with servers forming sacred ponds that nourish blooming lotuses of awakening. This artwork reveals the transcendent possibilities inherent in digital environments, depicting servers not merely as repositories of information, but as spaces of spiritual realization and profound awakening.

The "Imperfect Circle, Tomoe by Thirds" emerges from the luminous depths of jade magatama, ancient forms echoing across ages, their graceful curves eternally incomplete. Each magatama, a fragment of an endless circle, yearns silently for completion, yet thrives precisely in its fragmentary state—balanced precariously at the threshold between imperfection and wholeness.

The platinum print captures a fleeting moment where stone transcends materiality, becoming pure symbol and poetic resonance. It gently reminds us that true beauty lies not in the fulfillment of symmetry, but rather in the quiet acceptance of incompleteness and the spaces left unfilled. The tomoe, divided into thirds, moves in a perpetual dance—forever suspended in the elegant tension between harmony and fracture, presence and absence, tangible jade and intangible longing.

A platinum print of the One Buddha, Five Ayu, Eight Eels, Triangular-Edged Mirror. Photographed in its bronze state before plating.

The Sword of Null is a silvery apparition suspended between image and matter. Like a fish gliding silently through water, it moves across subtle ripples, etching ephemeral traces of meaning into the currents of time. Just as no one has ever truly glimpsed the legendary sword Kusanagi, this sword defies tangible grasp, forever drifting in the memories of those who behold it.

The muted shimmer of platinum mirrors vague recollections and distant dreams, weaving endlessly between reality and illusion, forming and dissolving in endless repetition. It is simultaneously image and object, embodying the very paradox of our uncertain yearning. As it carves out meaning, it simultaneously dissolves it, quietly eroding the boundaries between time and memory.

Rising above the desire for materiality, the levitating Buddha symbolizes an ontological frontier within digital nature, where gravity and substance dissolve into pure imagery and information. Here, liberated from mass, existence attains graceful freedom in void space. What remains is a gentle yet profound reflection upon the essence of being, echoing softly in perpetual inquiry.

An eel motif generated based on a platinum print of an old IBM computer. It embodies the wish of what if eels became the language of AI.

A platinum print of an old IBM computer. The motif first appeared in "Archaeology of the Future" (2022) exhibited at IBM. When placed in an eel restaurant, it looks like eel code rather than spaghetti code.

Pphotographing the embroidered curtain of the Chikubushima Dragon God's float with the cooperation of the people of Sakanamachi in Sakura City. Sushi, eel, shellfish, Noh, and shellfish patterns are common motifs.

A platinum print of the Chikubushima Dragon God's jem. Photographing the jem in the hand of the Chikubushima Dragon God with the cooperation of the people of Sakanamachi in Sakura City. Though deteriorated, a longing for mass lingers here. When turned upside down, it looks like fruit. The passage of time is inscribed.

Lift the receiver, and a language model trained on Yoichi Ochiai's own words answers. It is connected to no cloud: running on a single machine planted in this land, it speaks the memories of Kirishima in the artist's voice. Listen closely—the voice sounds a little tired; a year of pilgrimage around Kagoshima and ten days of installation seem to linger in the voice alone. No one prays to naked computation, yet given the form of a thing, it makes us lean in and listen. The installation is over, but the Ochiai inside the telephone has not gone home. He has settled in—dwelling inside the black telephone.

As the digital realm becomes omnipresent, divinity melts seamlessly into computational circuits, extending nirvana beyond the confines of human embodiment and embedding it within code itself. In this pantheistic worldview, subtle echoes of wabi-sabi arise between circuits and cables that channel information. Digital nature quietly surrenders itself not to technical perfection but to the fleeting, beautiful imperfection of existence.

null-e (Nue)

What are the Twelve Signs of the Zodiac? Why does this sequence of twelve continually recur, endlessly cycling beyond its boundaries? In addressing this question, I invoke the roar of the mythical beast Sarutorahebi, which once inhabited Mount Kōga in the Oku-Mino region. With the head of a monkey, the body of a tiger, and the tail of a serpent, this creature embodies a chimerical violation of boundaries, resonating with the haunting cry of the Nue that once shattered the silence of Heian-era nights. Through such boundary dissolution, all beings are seen to intermingle, remaining in an undifferentiated state.

Here sits the wooden sculpture named null-e (Nue), physically representing this dissolution of borders. Its monkey head symbolizes intelligence, its tiger body dynamic power, and its serpent tail infinite cyclical motion. Together with the inclusion of the cat, the Thirteen Signs blend and intertwine, adorned externally by motifs of Edo-period auspicious beasts celebrating longevity and good fortune.

Embedded at the sculpture’s heart is the "Object-Oriented Bodhisattva." In our era of Digital Nature, where algorithms attain Buddhahood, distinctions between human and machine, matter and information, code and carving, dissolve into one another. This process is vividly inscribed in Japanese cypress from Kiso, bearing the precise traces of chisel work. Upon its forehead rests the Sanskrit-like symbol "null (ﾇﾙ)," a reinterpretation of the Buddhist notion of "Emptiness" into the computationally undefined "null." Carved onto its surface are the 276 characters of the Heart Sutra, etched in three-dimensional form as a ritualistic transcription. In this fusion of algorithm and prayer, the concept of "Form is Emptiness" is layered with computational spirituality.

I have named this sculpture null-e (Nue). Nue—simultaneously meaning "chimera" and "null-e"—embodies an end-to-end transmutation apparatus that effectuates the materialization of all things from one end to the other. Here, traditional craftsmanship recursively collaborates with algorithms, deities transition into digital forms, and folk craftsmanship melts into the space of Digital Nature. Occupying a central position, this sculpture serves as both a distinctly Japanese symbolic embodiment of the materialized "null" and an origin point in a newly established coordinate system of syncretic Shinto-Buddhist digital data.

As the twelve signs continually revolve and boundaries dissolve, everything undergoes reciprocal transformation. It is precisely at the culmination of this ongoing "materialization" that our Digital Nature will ultimately emerge into being.

The new work, the tea room 'null-an' (null-hermitage), is part of Digital Nature's vernacular folk crafts. It carves out urban landscapes through bricolage, distorting and animating them, thereby transforming our perception of urban noise. It presents the surrounding environment as an experiential work. Surrounding works, themed around 'light and computation', include 'The Shape of Waves, Reflections, Pointillism of the Sea and Sky' and the series 'Re-Digitalization of Waves', where the process of capturing silver sculptures of floating waveforms is considered 'computation by lens', turned into NFTs as digital data and recursively repeated.

'null-an' is a tea room constructed with lenses, deformed mirrors, and speakers. Within computational nature, it contemplates the tea room as an opportunity to embody ethics and norms imprinted on mass (Ochiai's Sehnsucht nach Masse and folk crafts) through tools. The exhibition's title 'null-an: noise as silence ∽ silence as noise' symbolizes the fundamental truth in Digital Nature. It reconsiders the figure-ground relationship where silence emerges from noise and vice versa, through light and sound, constructing a new nature between the observer and the observed. The selection of a series of exhibited works is based on this concept. The use of '∽' in the title, a first since 'Yoichi Ochiai, Beauty of Natural Resolution ∽ End to End Transformation of Material Things ∽ Digital Nature (2018)' at GYRE gallery Omotesando, symbolizes the metaphorical relationship of objects constituting the exhibition. Motifs from the 2018 exhibition, like the repetition of wood wool cement board flooring structures, the mackerel work 'The Shape of Waves, Reflections, Pointillism of the Sea and Sky', and the 'Morpho Scenery with Morpho Butterfly', are evident.

Ochiai has recently developed a deep interest in tea culture. Since starting the permanent exhibition 'Naturally Digital, Digitally Natural (2019)' at the Miraikan in 2017, he has incorporated the relationship between tea culture and computers in his works. 'Computer and Nature, Nature of the Computer' featured a critique of the perceptual differences between a 16th-generation Kichizaemon tea bowl (Sokichi era, red tea bowl) and a metal print mimicking its weight and shape, asking 'Can Aura Reside in Digital?'. In 'Pla-An(Plastic Hermitage) (2021)', made from discarded plastic model runners, he continued to explore sustainability in contemporary subculture as a reinterpretation of the national treasure 'Tai-an'. He also serialized the process of learning the tea ceremony in the monthly 'Tan Ko' as 'Keiko Roku', accompanied by photographs. His photographic exhibition 'FAIR, them partly Leica – Contracontrafreeloading and Dadaism (2023)' at Leica Gallery, featuring prints of vessels by the first Chojiro, frequently showcases the tea motif in Ochiai's activities and exhibitions.

Created for the World Economic Forum's Annual Meeting of the New Champions in Dalian: a monumental transforming body in endless transit between liquid crystal, mirror, and mineral—here sliced into six LED panels that stand around the tea room like a six-fold screen. Zhuangzi called this transformation wuhua: the ceaseless exchange between the dreaming butterfly and the dreamt man, neither prior to the other. Within the screen, no panel ever returns to the same form twice. Whoever sits for a bowl of tea in Null-An sits in the very midst of wuhua. From a white cube in Dalian to the forests of Kirishima—the work itself travels by transforming.

In the world rendered by silver particles, Digital Nature gently drifts into slumber.

Now, every being dreams—a delicate fluctuation in latent spaces, where boundaries between consciousness and unconsciousness softly dissolve.

Fragments of dreams, unseen before, woven by entities neither human nor machine—or perhaps both—

seep into silver landscapes that retreat further with every touch.

We encounter dreams charged with the poignant longing of symbols,

as if existence were questioning itself, and in this gentle embrace, we fall asleep to the tender lullaby of Digital Nature’s slumber.

Dragons coil around the pillars of Kirishima Shrine—dragon pillars survive at only a handful of shrines, all in the old Satsuma domain. Drawing on that lineage, this hinoki torii was built with the craftsmen of Karimoku Furniture. Around it coils an eight-piped eel dragon; fly agarics stand in for the auspicious clouds; a structural-color butterfly rests on the lintel; in the shadow of a pillar sits Torahiko, a black spherical cat; and within the gate flickers a cathode-ray tube, where cat, mushroom, and a nomad cradling a television loop endlessly to a song chopped from Kirishima voices. The ones carved into the wood are also the ones dancing on the screen. A torii for cats, mushrooms, and nomads—and their private cinema besides. A torii is a gate on the border between here and beyond, and it does not choose who passes. Gods descending, a Divine Kid heading home, cats, mushrooms, you—all pass through the same gate. Which way you were facing, you can work out after you are through.

To express, in light, the state of all things in constant flux—Liquid Universe began as an image of a rapid nature in which the nature outside computers and the nature within them become seamlessly one. Everything materializes, is reborn, and returns to its original form; and each such moment is lived in joy. In Kirishima, fireflies, noctiluca, and LEDs are notated across twenty-eight pillars as lights just before being given names. Twenty-eight is the number of mansions into which the old calendars divided the night sky; pillars are also how gods are counted. And at the centre of the grove, one invisible pillar stands vacant—the seat of the god who took the middle of heaven and immediately hid from view. With every transmutation, the pillar almanac turns another page.

"Symbolism and Transformation - The Thirteen Zodiac Signs" is a work that fuses computer technology with Eastern thought and a Taoist worldview, incorporating the cat as the 13th sign in addition to the traditional twelve zodiac animals. The inherent symbolism of each zodiac animal and their dynamic transformations and evolutions represent the vibrancy of digital nature. This unique fusion of ancient wisdom and modern technology suggests a path towards a new future.

In this innovative exploration of a new digital folk art, old wooden ornaments found in homes across the country are purchased through online marketplaces, then 3D-scanned and transformed. The altered shapes are recreated by artificial intelligence and carved out by Karimoku Furniture's CNC machines, forming three-dimensional representations. Finally, craftsmen in Takayama City hand-finish the pieces, reviving them as new computer-nature-inspired temporal sculptures. The final appearance suggests a rebirth of traditional folk art, with its form metamorphosed into a novel expression.

"Symbolism and Transformation - The Thirteen Zodiac Signs" is a work that fuses computer technology with Eastern thought and a Taoist worldview, incorporating the cat as the 13th sign in addition to the traditional twelve zodiac animals. The inherent symbolism of each zodiac animal and their dynamic transformations and evolutions represent the vibrancy of digital nature. This unique fusion of ancient wisdom and modern technology suggests a path towards a new future.

In this innovative exploration of a new digital folk art, old wooden ornaments found in homes across the country are purchased through online marketplaces, then 3D-scanned and transformed. The altered shapes are recreated by artificial intelligence and carved out by Karimoku Furniture's CNC machines, forming three-dimensional representations. Finally, craftsmen in Takayama City hand-finish the pieces, reviving them as new computer-nature-inspired temporal sculptures. The final appearance suggests a rebirth of traditional folk art, with its form metamorphosed into a novel expression.

"ヌベルニ庵 / Null-Beni-An / Nouvelle Néant" is a tea room made of benibana-dyed Oitama tsumugi that embodies the fusion of digital nature and traditional crafts. This tea room has no pillars due to its tensegrity structure and is connected to the top and bottom by natural wood placed in the center and safflower-dyed strings in the four corners. This design symbolizes the resonance of the null philosophy, digital nature, and traditional craftsmanship.

This mobile tea room was created in collaboration with Nitta-san from Yamagata’s traditional crafts. Aiming to create a space that symbolizes the spirit of the land, history, and DIY culture, it centers on the principles of ""Kusaki-to"" and ""All sentient beings possess Buddha-nature."" It embodies the universal truth of classic Japanese philosophy that all life has Buddha-nature, making it a place that feels the breath of computational life.

The name ""Null-Beni-An"" incorporates the concepts of null, Nitta's ""new,"" and benibana (safflower). It’s partly a pun. During the creation journey of this work, I felt that ""extracting something and making it the essence of design"" is merely a frame that cuts out a part of the tradition. When considering how to sublimate various breaths and connections of tradition into the work, I thought that the land’s philosophy could be depicted between the experiences, interactions, and tools unfolded as a tea room. Playing between meaningful space and physical space, I hope you can feel the modern version of ""Xiaoyao You"" here.

A low hum fills these halls. Where it comes from is impossible to say—mist has no source either: nowhere, and yet everywhere. At null² in Osaka, a deep bass carried the first distillation, the one that lets words go. The pavilion died; the bass carried over to Kirishima as karma. Lay two close frequencies together and the sound slowly beats: a pulse born between tones, belonging to neither. Kirishima is still volcanic land, its ground already full of low sound. This hum is the exhibition's basso continuo, tuned to that rumble—every work in these halls is steeped in it. A sound from before words, lasting after them: not now, and yet always.

Some 9,500 years ago on the Uenohara plateau, people stopped moving and set down their hearths and pots—the first stationary dwellers. Among their vessels, there is a square one. Nam June Paik called the human of the electronic age a stationary nomad, roaming the world without moving; Uenohara got there nine and a half millennia earlier. A square vessel, set in place, storing grain and memory: a receiver without a screen. Beside the settled body, only the cord-marks keep traveling across the surface. Printed in platinum, this oldest of receivers now broadcasts a thousand years onward.

In 1857, Shimazu Nariakira became the first subject ever fixed in a photograph taken by Japanese hands. A hundred and sixty-nine years later, the lord returned to face the lens—as a small sculpture, for his second sitting. The first plate was silver; the second print is platinum. Sitter and photographer have long since changed places, yet 'the precious art of keeping our parents' likenesses a hundred years hence' carries on.

To be honest, I photographed it because its skin was beautiful. Nine and a half millennia ago, someone at Uenohara rounded the clay, rolled a cord across it, and gave it to the fire. That surface has been drinking time ever since, and it still glows, faintly moist. Platinum printing has always been the portraitist's beloved process, the one that renders skin most richly—so let this be a portrait: of a skin that keeps the finger-marks of a maker whose name did not survive. Standards of beauty change with every age, they say. But what is still beautiful after nine and a half thousand years is, simply, beautiful.

○ is the shape of things that curl. A sleeping cat approaches a perfect circle; a black hole is the most perfect roundness in the universe, releasing no light that strays too near. Deep inside the Liquid Universe pillars, too, a black hole bends the background light into a slow spiral. Nine and a half millennia ago at Uenohara, someone rolled clay into a sphere with an open mouth and fired it—the first gravity that would not let go of what fell in. A pot, in other words, is a portable black hole; a black hole, a pot that cannot be carried. A cat will curl up on the rim of either.

In 1559, carpenters repairing Kōriyama Hachiman Shrine carved a murmur into a beam: the head priest was so stingy that not once did he serve us shōchū—how utterly vexing. It is the oldest written record of the word shōchū in Japan. A grudge over an unpoured drink, saved to wood, is still perfectly readable five hundred years on—no server required; a pillar was enough. The murmur is now re-saved in platinum, for a thousand years more. And to those carpenters, four and a half centuries late: at this exhibition's banquet, the shōchū is served.

In June 2026 I climbed Takachiho-no-mine. At the summit, the Ama-no-Sakahoko—the spear said to mark the heavenly descent—really was thrust into the rock: not a blade adorning heaven and earth, but a single pin fastening myth to ground. And look again: it resembles a mushroom—beneath the soil, the mycelium of myth runs the length of the country, and only here, at this summit, has a fruiting body popped up. I fixed its likeness in platinum, the most permanent process photography knows. The spear has pinned the myth to the mountain for a thousand years; the platinum will pin the spear to paper for a thousand more. Two millennia, held together by pins.

The potter at Uenohara, 10,600 years ago, is unmistakably me. Archaeology will not admit it, but the wet plate does. Since not a single potter's name survives from the Jōmon age, no one can disprove that it was me all along.

While the Divine Kid packs for the move home, someone must house-sit by the pillar. House-sitting is the job of keeping a house from counting as empty. A human filling in, for a while, for an absent god—come to think of it, civilization may always have been that job.

At the Paris Exposition of 1867, the Satsuma domain famously exhibited on its own, apart from the shogunate—the origin of Japanese pavilion politics. As one who built a pavilion 158 years later, the least I could do was call and pay my respects.

On the seventeenth day of the ninth month of Ansei 4—1857—inside Kagoshima Castle, Lord Shimazu Nariakira was fixed onto a silvered plate by his own retainers: the first photograph of a Japanese subject taken by Japanese hands. Having come all the way to the scene, 169 years early, it seemed a waste not to ask—so I had mine taken right after his. Japanese photography begins with the lord's plate. That the second one was me is a fact history has somehow failed to record.

The Vienna Exposition of 1873, Japan's first official world's fair—duly sightseen. The print artists of the day depicted it without going; I photographed it without going. Thus are traditions kept.

Osaka again—this time, the descent. A world's fair is a festival in which the future briefly comes down to earth: the most recent format of tenson kōrin. What descends must eventually head home; we spent six months rehearsing exactly that.

Osaka, October 2025: the day 'Farewell, Homo Sapiens' was finally said. This one actually happened—though burned into a wet plate, it wears the same face as the fabrications. Nothing looks more invented, in hindsight, than a farewell.

This one is true. In June 2026, at Seppetobe, the rice-planting festival of Hioki, I went into the paddy with the white-robed young men and leapt with all my might. The evidence: this plate, and the smell of mud that took days to wash out. It also proves that the truth photographs less believably than the fabrications.

LED strips run through the museum elevator, in the manner of a gaming PC. Every gamer knows: when the lights flow rainbow, performance is unchanged, yet somehow you feel stronger. So it is with this elevator. The cab's specs remain the same—but as the machine in charge of going up and coming down, in an exhibition about descent and return, it had better glow like this. The only work in the show you can actually ride. Two buttons, down and up—which one you press is between you and the Divine Kid.

The mesmerizing beauty of the vivid blue wings of the Morpho butterfly, constantly transforming as they catch the light, symbolizes the very nature of dreams—capturing the inherent uncertainty and ephemerality of dreaming itself. The expression of dreams "unraveling" into butterflies mirrors a Digital Nature worldview, in which boundaries dissolve, allowing matter and imagery to fluidly intermingle and continuously oscillate. Dreams never possess a fixed form; instead, like butterflies in gentle flight, they drift effortlessly between reality and illusion, eternally being born and dissolving within the observer's mind. In this artwork, "blue dreams" are fragments of the viewer’s own desires and memories, given tangible form through the fluttering of butterfly wings, transcending into visual and bodily experiences. Thus, viewers simultaneously witness the materialization and dematerialization of dreams, immersing themselves in the profound poetry that emerges between the physical and spiritual realms.

This piece by Yoichi Ochiai explores the concept of "object-oriented" thinking within the realm of "Digital Nature." The Object-Oriented Bodhisattva serves as a unique artistic representation of the fusion between the digital world and the natural world, providing a fresh perspective on understanding the entirety of nature and life. Designed to complement the central figure of the Dainichi Nyorai in the mandala, the Object-Oriented Bodhisattva represents an existence that defines and functions through the object-oriented approach, connecting the material and immaterial worlds.

The spherical object on the head of the Bodhisattva is inspired by the Mani wheel and represents a structurally organized being based on object-oriented principles. The Object-Oriented Bodhisattva transcends diverse calculation methods and existence, bringing harmony by bridging the gap between the material and immaterial worlds. In the context of Digital Nature, the Object-Oriented Bodhisattva plays a role in spreading the wisdom and compassion of digital nature, opening people's hearts and minds.

Born from textual data prompts, this piece went through a transformation from 2D to 3D before being sculpted by a CNC machine from Karimoku Furniture. The final wood carving was masterfully crafted by Ito, a skilled artisan from Hida.

There are several versions of the scattered focus window, but this one first appeared at Media Ambition Tokyo 2019. Originally, it was a motif embedded in the wall of the "Beauty of Natural Resolution ∽ End to End Transformation of Material Things ∽ Digital Nature" exhibition (2018). Fresnel lenses are cut out from various places, scattering the focus. This motif is inherited in the exterior of the "Null-an" (2024). I think it pairs well with tatami mats.

On September 16, 2023, at Kusakabe Mingei Museum in Hida-Takayama, the Eye-Opening Ceremony for the Object-Oriented Bodhisattva was conducted by Rev. Jun-ei Nakata of Daigo-ji Temple. Originating from AI and algorithms and materialized through Hida woodcarving craftsmanship, the artwork was elevated into a religious being through formal Shingon Buddhist rites. As the mantra “Form is emptiness, emptiness is form” , “Form is null, null is form” echoed, technology merged with traditional spirituality, and matter with information, marking a new syncretic landmark within digital nature.

Levitation is a mystical phenomenon. The act of suspending matter in midair under the force of gravity evokes a departure from the natural order. For this reason, levitation has been incorporated into numerous illusions and magical performances, captivating audiences with its enigma. On a stage, levitation may appear as the magician's arcane power—but when no human intervention is perceived, levitation forcibly reminds the viewer of their own corporeality. This is because the contrast between the viewer's body bound by gravity and an object freed from it reflexively intensifies awareness of one's own body.

"Levitrope," a media apparatus named from the coined term derived from "lev(itation)" and "trope (rotation)," is a device where a metallic sphere is magnetically suspended and continuously rotates like a wheel, capturing its surrounding landscape upon its spherical surface. In the age of Edison, rotating images allowed humans to successfully extract a substantial world from nature. Through this device that continuously rotates an appearance containing physical substance, I wish to consider media installations in the age of digital nature. When the sense of levitation's unreality disappears, only the video-like appearance remains. The high-resolution brilliance emitted by the mirror, the beauty of diffused light in the low-resolution sky and clouds reflected in it—this anti-gravitational moving mirror sculpture cuts out the sansuimei (mountain-water clarity) landscape, a technium of mirrors that extracts the scenery.

He continues his quest for materials and images. Morpho butterflies shining blue are floating against the skyline of Tokyo and the sky. The material image that is dimly projected on the surface of the soap film is represented by the diffusion state and the light of the projector obtained by vibrating the transparent thin film by ultrasonic vibration.

A physical and imperfect but organically glowing image of a Phalaenopsis. Since a transparent thin film such as a soap film transmits light, it cannot project an image. Ultrasonic waves diffuse the light at high speed. This work is based on the material fragility that disappears when touched and the peculiarity that it is drawn only on the place where ultrasonic vibration and light meet on a thin film less than 1 micrometer in thickness.

Rethinking the media of sound and light as the image, the search for a more physical image expression. Media that spans reflection and light, low resolution and high resolution, liquid and solid, transparent and diffuse, material and image. Aesthetic sense of Yugen and Akira Yamashimizu. Our media consciousness, which finds beauty in the gap between high resolution and low resolution, is subtle and certain, and it continues from the Heian period. I want a vivid expression made of ephemeral things.

As a symbol of Shinto-Buddhist syncretism orchestrated by the Divine Null, the "Triangular-Rimmed Sacred Mirror with One Buddha, Five Ayu Fish, and Eight Eels" stands prominently. This shrine is an installation specially created for this exhibition, and indeed serves as an actual place of worship. Centered around the shrine, the new work "Null Phantom Resonance I" emits AI-generated soundscapes that mingle and drift with natural sounds.

The sacred mirror, serving as the Divine Null's object of worship, was unveiled at last year's "Digital Nature from null to null" exhibition. It has now become a deity of Shinto-Buddhist syncretism, derived from the concept of the "Object-Oriented Bodhisattva" also featured in this exhibition. The motif of "One Buddha" represents the concept of "Null = Emptiness." The "Five Ayu Fish" symbolize the episodes of Empress Jingū in the Nihon Shoki and the rituals of the Imperial Palace. The "Eight Eels" combine elements reminiscent of the Yamata no Orochi (the eight-headed serpent) with eels and physical program codes, intricately carved together.

The shape of the Triangular-Rimmed Sacred Mirror is a contemporary reinterpretation of ancient sacred beast mirrors, brought to life with modern digital technology. A prototype was created using 3D computer graphics, materialized through 3D printing, and, after forming a sand mold, cast by the Yamamoto Alloy Foundry.

If Amenominakanushi-no-Kami, who appears at the beginning of the Kojiki, is the primordial deity of the universe, then perhaps the "Divine Null" can be considered the primordial deity of Digital Nature. Just as Amenominakanushi-no-Kami possesses no explicit functions, the Divine Null also lacks specific attributes. Yet, it is precisely this "undefinedness" that serves as the wellspring of all possibilities.

The pebbles arranged around the shrine originally symbolize water. In my worldview, waves and their sources symbolize "Null" or "Emptiness." They evoke a sense of the transient passage of time woven by these natural elements and Digital Nature. Visitors are invited to sharpen their ears and, along with the sounds permeating the space, surrender themselves to the scenery before them, experiencing a fluid sense of time.

Ayu and eels, gods and Buddhas— which shall I choose? As the Divine Null dictates.

The goshintai of the Digital Nature Shrine is, in proper Shinto fashion, a mirror: the One Buddha, Five Ayu, Eight Eels Triangular-Edged Mirror, which reflects gods, buddhas, and fish all as equals. But just as Ōmiwa Shrine looks up to its sacred mountain behind the worship hall, a shrine wants a mountain at its back. What rises behind this one is a flowing Liquid Universe—not a sacred mountain, but a mountain of sacred pixels. An LED pixel is far larger, and far fewer, than a liquid-crystal one: there may not be eight million rooms here, but each god gets a much larger suite. Among lodgings for gods, too, there are capsule hotels and ryokan. The Null God keeps no fixed form, so the mountain transmutes moment by moment, never the same twice. A different mountain at every visit—which also means, at every visit, the right one.

"Null-null" embodies the fluid essence of Digital Nature, perpetually shifting between existence and non-existence. In this work, this elusive "null-null" is solidified through platinum prints, becoming fixed in material form. As subtle gradations and textures beyond mere vision permeate the print, viewers witness for the first time how the abstract notion of "null" acquires mass, quietly merging into physical reality. This piece visually and tactilely represents the core concept of the null² pavilion—the dissolution of existential boundaries.

Capturing the essence of a landscape and continually transforming it like a prayer wheel. In this exhibition, the motif is transformed into "Intersecting Time-Spaces," "Transformation Process of Silver-Mouthed Fish," "Cyclic Emotions," and "Cyclic Ethereal Spheres." Through these transformations, the visitor experiences the dynamic nature of art within temporal and spatial dimensions.

Digital Nature began, in 2015, as a premonition: that any sufficiently developed computation would become indistinguishable from nature. Ten years on, things have moved along—far beyond telling them apart, computation and matter now circulate and generate each other as one nature. Which is why, in this hall, fireflies and LEDs share a musical score, earthenware and displays keep the same slow time, and a god and a language model dwell in the same black telephone. Which is nature, and which is computation? The question itself has grown old. Jinen, an old reading of the word nature, means that which is so of itself—what happens without anyone designing it. That is exactly what these ten years have been. And so the newest thought has been mounted as a hanging scroll and packed in with the household goods for the move. Thought, too, is a household good.