{"articles":{"data":[{"attributes":{"slug":"in-conversation-with-emi-kusano-on-melancholic-magical-maiden","title":"In Conversation with Emi Kusano on Melancholic Magical Maiden","author":"Jordan Kantor","content":"

Emi Kusano is a multidisciplinary artist based in Tokyo, Japan. She employs AI to merge past and future aesthetics, challenging our perceptions of art and technology. She holds a degree in Environment and Information Studies from Keio University, Tokyo, Japan and is a part-time Lecturer at Tokyo University of the Arts.

Jordan Kantor: Hi there, Emi. It's great to speak with you. Before we get into talking about your debut Art Blocks project Melancholic Magical Maiden, I am hoping you can share a bit about your personal journey and creative history. How did you first get into making art?

Emi Kusano: I was raised by artist parents and always believed I'd become an artist as well. However, seeing their struggles, I gave up on going to art school and instead chose to attend a university to study business and design. Still, I always found joy in creating things: I was a street photographer in high school and formed a band called “Satellite Young” in college, dressing as an '80s idol and singing about modern tech.

\"Satellite-young_album — *Satellite Young* (サテライトヤング, *Sateraito Yangu*) debut studio album released on April 5, 2017.

JK: Wow. I am sure there are folks who will want to look up your career as a pop star! How did you then channel that creative drive into the digital realm, and how did you discover the blockchain as a medium for art?

EK: I became aware of the blockchain in 2021, and it was a revelation that expanded my artistic horizons. The pandemic was pivotal, and, one of the silver linings was to unveil the potential of digital art for me. It came about kind of by happenstance when my eight-year-old son Zombie Zoo Keeper created an artwork that went viral after well known people (like Steve Aoki) bought it. This introduced me to a new network of artists, builders, and collectors worldwide. In 2022, I co-founded a web3 anime studio called “Shinsei Galverse,” that was focused on making iconic anime. Over the last year or so, I’ve deeply delved into post-photography using generative AI.

\"synthetic — Emi Kusano, *Synthetic Reflection #3*, 2023.

Around the same time, I developed an interest in coding art and began Melancholic Magical Maiden with the creative coder Sayo towards the end of 2022, taking over a year to release. I’ve learned a lot from working in this space, and thanks to collector support have been able to engage full time in creative endeavors. I am really drawn to the interdisciplinary, cross-sector nature of this space, which can draw in participants from entertainment, art, fashion, and more to innovate using the blockchain. This synergistic element of the blockchain resonates with me deeply.

\"493000000.gif\" — Emi Kusano, *Melancholic Magical Maiden #0,* 2024. Live view.

JK: The radical interdisciplinarity of your approach to working on the blockchain is apparent, and super exciting. Can you talk a bit about how your creative process has evolved, and how Melancholic Magical Maiden fits in?

EK: Technically, generative AI has reshaped my creative process. I’ve produced numerous AI-based works, and in collaboration with Sayo, we’ve efficiently learned to use this tool to realize our vision in post-photographic works, music, videos and installations. From an artistic standpoint, a through line in all of this is my interest in addressing Japanese culture and identity and I seek to portray the depth and complexity of our culture, which I think can often be overshadowed by its pop culture image. Melancholic Magical Maiden marks my creative coding debut, and the process was profoundly intricate. Figuring out how to embed meaning and my narrative into code was fascinating. The project has taken over a year, undergone 28 revisions (!), and incorporated a lot of valuable feedback from many more veteran artists in this space. Honestly, there’s still endless scope for improvement. In terms of subject matter, Melancholic Magical Maiden deconstructs elements of 1990s Japanese animation, exploring themes of femininity and societal pressures within these narratives. Specifically, it tackles how the “magical girl” genre, in which young heroines battle using magical powers, has continually evolved. It is complicated though, for while it has provided empowerment, it has also occasionally perpetuated gender stereotypes.

\"493000001.gif\" — Emi Kusano, *Melancholic Magical Maiden #1,* 2024. Live view.

JK: It is really interesting how your examination of these themes has moved across your work in music, AI, and now generative art. In terms of this project, what should collectors look for in the series as it is revealed? And Is there anything specific you’d like to share that would help viewers approach and appreciate your work?

EK: I hope they enjoy each piece’s nostalgic aesthetics in their simplicity. The color palette is reminiscent of the 1990s, and I’d be delighted if they appreciate the animation’s movements. Really, I just encourage an open mind and curiosity. I hope viewers might research some of the references and relate them to themselves. Also, I am intending to invest proceeds back into further expansion of the project and plan to make installations and physical works.

JK: Are there any recent accomplishments you’d like to share?

EK: 2023 was the turning point of my art career. I participated in a Christie’s x Gucci auction in collaboration with Claire Silver and toured with Bright Moments. I’m honored to exhibit my project “Neural Fad: AI dreams Nostalgia” at the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Contemporary Art until early March 2024. This spring, I’m excited to have a solo exhibition at Expanded Art in Berlin.

JK: I am sure folks will want to keep up to date with all these things and more. What is the best way for people to follow your work?

EK: Sure. People can follow me on Twitter: @emikusano, Instagram: @emiksn, and subscribe on Deca for notifications on new releases.

JK: Thank you so much for bringing Melancholic Magical Maiden to Art Blocks, Emi. We are looking forward to seeing the project unfold on February 28, 2024.

Top image: Tomofumi Usa, Portrait of Emi Kusano.

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Ben Kovach is an artist who focuses on building emergent generative work with a natural feel. He lives in Burlington, VT with his wife and two-year-old daughter. I had a chance to chat with Ben about his background in generative art in advance of his upcoming Art Blocks project Edifice.

Jeff Davis: Hi Ben! It’s great to speak with you. How did you first get into making art?

Ben Kovach: I’ve been drawing since I was a kid. My dad used to have a stack of books about drawing—I remember flipping through those a bunch when I was very young. As a teenager, art took over my life as I had some amazing teachers who really pushed me to express myself creatively. During that time, I primarily focused on pen drawings and paintings. Interestingly, most of my work around that time was either highly chaotic or followed some sort of rule I self-imposed. For example, I made a series of portraits in pen and ink that were drawn using only horizontal and vertical lines. I also dove into digital art around that time, playing with fractal generating programs and making abstract visuals in Photoshop. I went to college for an art degree but quickly pivoted to computer science and math as I found my early art courses uninspiring and creatively draining.

\"Manufactured — Ben Kovach, *Manufactured Turbulence*, 2020.

JD: That’s really interesting that you moved from art towards math and computers. I was actually the opposite as an undergraduate, starting with math and eventually pursuing art. So when did you bring art back into the equation to start pursuing generative art?

BK: I’ve had an interest in procedural generation for years. I have built lots of little projects like a Conway’s Game of Life simulation and a Julia Set visualizer before putting a name to what I was doing. What really kicked it off was seeing Tyler Hobbs talk at Strange Loop in September 2017. Some of his work looked hand-drawn to me, and this had my head spinning. I didn’t know algorithmic art could look so natural, and I had to try it. I spent the flight home setting up my Processing environment, then made one generative sketch per day in October. I called this Digital Inktober and started posting on Twitter. People seemed to respond well to these sketches, so I kept going. Nothing amazing came out of it, but that month of work gave me a solid foundation on which to build. I remember some people being impressed with some flow field work I posted on Reddit and thinking “okay, maybe I’m onto something.” Not long after, I started moderating the generative subreddit with Aaron Penne and Tyler and some other folks. Just living in that world. It was a lot of fun.

JD: Then how did you discover NFTs and crypto art?

BK: The first NFT project I remember hearing about was CryptoKitties. I never really got into it, but I thought the idea was pretty cool. I started taking crypto art more seriously when a bunch of artists I knew began posting on hic et nunc. The way I’ve always sold work is through 1/1 prints, and that was going okay, so I kind of ignored it and stuck to prints for a while. Eventually one of my friends directly reached out and told me I should mint some of my work just to see what happened. That was my Luminary series, which I minted in August. The experience of selling an NFT immediately felt like a more natural fit for my work than 1/1 prints. Soon after, I discovered Art Blocks and artists like DEAFBEEF doing creative things with code on-chain and I haven’t stopped thinking about it since.

\"Luminary, — Ben Kovach, *Luminary*, 2021.

JD: How would you say your creative practice has grown over time?

BK: This is a tough one. I guess I’d say that I now spend much more time with my work before calling it complete. Early on, I’d come up with a quick sketch, post it around, and move onto something new. Over time, I started spending much more time with other artwork, books, and research papers. Generally slowing my pace a bit. For Edifice, I bought a bunch of heavy body acrylic paints and spent several evenings just playing with them for the sole purpose of finding colors to sample for palettes. That sort of slower, methodical approach to art making has become more commonplace in my work as I’ve gotten deeper into it.

\"Good — Ben Kovach, *Good Night*, 2018.

JD: Any recent accomplishments you’d like to share?

BK: My artistic effort has been laser focused on Edifice for the last several months, so I don’t have a ton of recent artwork related accomplishments to share from that time span. Minting Edifice #0 is a monumental achievement for me, and I’m very proud of that. I’m also proud of my writing and StrangeLoop talk from 2018 “A Box of Chaos.” I find knowledge sharing very difficult but equally rewarding.

JD: Alright, well let’s get into Edifice! What was your inspiration for the project?

BK: I have a vague recollection of watching one of those demo videos from SIGGRAPH or something showing a simulation of a ball flying through the air and tearing through some cloth. I wanted to emulate this process, but in a generative work. The result of this initial exploration was my piece Good Night in 2018, which has this industrial feeling that I immediately fell in love with. I’ve used this algorithm in several pieces since then, but I knew there was so much more I could do with it. Art Blocks was the perfect opportunity to stretch the system to its limits using all the tools I’ve built up over the past four years, and I think I’ve done that.

JD: What should collectors look for in your Art Blocks project as the series is revealed?

BK: The core algorithm produces these little explosions in a lattice—the way those are laid out has an emergent effect at the micro level, so keep a close eye on the details. Some of my favorite results appear minimalistic at first glance, but harbor small details that I think are really special. I highly recommend viewing the output in as large a size, and as dense a screen, as possible. Additionally, there are some color scheme variants that are not tracked as features. These can have dramatic influence on the work as a whole, especially depending on how much symmetry the piece has. I enjoy watching the pieces animate, particularly when there is no symmetry involved. Pay close attention to this and you may catch a glimpse at the algorithm driving the work. Edifice is a highly variable system, and even though I have generated tens of thousands of works-in-progress pre-release, I am consistently surprised by some of the outputs. If viewers find something in a piece that surprises them, I would love to hear about it.

JD: That’s awesome. Yeah, I’m really looking forward to seeing everything that comes out of the minter. Is there anything else you’d like to share to help people better understand your art?

BK: Most of what I do has some grounding in the analog world. I use physical simulations a lot. I don’t typically gravitate towards pure geometric work, but prefer to try to emulate the natural inconsistencies of the real world. For that reason, I’ve always put a lot of emphasis on detail work in my art. I always encourage people to view my work in as large a resolution as possible, because those details are what define it. I lean heavily on texture and try to make sure that things look good even viewed in large sizes, screen or print. I have written a few articles about my workflow and general thoughts on generative work as well. You can read What Makes Generative Art Hard and A Story of Iteration—Generating Blotch on my website. I plan to write a deep dive essay on the Edifice algorithm after the drop to give everyone a shared understanding of the intricacies of the work.

JD: And what’s the best way for people to follow your work?

I can be found on Twitter, that is probably the best way. Additionally, I have a website where I host my portfolio and occasionally write about generative art. You can subscribe to my mailing list there, which I send updates through infrequently. I occasionally mint 1/1 NFTs on Foundation as well.

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Leo Villareal is an NYC-based artist who makes light sculptures with computational elements. He is represented by Pace Gallery and is known for creating large-scale, site-specific artworks such as The Bay Lights in San Francisco and Illuminated River in London. Villareal’s work is in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., the Brooklyn Museum of Art, and the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, New York, among others. I had the privilege of speaking with Leo about his distinguished artistic career and his upcoming Art Blocks project Cosmic Reef.

Jeff Davis: I’m a long-time admirer of your work, so it’s great to have an opportunity to speak with you about your background. How did you first get into making art?

Leo Villareal: I took my first installation sculpture class in college and realized I wanted to be an artist. Previously I had been designing sets and studying Art History. The idea that I could create an environment with light, sound, and video was fascinating to me. After college, I saw the work of James Turrell and Dan Flavin. I realized art could be much more stripped down than I had previously considered.

JD: What drew you to incorporate technology into your artwork?

LV: My dad gave me an Apple II+ when I was 13, and I grew up with an awareness of computers. I graduated from college in 1990, the same year Adobe Photoshop was launched. There was also a lot of buzz about virtual reality even then. These new tools intrigued me and led me to the Interactive Telecommunications Program at NYU where I deeply immersed myself in all sorts of tech. I always knew I wanted to use these tools as an artist. It took me many years to find my medium. In 1997 I connected software and light for the first time. I created a beacon with 16 strobe lights that I programmed with a Basic Stamp microcontroller. Zero was off and one was on. What started as a simple wayfinding device turned out to be a major epiphany. The combination of software, light, and space crystalized into what then became my medium.

\"Leo — Leo Villareal, *Supercluster*, 2003.

JD: That’s great, I had an Apple IIe growing up, and it definitely planted the seed for my technology curiosity as well. After that realization, how did your creative practice evolve?

LV: I established my studio in New York City in 1998. I started having studio visits which lead to group shows then solo shows. In 2003, I had a chance to do my first public artwork, Supercluster on the scaffolding covering the facade of MoMA PS1 in Long Island City. It was thrilling to make a work that the public could interact and respond to. This represented the start of my work in site specific public art. I have really enjoyed working with architects and urban planners on ways of activating space. My work that utilizes NFTs represents yet another shift. I look forward to connecting with a new audience in a way that has not been previously possible. Having a way of distributing purely digital work is incredibly exciting and opens up all sorts of possibilities.

JD: Yes, it’s been a pleasure to be able to connect with you at various events these last few months. Do you have any recent accomplishments you’d like to share?

LV: In 2013, I launched The Bay Lights in San Francisco which added 25,000 white LED nodes to the 1.8 mile long western span of the bridge. In 2021, I completed nine bridges in London over the Thames for a project called Illuminated River. It’s challenging to work on monumental city scaled projects but well worth it when I think about the hundreds of millions of people who will see and interact with these artworks.

JD: Those are truly monumental works, which is what makes us so excited for your Art Blocks project. What was the inspiration behind Cosmic Reef?

LV: My Art Blocks project grew organically. It started out with a lot of learning about what’s possible in a browser and a deep dive into Three.js. We started with the simplest of forms—spheres—and began to see what was possible in animating these forms. I am inspired by things I see in nature. I am always thinking about what underlying structures are at work. How can I make patterns that simulate the ripple of waves or the colors of a sunset? I am very intrigued by how very complex things can actually be described with a very simple program. I am also interested in the universal human responses to such systems. For Cosmic Reef, I wanted to create a completely new artwork made specifically for the format that Art Blocks has developed. We started by creating simple geometry and then applying motion, distortion, feedback, and color. Then we began layering these systems together to create more complex structures. There is an elegance and simplicity to the code and what’s exciting is the rich and vibrant results it produces.

\"Leo — Leo Villareal, *Cosmic Reef*, 2022.

JD: What should collectors look for in your project as the series is revealed?

LV: I hope that collectors will see the range and diversity in each iteration of Cosmic Reef. They are each their own system. We added a feature by which a collector can press the Z key and experience a journey through the geometry. Each work in the series has its own personality. Some are more subtle and minimal with a slow and meditative pace. Others are bursting with energy and evoke the moment of creation. In my mind they represent an open-ended creation myth. There are forms that could exist in the cosmos and others have a distinctly aquatic vibe. We saw a photo that the Hubble Space Telescope sent back called Cosmic Reef, and it all made sense.

JD: I love the Z interaction, being able to dive into the middle of the structure. And now I need to see what the Hubble Cosmic Reef looks like. Is there anything else you’d like to share to help people better understand your art?

LV: I really like the open-ended nature of abstraction and how it allows for highly subjective responses in viewers. I find it refreshing to not see an image or text and for a work to be able to maintain a sense of mystery. There are cues that suggest things we might recognize in nature, but they are not specific. My work is also about time and a constant evolution and change. There is no beginning, middle, or end. Just a constant flow that a viewer can engage with or not, completely on their terms.

JD: Well, it’s been an honor to get to know you better. What’s the best way for people to follow your work moving forward?

LV: You can follow online at cosmicreef.io—where we have links to our Discord server as well as Twitter and Instagram. In the physical realm, I am having two exhibitions with Pace Gallery this year, one in Palm Beach in March and another in Geneva in the fall.

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Episode 69

Originally released: 27 December 2022.

Art Blocks After Dinner Mints with Harvey Rayner.

About After Dinner Mints

In this series, the Art Blocks team interviews leading figures in the generative art community.

Watch more After Dinner Mints episodes here.

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