Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo / December 9, 2023 - March 3, 2024
Neural Fad : AI dreams Nostalgia
Overview
Emi Kusano's exploration into AI and digital fashion is being showcased at Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo, one of Japan's leading public museums, located in the first-floor foyer and the basement exhibition room. This showcase, part of the MOT Annual Extra related activities, is supported by the Nippon Television Imaginarium Awards, where she served as a juror. The showcase is available for viewing from December 9th to March 3rd.
Theme
Neural Fad : AI dreams Nostalgia
"Neural Fad: AI Dreams Nostalgia" is a showcase that explores the relentless exponential evolution of technology and the cyclical nature of fashion trends. Kusano approaches the fashion cultures she references and various global subcultures as a form of “color,” delving into the unknown potentials of generative art. This display features digital fashion and visual works, along with portraits from the non-existent subculture of “Neural Fad,” all co-created with AI. These pieces, developed from extensive data and models, sometimes hack into human biases to emerge into being.
Neural Fad (2023)
Neural Fad reimagines Tokyo street fashion history to examine the relationship between AI and memory.
In post-war Japan, distinctive magazines and television cultivated an aspirational youth culture that gave rise to unique fashion subcultures at different train stations around Tokyo. Inspired by the rebellious spirit of each generation and their projections towards an imagined future, Kusano produces records of subcultures that never actually existed.
Reimagining the rich vocabulary and history of Tokyo street fashion through AI, the collection takes the viewer across and beyond the post-war decades of Japanese fashion history — from the Moga and Mobo of the 1940s to the Japanese hippies known as the Fūten Tribe, the Karasu Tribe of the 90s and the Gyaru and Decora fashion of the late 90s and early 2000 — to present Tokyo street fashion as imagined beyond time.
Through this collaboration between AI and Japanese street fashion archives that she herself contributed to as a street photographer of Harajuku fashion, Kusano uses emerging technologies to offer a retro-futuristic intervention into the landscape of Tokyo street fashion.
Supported by Callback
Morphing Memory of Neural Fad #2 (2023)
This work features numerous photographs of somewhat familiar yet strange sceneries. Displayed are fictional street snapshots made by generative AI. The series of images reexamines the relationship between AI and human memory by evoking our feeling of nostalgia through AI creations.
Video director/technical assistance: Kanji Kyoda
Supported by PROOF
Shinjitai -Emi Kusano x Claire Silver for Gucci (2023)
Our protagonist:
A neo-classic--bold, discerning, and unafraid of the strange beauty of the new. She is a bohemian cyberpunk with an obsession for Grace Kelly and mecha anime, effortlessly gliding through the neon Harajuku night. Deliberate, delicate, powerful, optimistic. Her mind is sharp. Her heart is young. Her step is sure.
Gucci's history is a blooming vine of global innovation. New materials and movements found their home again and again in Gucci's hands. In honor, the artists varied mediums to create this wearable art.
Shijitai was digitally hand-sculpted and textured with AI-Collaborative art, combining advanced mathematics and aesthetics of ancient paintings and tapestries. Disassembled to purest form--shapes and colors--it was then arranged as abstract collage, glowing and dancing over the fabric. A laborious process, this is a love-letter. It’s intended to reflect the sophistication of experience, the innocence of youth, the depth of tradition, and the light of the future.
Glitched Reflection (2023)
Glitched Reflection, featured in the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo’s Annual extra exhibition, epitomizes a new elegance emerging from human-AI collaboration. Drawing inspiration from Emi Kusano’s work for WWD Japan, it uses pixelated light to convey how glitches can redefine beauty, merging harmony and discord.
Its voluminous, translucent silhouette blends seamlessly with the movement of the body, while futuristic metallic wings add an unreal dimension. This piece evokes a fusion of technology and fashion, provoking a visual and conceptual reflection essential in our contemporary world
Supported by DRAUP, ZERO10
Thank you to our sponsors
Dates:
Venue:
Admission:
Info:
December 9, 2023 (Sat) - March 3, 2024 (Sun)
*The exhibition period differs from MOT Annual 2023.
Atrium, Foyer, etc., B2F of the Exhibition Hall
Free
https://www.mot-art-museum.jp/en/exhibitions/mot-annual-2023/