Ryuta Aoki

Artist / Artistic Director

Ryuta Aoki

Current Positions

  • VOLOCITEE Inc., Founder & CEO
  • METACITY, Co-Founder & Artistic Director
  • Mucha-Kucha Inc., Co-Founder & Executive Director
  • ArtHackDay.jp, Founder & Artistic Director
  • The TEA-ROOM, Co-Founder & Artistic Director
  • ALTERNATIVE MACHINE Inc., Co-Founder
  • ALIFE Lab., Co-Founder
  • Salzburg Global Seminar, Fellow
  • MOTION GALLERY, Fellow

Contact

[email protected]
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Profile

Ryuta Aoki is a Tokyo-based Japanese artist and artistic director. Through large-scale installations and the collectives and communities he gathers, he intervenes in the invisible structures that shape society and opens spaces where another world can take hold. Bio Sculpture received the Social Impact Award (Minister of Education Prize) at the 25th Japan Media Arts Festival. He was selected for the inaugural cohort of WAN: Art & Tech Creators Global Network (Japan Arts Council) and for the Ethereum Foundation's first artist scholarship (Devcon 7 Scholars Program). His work has been presented at the National Asia Culture Center (South Korea), 21_21 DESIGN SIGHT, DESIGNART, MUTEK.JP, and Science Gallery Melbourne (Australia), among others. He founded Art Hack Day, Japan's first art hackathon, and launched Japan's first TEDxKids. He has also served as Creative Producer of the Japan Media Arts Distributed Museum, Artistic Director of the exhibition Jack into the Noösphere, and Director of the international conference ALIFE 2018.

Biography

Born in Tokyo, Aoki grew up largely outside the formal education system. Amid frequent moves, he spent his late teens in Australia and New Zealand. He taught himself to program and, in 2000, co-founded a tech startup in Japan, working over the following decade as an engineer and then as a director at startups specialising in embedded systems and high-performance computing. In 2011 he launched Japan's first TEDxKids, running it with more than 100 volunteers. In 2014 he initiated Art Hack Day, Japan's first art hackathon, giving rise to more than 70 artist collectives — many of which went on to be invited to art festivals in Japan and abroad, with some receiving the Excellence Prize at the Japan Media Arts Festival. In 2016 he co-founded the artist collective The TEA-ROOM and ALIFE Lab., a community of artificial-life researchers. In 2018 he co-founded ALTERNATIVE MACHINE, a research-driven company applying artificial-life research to society, and launched METACITY, a research collective exploring possible urban futures. That same year he served as Director of ALIFE 2018, the first international conference on artificial life following the merger of European and American academic societies. In 2019 he co-founded Mucha-Kucha Inc. with members of The TEA-ROOM.

Recent works include the Alternative Computations series (2026–, Quantum Art Festival Special Exhibition, Spiral Garden, Tokyo), which sculpts the cosmologies of vernacular computing cultures using quantum computers; Simulated Consensus (2024, National Asia Culture Center, South Korea), in which AI agents simulate approximately 100,000 virtual voters to interrogate the assumptions underlying democracy; the SOTOROJI series (2020–), which summons the spiritual threshold of the tea garden through tens of thousands to over 130,000 QR codes; Artificial Moons (2020), projecting artificial moonlight trembling to the rhythms of the three-body problem onto a 150-metre building, inaugurating the rituals of a fictional city within the play of chance; the Bio Sculpture series (2021–), using a massive soil 3D printer extendable to 30 metres to bring three-dimensional wetland environments into being within the city; and the ANH series (2019–), acoustic ecosystems of digital agents evolving through genetic algorithms.

As a curator, Aoki served as Creative Producer for Japan Media Arts Distributed Museum (Agency for Cultural Affairs, 2020) and as Artistic Director of the exhibition Jack into the Noösphere at Chiba City's inaugural art festival (2021). In 2022 he contributed to the conceptual design of the international art festival succeeding the Japan Media Arts Festival, which for a quarter century had been a cornerstone of media art in Japan and abroad.

Awards and fellowships include the Social Impact Award (Minister of Education Prize) at the 25th Japan Media Arts Festival, Art Division (2022) — the first awarded to a Japanese group; ACC CREATORS Residency (National Asia Culture Center, South Korea, 2024); Devcon 7 Scholars Program (Ethereum Foundation, 2024); and WAN: Art & Tech Creators Global Network (Japan Arts Council, 2025).

Artist Statement

As a child, after hours of music videos, I once watched a pink piano drift slowly across the living-room ceiling. Since then I have known the wall between the real and the imagined is thinner than the world insists. I grew up in Tokyo, moving from place to place, and each place had its own kuuki — a pressure no one names yet everyone obeys, deciding who falls silent, who acts first, and, larger still, what is even allowed to exist. The world we have is only one of countless worlds that could have come to pass, yet it wears the face of the one and only reality.

So I do not argue that the world could be otherwise. I build a working piece of another world and set it down where you can walk around it. There has never been only one way to compute a world — the ancient, the vernacular, the buried — and the one in charge calls the others error and throws them out. I take a discarded one and build it back until it runs. I prepare the conditions, then let what I did not place arrive.

Curriculum Vitae

CV PDF ↓ Portfolio PDF ↓

Solo Exhibitions

  • 2026 Alternative Computations — Worlds Otherwise Calculated, Quantum Art Festival Special Exhibition, Japan
  • 2020 Exhibition: Multi-Layered City Makuhari, Chiba City, Japan

Group Exhibitions

  • 2026 EMERGENCE[Y], Science Gallery Melbourne, Australia
  • 2024 AI · Human · Multiverse, National Asia Culture Center, South Korea
  • Trusting the Unseen, Ethereum Foundation, Thailand
  • Reframing Exhibition, DESIGNART 2024, Tokyo, Japan
  • 2022 25th Japan Media Arts Festival Exhibition of Award-winning Works, Agency for Cultural Affairs, Japan
  • 2021 2121 Futures In-Sight, 21_21 DESIGN SIGHT, Japan
  • Ars Electronica 2021 Garden Tokyo, Online
  • Chiba City Festival of Arts, Japan
  • ART for SDGs: Kitakyushu Art Festival Imagining Our Future, Kitakyushu City, Japan
  • 2020 Next World ExhiVision x 23rd Japan Media Arts Festival, Agency for Cultural Affairs, Japan
  • Japan Media Arts Distributed Museum, Agency for Cultural Affairs, Japan
  • 2019 MUTEK.jp 2019, Japan

Commissions / Collections

  • 2026 SOTOROJI #6, DENSO Advanced Research and Innovation Center, Japan
  • SOTOROJI #5, DENSO Advanced Research and Innovation Center, Japan
  • 2025 SOTOROJI #4, DENSO Advanced Research and Innovation Center, Japan
  • 2021 Bio Sculpture, Kitakyushu City, KIGS, Japan

Awards / Fellowships / Residencies

A = Awards / F = Fellowship / S = Scholarship / R = Residency / H = Honorary Mention

  • 2025 F WAN: Art & Tech Creators Global Network (Agency for Cultural Affairs, New York, USA)
  • 2024 S Devcon 7 Scholars Program Artists and Writers Cohort (Ethereum Foundation, Bangkok, Thailand)
  • R ACC CREATORS Residency 2024 (Asia Culture Center, Gwangju, South Korea)
  • F Curatorial Research Program (Lithuanian Culture Institute, Vilnius/Kaunas, Lithuania)
  • 2023 F MOTION GALLERY
  • 2022 A 25th Japan Media Arts Festival, Art Division, Social Impact Prize — Bio Sculpture
  • 2021 A WIRED Creative Hack Award 2021, Public Prize — Bio Sculpture
  • H WIRED Creative Hack Award 2021, Finalist — Artificial Moons
  • 2017 F Salzburg Global Seminar
  • 2015 H Great TEDx Stage Design — TEDxKids@Chiyoda
  • 2012 H Best Practice of TEDx — TEDxKids@Chiyoda
  • H Best Stage Design of TEDx — TEDxKids@Chiyoda

Curatorial Projects

E = Exhibition / P = Performance / C = Concept Design / A = Award

  • 2026 E Alternative Computations — Worlds Otherwise Calculated (Quantum Art Festival | 29 Jan - 1 Feb)
  • 2025 P STACK TOKYO (WPÜ HOTEL | 11 Sep)
  • 2024 E Reframing — Official Exhibition of DESIGNART 2024 (DESIGNART | 18–27 Oct)
  • 2022 C Basic concept design for the international festival & ecosystem that will succeed the Japan Media Arts Festival (Agency for Cultural Affairs | Sep 2022 – Mar 2023)
  • 2021 E Exhibition: Jack into the Noösphere — Chiba City Festival of Arts (Chiba City | Jul – Aug)
  • 2020 E Exhibition: Multi-Layered City Makuhari (Chiba City | Dec 2020 – Jan 2021)
  • E Japan Media Arts Distributed Museum — airport editions: Centrair / Naha / Fukuoka (Agency for Cultural Affairs | Feb–Mar)
  • 2018 A ALIFE Art Award 2018 (Miraikan | 14 May – 25 Jul)
  • E ALIFE Art Award Exhibition "Being There" (ALIFE 2018 | Jul)
  • P Shipboard Tea Ceremony (Mar)
  • E Art Hack Day Exhibition 2018 "Being There" (Miraikan | Mar)
  • 2016 E Art Hack Day Exhibition 2016 "Technology as Organism" (Nov)
  • P Glowing Tea Ceremony (Sanrio Puroland | Oct)
  • P Sound Tea Ceremony (TAICOCLUB | Jun)
  • 2015 E 3331α Art Hack Day Exhibition 2015 (3331 Arts Chiyoda | Sep)
  • 2014 E Art Hack Night 2014 (Loftwork | Sep)
  • E 3331α Art Hack Day Exhibition 2014 (3331 Arts Chiyoda | Sep)
  • 2012 E Exhibition: Design to Change the World — Trans Arts Tokyo (3331 Arts Chiyoda | Sep – Oct)

Conferences & Workshops

C = Conference / W = Workshop / SF = Sci-Fi Prototyping

  • 2024 SF Sci-Fi Manga Design Research for Quantum Computing
  • C Creative Futurists Initiative (University of Tokyo | 22 Feb)
  • 2021 SF Civic Vision Sci-Fi Workshop
  • 2020 C Exhibition: Multi-Layered City Makuhari (DOMMUNE | 30 Dec)
  • 2019 W Future+Design for ALIFE research Vol.2
  • SF Sci-Fi Manga Design Research for ALIFE research
  • C METACITY CONFERENCE 2019 (Makuhari Messe | 18 – 19 Jan)
  • 2018 C International Conference ALIFE 2018 (Miraikan | 23 Jul)
  • W ALIFE for Kids | Future Biology for kids
  • W Art Hack Day 2018
  • W Future+Design for ALIFE research Vol.1
  • 2017 W Kogei (Craft) Hackathon
  • C Generative Ethics and Society (University of Tokyo | 13 May)
  • SF School for ALIFE
  • 2016 W 3331α Art Hack Day 2016
  • C COI 2021 Conference (Youth Education National Olympics Memorial Youth Center | 29 – 30 Jan)
  • 2015 W KENPOKU Art Hack Day — a social programme of KENPOKU ART
  • W LED Bulb Speaker Ideathon
  • W 3331α Art Hack Day 2015
  • 2014 C TEDxKids@Chiyoda 2014 (3331 Arts Chiyoda | 30 Nov)
  • W 3331α Art Hack Day 2014
  • 2013 C TEDxKids@Chiyoda 2013 (3331 Arts Chiyoda | 4 Nov)
  • 2012 C TEDxKids@Chiyoda 2012 (3331 Arts Chiyoda | 28 Oct)
  • 2011 C TEDxKids@Tokyo 2011 (CARATO71 | 1 Oct)
  • 2010 C TEDxTokyo yz 2010 Theater (Timeout Cafe | 17 Nov)

Research Projects

C = Collaborative / D = Development

  • 2020–2021 C New Rousseau Machine R&D (MIT Media Lab City Science Group + METACITY)
  • 2019–2022 C Bio Sculpture R&D (Keio University SFC Hiroya Tanaka Lab + METACITY)
  • C Acoustic Niche Hypothesis R&D (ISID + ALIFE Lab)
  • 2019–2020 D Software for android Alter 3 (ALTERNATIVE MACHINE)
  • 2018–2021 C Research on Flourishing Mind (JT + ALTERNATIVE MACHINE)
  • 2018 C Prototype House Becomes Family (LIFULL + VUILD + ALTERNATIVE MACHINE)
  • 2017–2020 D ALIFE Engine — generative dynamics engine (ALTERNATIVE MACHINE)
  • 2017–2018 C Citizen-cooperative distributed logistics (DENSO + ALTERNATIVE MACHINE)

Venues & Spaces

  • 2018–2021 Nausicaä House — Co-working hub (Shibuya, Tokyo)
  • 2016–2017 Life Space UX Showroom, Sony Building Ginza (Chuo-ku, Tokyo)
  • 2015–2017 3331α Studio — production & event space (Chiyoda, Tokyo)

Publications

S = Scientific Paper / B = Book / A = Article

Talks & Lectures

T = Talk / L = Lecture / W = Workshop

Press

B = Book / C = Catalog / M = Magazine / P = Newspaper / R = Radio / T = TV / V = Video / W = Web

Jury & Advisory

J = Jury / A = Advisor / Am = Ambassador

Professional Experience

  • 2025– Reappointed Executive Director, Mucha-Kucha Inc.
  • 2023– MOTION GALLERY Fellow
  • 2021–2024 Councilor, Tonakaima Research Society
  • 2020– Co-founder & Director, METACITY Council (nonprofit)
  • 2019–2021 Co-founder & Executive Director, Mucha-Kucha Inc.
  • 2019–2023 Co-founder & Director, ALIFE Lab. (nonprofit)
  • 2018–2020 Co-founder & Artistic Director, METACITY (collective incorporated 2020)
  • 2017–2020 Co-founder & CEO, ALTERNATIVE MACHINE Inc.
  • 2017 Salzburg Global Seminar Fellow
  • 2016–2019 Co-founder & Director, ALIFE Lab. (collective, incorporated 2019)
  • 2016– Co-founder & Artistic Director, The TEA-ROOM
  • 2014 Organised Japan's first art hackathon Art Hack Day
  • 2011 Organised Japan's first TEDxKids programme
  • 2011– Founder & CEO, VOLOCITEE Inc.
  • 2006–2011 Software Engineer / Director, Fixstars Corporation
  • 2002–2006 Software Engineer, Zentek Technology Japan
  • 1999–2002 Co-founder & Executive Director, Hash System Inc.