The work is organised into four strands — ongoing lines of inquiry, each gathering individual works and series.

Strand 01

Alternative Computations

2026– · 2 works

Drawing on vernacular cultures of calculation to open up other ways of seeing in a world increasingly standardised by efficiency and optimisation.

Contemporary computation has developed alongside efficiency, standardisation, and optimisation, allowing different places and cultures to be translated into common measures. In the process, ways of calculating rooted in particular cultures—and the ways of seeing embedded within them—have increasingly been displaced.

Treating calculation not as a neutral tool but as a way of perceiving the world, these works bring vernacular cultures of calculation into contact with contemporary technologies to ask what other worlds might come into view.

Alternative Computations — Worlds Otherwise Calculated
Alternative Computations — Worlds Otherwise Calculated, 2026
Phantom Realities
Phantom Realities, 2026

Strand 02

Technology for Multi-Species

2019– · 5 works

Opening technologies developed for humans to other forms of life, making room for them to shape the environments they inhabit.

Much of what we call technology has been developed for human needs, desires, and convenience. But what might technology become if humans were no longer its only beneficiaries? Rather than controlling nature or steering it towards predetermined outcomes, these works explore how technology might create conditions in which other forms of life can act within and shape the environments they inhabit.

Instead of using technology to design life, they ask how it might make room for life to participate in the making of the world itself.

Bio Sculpture (Scene of a Future Boutique)
Hiroya Tanaka Lab + METACITY Bio Sculpture (Scene of a Future Boutique), 2022
Bio Sculpture (Scene of a Future Portable Lab)
Hiroya Tanaka Lab + METACITY Bio Sculpture (Scene of a Future Portable Lab), 2021
Bio Sculpture
Hiroya Tanaka Lab + METACITY Bio Sculpture, 2021
ANH-01
ALTERNATIVE MACHINE ANH-01, 2021
ANH-00
ALTERNATIVE MACHINE ANH-00, 2019

Strand 03

Consensus Machines

2021– · 3 works

Questioning the assumption that a collective decision represents the will of the group.

When a group needs to make a shared decision, the outcomes of voting, majority rule, consensus-building, and other processes are often accepted as the will of the group. Once accepted, such decisions can become policies, rules, or agreements that bind organisations, communities, and those within them.

Yet outcomes can change depending on how choices are framed or aggregated, while the mechanisms themselves often go unquestioned. Emerging computational technologies can go further, allowing those who design the process to shape the conditions of decision-making—sometimes without participants being aware of it—and influence how outcomes take form.

Simulated Consensus
Simulated Consensus, 2024
New Rousseau Machine (Kyoto Mounting Edition)
METACITY New Rousseau Machine (Kyoto Mounting Edition), 2021
New Rousseau Machine
METACITY New Rousseau Machine, 2021

Strand 04

Mechanisms of Fiction

2020– · 7 works

Exploring how shared contexts and fictions can bring a world into being through a few words, objects, gestures, or rituals.

Cultures have ways of sharing complex meanings and worlds without explaining everything in words. A few words, objects, gestures, or rituals can evoke something far larger by connecting to shared memories, symbols, stories, and conventions—allowing even what is not physically present to become real within a shared world.

Drawing on mechanisms of fiction found in practices such as mitate and ritual, these works extract structures embedded in culture and explore how they might operate through different technologies and across different contexts and times.

SOTOROJI #3
The TEA-ROOM SOTOROJI #3, 2024
SOTOROJI #2
The TEA-ROOM SOTOROJI #2, 2024
SOTOROJI #1
The TEA-ROOM SOTOROJI #1, 2021
Hello, Error!
The TEA-ROOM Hello, Error!, 2021
Artificial Moons
The TEA-ROOM + METACITY Artificial Moons, 2020
VOID SYSTEM
The TEA-ROOM VOID SYSTEM, 2020
SOTOROJI #0
The TEA-ROOM SOTOROJI #0, 2020