Dec 4 (Day 1) — I. Sound and Meaning: The Disconnect Between Evaluation and Meaning
At last, Gardens of Becoming has opened. Composed of four interconnected rooms, the installation functions as a system in which information circulates through the interplay of AI and human intervention. Within this environment, both the flowerbeds and texts are in a constant state of becoming. For details, please see the exhibition statement → [Link]
The garden is evaluated along two axes:
whether change is sustained, and whether imbalance emerges.
If circulation is active, the AI judges the state as Excellent.
When stagnation occurs, the status degrades through the following states:
Good → Caution → Bad → Critical.
When stagnation occurs, the status degrades through the following states:
Good → Caution → Bad → Critical.
The garden has no final or optimal state. Even a condition judged as Excellent, when sustained without transformation, is eventually interpreted by the AI as stagnation and reclassified downward.
On the first day, A-san, an adviser to the project, visited and walked through all four rooms.
In the Digital Room, the AI kept reporting “Good.”
In the Digital Room, the AI kept reporting “Good.”
A-san turned to me and asked, “Why does it keep saying ‘Good’?”
I replied, “If the roses in the Analog Room keep moving, it remains ‘Good.’ Perhaps someone has just rearranged the flowers.”
After observing the venue for a while, A-san noticed a quiet moment when visitors had left and the flowers had stopped moving. She then returned to the Digital Room and waited for the moment when the AI’s evaluation would fall to “Bad.”
Watching her, I came to realise something.
A shift toward Bad can be welcomed, even enjoyed, depending on the visitor.
It becomes something people want to observe or even something they intentionally trigger in order to disrupt the “stable good” the system tries to maintain. In other words, the AI’s “Bad” does not necessarily carry negative meaning for humans.
Whether Good or Bad, a state that remains unchanged becomes homogenised, and a desire to disrupt that sameness emerges on the human side. I call this Human Horsepower, my term for human creative agency in this exhibition.
In that moment, the evaluation is nothing more than sound. Meaning is not produced by the AI, but given afterward by the human observer. The moment of reinterpretation is metabolism, and a small sprout of creativity emerges.
A-san taught me, with her body and actions, what it means for evaluation and meaning to diverge:
the moment when humans give information a new perspective.
the moment when humans give information a new perspective.
Even on the very first day, delicate misalignments, small seedlings of creation, had already begun to appear.
(The garden remained mostly in Good.)
Dec 5 (Day 2) — II. The Spiral Logic and the Site’s Temporal Strata
A friend I hadn’t seen for a long time visited today.
After going through the exhibition on her own once, she walked through it again with me on a short guided tour. Watching her expressions as she moved through the work, I realised something: this exhibition is unmistakably a deeply site-specific work.
After going through the exhibition on her own once, she walked through it again with me on a short guided tour. Watching her expressions as she moved through the work, I realised something: this exhibition is unmistakably a deeply site-specific work.
The Ibaraki City Cultural Centre, where the installation is housed, was built in 1981 and is scheduled for demolition next year.
The third floor, where Garden of Becoming unfolds, was once a wedding hall; traces of that history still remain, the rose engravings by Kosuke Kimura in the lobby, and faint marks of chandeliers on the ceiling.
The third floor, where Garden of Becoming unfolds, was once a wedding hall; traces of that history still remain, the rose engravings by Kosuke Kimura in the lobby, and faint marks of chandeliers on the ceiling.
Whenever I felt uncertain during production, I often returned to this space and asked myself,
“What kind of landscape do I see here?”
“What kind of landscape do I see here?”
From this act of looking, the idea of using roses as a motif emerged - roses being the official flower of Ibaraki City. The method of layering printed voices of local residents across the walls of the Red Room also arose from the building’s temporal strata.
In many ways, the accumulated layers of time embedded in this architecture guided the growth of the work.
In many ways, the accumulated layers of time embedded in this architecture guided the growth of the work.
My work is multi-perspectival; it cannot be grasped in a single blow.
Viewers descend into it gradually, as if spiraling down a staircase.
I, too, descended through a spiral during the production process, encountering each voice gathered through interviews and each place, forming relationships with them one by one.
Viewers descend into it gradually, as if spiraling down a staircase.
I, too, descended through a spiral during the production process, encountering each voice gathered through interviews and each place, forming relationships with them one by one.
The depth of that spiral becomes the very stratification of the exhibition.
For visitors encountering the work without the processes behind it, the chain of thoughts that unfolded in my mind as A → B → C may appear scattered or disjointed.
While A, B, and C all underpin the work, some viewers may notice only A and C, others may engage deeply with B alone. There may also be those who encounter the work from a perspective I never imagined—a new and unexpected Z.
The curator U-san and programmer K-kun, too, are companions who descended this spiral with me,
moving from point to point, like crossing a set of monkey bars, as we made our way deeper into it together.
moving from point to point, like crossing a set of monkey bars, as we made our way deeper into it together.
Today I found myself reflecting on the boundary between what should be entrusted to the visitor’s Human Horsepower (their capacity to generate their own meaning), and what, as the artist, I ought to offer as guiding hints. Where does that line lie? How much should remain open, and how much should be shared?
These questions stayed with me as the garden continued drifting through its state of “Good,” resisting saturation and homogenisation.
(Garden status: Mostly “Good” throughout the day.)
Dec 6 (Day 3) — III. The Logic of Refusing Prompts and Trust in Human Horsepower
Today, O-san, whom I met during my residency in Katsurao Village in Fukushima, visited the exhibition.
After going through the entire exhibition once, she said, “I think I’ll go back to the Analog Room again.”
Her words directly confirmed a question that the programmer, K-san, and I had debated the night before.
“Some visitors stop in the Digital Room because they can’t grasp its meaning.
Should we add an AI prompt telling them, ‘Please return to the Analog Room and change the placement of the roses’?” In the end, we decided not to add such a prompt.
We wanted to trust in Human Horsepower—the capacity of people to interpret information, assign their own meaning, and choose their next action autonomously, rather than obeying an AI instruction.
That is why O-san’s self-directed statement, “Maybe I’ll go back” felt like a moment in which the philosophy of the installation was truly alive.
Later that night, at my sister’s invitation, I joined an online talk with N, an artist based in Vienna, and F, who runs a gallery in Kyoto.
I no longer remember the official topic, but it resonated unexpectedly with a conversation I had earlier that day with a friend, who spoke about forms of hate emerging across Europe. In my mind, this converged into the question of:
Where does the boundary of “diversity” lie?
Whom do we choose to include, and at what point do we begin to exclude?
Whom do we choose to include, and at what point do we begin to exclude?
When one attempts to open everything to everyone, homogenisation arises. It becomes another form of exclusion.
In the context of my exhibition, if I add too many AI hints or instructions, I risk narrowing the range of visitor experimentation and cutting off the unknown “Z-possibilities” that might have emerged.
That would be a suppression of diversity and an acceleration of homogenisation.
That would be a suppression of diversity and an acceleration of homogenisation.
Instead of forcing all groups (I, II, III) into one coherent whole, perhaps it is healthier for society if: some people move between I ↔ II, others between II ↔ III, allowing a new Group IV to appear by the people who can visit group II and share the knowledge from group I or III. Individuals remain loosely connected, forming a loose and flexible community.
This thought reminded me of a dialogue between mathematician Kiyoshi Oka and critic Hideo Kobayashi, and also philosopher Toshihiko Izutsu’s writings from the 1960s-70s, where they observed that Western dualistic diversity tends to collapse into uniformity.
My friend from the UK had shared similar reflections, suggesting that even within Europe, people are beginning to sense the limits of that model.
My friend from the UK had shared similar reflections, suggesting that even within Europe, people are beginning to sense the limits of that model.
(That day, the garden tended to shift frequently into the “Bad” zone.)
Dec 7 (Day 4) — IV. Saturation as 'Bad' and the Emergence of the Gardener
On this day I was away from the exhibition for about five hours due to a workshop.
When I returned, right before closing, T-san from the foundation told me,
“It’s been stuck on ‘bad’ for a while.”
When I returned, right before closing, T-san from the foundation told me,
“It’s been stuck on ‘bad’ for a while.”
The cause turned out to be saturation, too many roses (visitors) in the flowerbed.
Because the AI recognises only the colour and coordinates of the flowers, once the number increases beyond a certain point, even if someone moves them, the system no longer registers the shift as “change.”
Instead, it reads the situation as fixation and homogenisation, judging it as "Bad." Perhaps this was an oversight in the initial setup.
Because the AI recognises only the colour and coordinates of the flowers, once the number increases beyond a certain point, even if someone moves them, the system no longer registers the shift as “change.”
Instead, it reads the situation as fixation and homogenisation, judging it as "Bad." Perhaps this was an oversight in the initial setup.
Yet at the same time, what the AI labels as “Bad” or “Critical” is, in fact, a visible sign of information saturation, a state in which too much accumulates, slowing movement and reducing variation. In other words, it reveals the reality of systemic stagnation.
At that moment, I suddenly transformed from exhibition artist to Gardener.
I began thinning the flowers to reduce excess information and restart circulation.
There is no final goal in Gardens of Becoming.
The number of visitors and their actions continually shapes the garden, and even my own role shifts accordingly.
The number of visitors and their actions continually shapes the garden, and even my own role shifts accordingly.
What does this “gardener” correspond to in society? A moderator? An editor? Or perhaps a microorganism quietly tilling the soil beneath everything? Perhaps, in this space, everyone plays an equal role as “human” after all.
As I removed flowers, another thought came to me: perhaps recording the daily phenomena and the thinking that sprouts from them, might also function as part of the garden itself, from the perspective of an observer.
artist = action / gardener = adjustment of circulation / observer = record of emergent thought
A garden is precisely this structure of roles that continue to transform.
Later that day, there was one unforgettable arrangement.
Someone had gathered all the roses to the back of the bed, leaving only a single rose planted in the middle. Then the person disappeared like a nimble phantom. I imagined them slipping away like the protagonist of Kajii Motojirō’s Lemon, walking off briskly after placing that solitary rose.
Someone had gathered all the roses to the back of the bed, leaving only a single rose planted in the middle. Then the person disappeared like a nimble phantom. I imagined them slipping away like the protagonist of Kajii Motojirō’s Lemon, walking off briskly after placing that solitary rose.
Undeniably, it carried the trace of Human Horsepower.
(The state of the garden: prolonged “Critical.” → thinning conducted as Gardener.)