Daito Manabe's First Major Overseas Solo Exhibition "RELATIONAL TIME" (Taichung City Museum of Fine Arts) Report: A World That Changes with Each Visit, Created by AI and Artificial Brains
Daito Manabe's first major overseas solo exhibition "RELATIONAL TIME" is on view at Taichung City Museum of Fine Arts, featuring AI and artificial brains that create a different world with each visit.Summary
Daito Manabe's first major overseas solo exhibition, "RELATIONAL TIME - Life Beyond Simulation," has opened at the Taichung City Museum of Fine Arts in Taiwan, running until January 3, 2027. The exhibition features new works tailored to each of the museum's three galleries, dealing with different materials such as artificial life, groups of AI agents, and the neural circuits of fruit flies, with each room revealing a different appearance on every visit. Born in Tokyo in 1976, Manabe studied mathematics at university while starting programming and DJing. He later studied music and acoustic design at IAMAS, where he met Motoi Ishibashi, with whom he would collaborate for years. In 2006, he founded Rhizomatiks, and has since worked across pop culture and cutting-edge technology, including collaborations with Ryuichi Sakamoto, Perfume, and Björk, as well as the Tokyo handover ceremony at the Rio de Janeiro Olympics closing ceremony. The curator of the exhibition is Joel Kwong, program director of the Microwave International New Media Arts Festival in Hong Kong, who encountered Manabe's experimental videos online early in her career and has followed his work since. The title "RELATIONAL TIME - Life Beyond Simulation" reflects the contrast between machines simulating thousands of futures per second and humans taking time to build trust and memory, with the idea that relationships are formed over time serving as the foundation of the entire exhibition. Manabe states: "In an era where generative AI is rapidly reshaping intelligence and creativity, artists face unprecedented questions. However, the human body and nervous system live on a completely different timescale from computer processing. This exhibition is not about dissolving human perception into the speed of machines. It aims to let our neural rhythms and computational logic interact while preserving their differences." The venue, Taichung City Museum of Fine Arts, is located within the mixed-use complex "Taichung Green Museumbrary" designed by SANAA. The galleries have ceiling heights ranging from 4 to 10 meters, and all sound systems for the works were brought from Japan. Teams from Japan, Hong Kong, and Taiwan have coordinated technical aspects, incorporating the architectural space itself as part of the exhibition.
(Source：Tokyo Art Beat)