Born in Tokyo in 1990, Emi Kusano began her artistic journey as a street photographer in Harajuku as a teenager and had an exhibition at the V&A Museum.
A multidisciplinary artist exploring the intersection of retro-futurism and modern technological acceleration, her unique AI art has been featured on the cover of WWD Japan and in auctions at Christie’s and Gucci.
Internationally recognized, her work has been exhibited at venues such as the Saatchi Gallery and the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa, and is collected in more than a dozen countries around the world.
In addition to her visual art career, Kusano is the lead singer and self-producer for Satellite Young, a band that creatively reinterprets 80s J-POP styles through a modern, technology-driven sci-fi lens.
This innovative approach has garnered international recognition, including an appearance at SXSW 2017, and has extended their creativity to installations.
In her own words, she explains:
In my work, I explore the ephemerality of memory through the lens of retrofuturism, blending past visions of the future with today’s realities, an exploration born out of a fascination with the nostalgic appeal of vintage science fiction and the timeless aesthetic of pop culture from the 60s-90s.
Using artificial intelligence and a fusion of various mediums including photography, music, anime, digital fashion and installation, I create visual narratives that delve into the whimsical and sometimes melancholic interplay between memory and modernity. The choice of medium is integral to my exploration as it reflects the rapid technological advancement that is constantly shaping and reshaping our perception of the past and the future.
Inspired by Japanese animist beliefs, my work is also an ode to humanity’s evolving relationship with technology, an attempt to understand how our collective nostalgia, fueled by media and pop culture of the past, influences our expectations and reception of the technology that moves us forward.
On February 28, Kusano will release her latest work, Melancholy Magical Girl, curated by Art Blocks. According to the artist, Melancholy Magical Girl deconstructs the aesthetics of the "magical girl" genre in 90s anime, where girls with magical abilities usually use them through an ideal alter ego that they can transform into.
The Index Dutch Sale and Settlement will take place on February 28 from 10am to 11am Pacific Time for the 300-lot collection.
OpenSea: Can you tell us about your journey to becoming an AI artist?
Emi Kusano: I’m not good at drawing or programming, but I’ve always had a limitless desire to express myself, and discovering ChatGPT and the ability to “program” in natural language felt magical, and since the beginning of 2022 I’ve been creating daily prompts that led to my “Neural Fad” series on Bright Moments, inspired by my teenage years as a street photographer.
OpenSea: Can you tell us a little bit about how you incorporate AI into your artistic process, from conception to execution?
Emi Kusano: When creating post-production photography, I mainly generate work based on prompts. I describe the landscape of my imagination in detail in Japanese, translate it, and then feed it into the prompt. Sometimes, I mix images together to create something new. In "Pixelated Perception", I combined real post-production photography depicting scenes in Japan from the 1990s with pixelated patterns inspired by chemistry.
I also use AI for ideation, and in my coding project “Melancholy Magical Girl” I used images generated by Midjourney as reference to guide the creative coder.
My creative process has become more diverse with the advent of various AI tools, and I often seek help from ChatGPT when writing prompts.
OpenSea: Can you share with us how platforms like OpenSea have impacted your artistic trajectory and the opportunities they provide?
Emi Kusano: My first OpenSea series was my son’s 2021 pixel art series Zombie Zoo, which changed the trajectory of my career, connected me with collectors and artists around the world, and even led to a collaboration between animation studio Shinsei Galverse and collector Devin Mancuso.
OpenSea: What was the inspiration for your upcoming Art Blocks series, “Melancholy Magical Girl”? What themes or concepts can we expect to be explored in it?
Emi Kusano: This series has been a weekend project since late 2022, a fully on-chain work that blends Japanese anime aesthetics with satirical captions, fusing quotes from 90s Wonder Woman heroines with societal pressures on gender roles. It was my first foray into code-generated art, made possible with the support of creative programmer Yurika Sayo.
OpenSea: From your son’s discovery of OpenSea to co-founding the “Shinsei Galverse,” collaboration and community seem to be recurring themes in your career. How do these collaborations influence your artistic process and vision?
Emi Kusano: Collaboration is an integral part of my process and I’m passionate about building teams to realize ideas, whether it’s photography themes, music lyricists and singers, or communities for NFT projects, “Shinsei Galverse” and my current collaboration with programmers feels very much like collaboration with AI itself.
OpenSea: Your work often incorporates elements of fantasy and melancholy. What draws you to these themes? How do you incorporate them into AI-generated art?
Emi Kusano: I am fascinated by the complexity of things and the non-singularity of truth, the irreversible fact that we cannot go back to the past, and the reflection on the brevity of life and its inherent melancholy.
OpenSea: With the rise of NFT, people's interest in digital art has surged. How do you view the cross-development of AI art and NFT in the future? What opportunities and challenges does it bring to artists?
Emi Kusano: The rise of NFTs has enabled me, a Japanese artist, to hold exhibitions around the world and make a living from my art. The ability to show on a global scale and connect directly with the community has been transformative, however, the most important aspect remains creating high-quality work.
I explore various areas of digital art, from profile pictures (PFP) to post-production photography to generative art. I am fascinated by the fact that each area has its own unique community and culture that is slightly different from each other, similar to how artists participating in art fairs are different from those participating in biennials. My goal is to explore these different intersections of art from multiple perspectives.
Digital art, especially that involving artificial intelligence, often faces criticism for not being “real” art, yet history shows that what is initially rejected as art often becomes an important part of art history, a pattern that demonstrates how new technologies and modes of expression can challenge and expand the traditional boundaries of art.
Therefore, I firmly believe that I am at the forefront of contemporary art, and in my opinion, digital technology and blockchain help to expand the nature of art, opening up new possibilities and avenues for exploration.
OpenSea: Looking ahead, what are your aspirations for your future artistic career, both in terms of personal projects and the broader impact of the AI art world?
Emi Kusano: I aspire to create physical works and delve deeper into interactive and gaming art, maintaining my subject focus regardless of the medium, with my ultimate goal of leaving a lasting legacy and becoming a star in the art world.
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