Since 2005, Ueda Maki has explored the intersection of scent and art, creating works that use smell and becoming a pioneering figure in the field of olfactory art. Since 2009, she has taught at institutions around the world including the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague, nurturing a new generation of olfactory artists. Nominated five consecutive times for the Sadakichi Award for Experimental Work with Scent at the Art and Olfaction Awards―an international hallmark of olfactory art―and winner of the award in 2022, Ueda is also a recipient of the Commissioner for Cultural Affairs Award 2024. Currently based on the island of Ishigaki, she runs an olfactory art laboratory engaging in education and tourism while exhibiting and running workshops around the world.

Doi Itsuki pursues research on synchrony in social groups. His artistic practice explores means of understanding the unique experiences and feelings of others, including artificial systems, from their own standpoints. His major exhibitions include ALTERNATIVE MACHINE (2021, WHITEHOUSE, Tokyo), I Forgot How to Look at the Ocean (2022, JINNAN HOUSE, Tokyo), MONAURALS (2023, WHITEHOUSE, Tokyo), and Harsh Listening (2025, LESSAYA, Tokyo). His music releases include Peeling Blue (CD, 2017).

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Born in 1992, Yamauchi Shota completed graduate studies in new media at Tokyo University of the Arts. He explores the relationship between the self and the world as well as the cracks that open up in reality and fantasy. In addition to moving image, sculpture, and performance, his transmedia practice has recently encompassed installations that use smell.

Kishi Yuma reinterprets AI as alien intelligence and proposes the emergent relationship between humans and AI as an alien subjectivity, which he explores through paintings, sculptures, and installations created in collaboration with an AI that he developed himself. Since 2023, the AI model MaryGPT has curated almost all of his work. Kishi’s exhibitions include the solo show Oracle Womb (2025, √K Contemporary, Tokyo) and the group show DXP2 (2024, 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa). His awards include the short list for the CAF Award 2024. He is the author of Creating with the Unknown: On the Alien Encounter between Humans and AI (2025, Seibundo Shinkosha).

Fujishima Sacco works at the intersection of art, games, and social issues, using painting and interactive media to examine our relationship with contemporary society in multifaceted ways. In her major work WRONG HERO, she employs RPG-like structures to challenge stereotypes around gender and social roles, drawing viewers into a critically engaged experience as players. In Virtual Demo, voices are gathered in virtual space and enacted as real-world “events,” unsettling the boundary between virtual and physical realities, and prompting new forms of viewer agency and participation.