Co-creating Cultures for the Future Week
The Future of Storytelling and Embodiment: When Entertainment Becomes Traditional Culture
Shape New World Initiative
Hypothesis of the Future in 2050: A future where body augmentation technology transforms our stories into traditional culture.
When does entertainment become culture? When considering cultural co-creation for the future, it is important to consider what the differences are between the entertainment that continues to be created today and the culture that has been handed down from generation to generation. In this programme, we would like to deepen our understanding of the future to cultural co-creation on the subject of ‘embodiment.
Discussion
- Cultural arts
- Music
- Manga and anime
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Agenda2025
Co-created Programme
- * Programme times and content are subject to change. Any changes will be announced on this website and via the ticket booking system.
- Time and
Date of
the event -
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2025.04.29[Tue]
10:30 ～ 12:30
(Venue Open 10:00)
-
- Venue
- Theme Weeks Studio
Programme details
Media have served as an extension of our bodies, recording stories. Before the development of media, stories were recorded in books and passed down orally, and became part of traditional culture. From the perspective of recording these stories, how do entertainment and traditional culture differ? In this programme, we will invite contemporary dancer, virtual singer and other professionals, as well as researchers in media and animation, and virtual beings. Together with them, we will clarify the differences between entertainment and traditional culture, the moment when stories are recorded with embodiment, and the ‘process of co-creating culture’ in 2050 brought about by body augmentation technology.
Cast
Moderator
Hiroshi Sakuma
Specially Appointed Researcher at the Social Solutions Initiative, Osaka University, Head of the Shape New World Initiative
Born in 1996. Mr. Sakuma has been engaged in the research on the new form of communication using avatars and agents at Osaka University. At Expo 2025 Osaka, Kansai, Japan, he is in charge of the exhibition "Future Virtual Being" as a director of Osaka Pavilion. He is also a principal investigator of the research on the design of future societies, a joint research project between Osaka University and the Japan Science and Technology Agency. In addition to his current position as a chairperson of Shape New World Committee, Osaka Chamber of Commerce and Industry and he is also a member of Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of Japan. In 2021, he was appointed as a team leader for a research study on the Moonshot Research and Development Program. He was selected as one of the Forbes 30 Under 30 Japan 2023 and is a recipient of the Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology Award of the Japan Open Innovation Prize.
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Speakers
RIM
Virtual Singer, KAMITSUBAKI STUDIO
A girl with mysterious eyes who likes Japanese songs, English songs, and Korean songs. A next-generation virtual singer with the possibility of crossing genres and national borders, with a strange singing voice in which transparency and luster coexist.
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Joseph Lee
Artistic Director, Unlock Dancing Plaza (HK)
Joseph Lee is a choreographer, performer, and performance curator based in Hong Kong. Lee graduated from the Chinese University of Hong Kong and The Place, London Contemporary Dance School and was appointed as the Artistic Director of Unlock Dancing Plaza in 2022. Lee’s curatorial work focuses on the unheralded aspects of the local contemporary dance culture, such as the production, archive, and dissemination of knowledge in the creative process, the dialogue between cross-cultural contexts and cross-artistic mediums, such as residency-based dance festivals #DANCELESS complex, and Unlock Body Lab: Open Research Week of the co-learning platform, etc., in an attempt to broaden the creation perspective on the body as the main medium. His recent curatorial project #DANCELESS complex 2026 attempts to create a translocal network for contemporary performance within Asia Pacific to raise the visibility and sustainability of the artists in this region. Lee is active in creating works around pop culture, queer body, physical labor, and the overlap and gap between dance and its images. Lee’s choreographic works have been toured in the UK, Germany, Japan, Australia, South Korea, Shanghai, and Beijing, and his video works has been selected and screened at prestigious experimental film festival such as EXiS in Seoul, Image Forum Festival in Japan and South Taiwan Film Festival and so on. Lee is the recipient of the Award for Young Artist presented by the Hong Kong Arts Development Council in 2017.
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Christopher Taylor
Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Department of Comparative Thought and Literature, Johns Hopkins University
Prior to his postdoctoral appointment at The Department of Comparative Thought and Literature, Chris was a Blakemore Freeman Fellow in 2020-2021, a Japan Society for the Promotion of Science visiting research fellow at the University of Tokyo in 2021-2022, and, most recently, an AGHI graduate research fellow in 2023-2024. Chris completed his PhD in Comparative Thought and Literature with a certificate in film and media at Johns Hopkins University and holds a BA in Philosophy from Yale University. His current project investigates the production of novel concepts of artificial humanity—human-constructed humans—and animacy in 20th-century Japan. His comparative research interests focus on the history and theory of animated media (broadly conceived) in relation to modernism, visual culture, world cinema, and the history of technology.
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Co-creating Cultures for the Future Week
The Future of Storytelling and Embodiment: When Entertainment Becomes Traditional Culture
Hypothesis of the Future in 2050: A future where body augmentation technology transforms our stories into traditional culture.
When does entertainment become culture? When considering cultural co-creation for the future, it is important to consider what the differences are between the entertainment that continues to be created today and the culture that has been handed down from generation to generation. In this programme, we would like to deepen our understanding of the future to cultural co-creation on the subject of ‘embodiment.
-
2025.04.29[Tue]
10:30～12:30
(Venue Open 10:00)
- Theme Weeks Studio
- * Programme times and content are subject to change. Any changes will be announced on this website and via the ticket booking system.
OTHER PROGRAM
Co-creating Cultures for the Future Week
