Daito Manabe: RELATIONAL TIME—Life Beyond Simulation

Taichung Art Museum (TcAM) presents RELATIONAL TIME – Life Beyond Simulation, a solo exhibition by Japanese media artist Daito Manabe. Globally recognized for his signature technology development for the Tokyo Handover Ceremony at the Closing Ceremony of the Rio 2016 Olympic Games and collaborations with Ryuichi Sakamoto and Björk, the artist presents newly created works tailored for TcAM. The exhibition’s sound systems were shipped from Japan.

Curated by Joel Kwong, Programme Director of Hong Kong’s Microwave International New Media Arts Festival, RELATIONAL TIME explores a profound paradox. While machines can simulate many possible futures in a second, humans require time to build trust and memory. The exhibition asks how relationships take shape through duration. Exploring how bodily perception, human-machine interaction, and autonomous agent systems operate across distinct temporal rhythms, the exhibition prompts viewers to consider how time is generated through relationships. Driven by visitor movements in Exhibition Rooms B and C, the evolving works weave architectural space, real-time computation, image, sound, and light into an immersive ecosystem of unrepeatable moments.

Discussing the conceptual foundation of the exhibition, Daito Manabe noted: “In an era where generative AI rapidly reshapes intelligence and creativity, artists face unprecedented questions. Yet, the human body and nervous system inhabit temporal scales distinctly different from computational processing. This exhibition is not about merging human perception with machine speed, but about allowing our neural rhythms and computational logic to interact while preserving their differences.” 

Curator Joel Kwong added: “Synthesizing over two decades of Manabe’s pioneering exploration—from physiological signal processing to multi-agent artificial life—the exhibition transforms the rooms into a living, breathing field, inviting the public to become active participants in this immersive, evolving world.”

Reflecting on the milestone collaboration, Lai, Yi-Hsin, Director of TcAM, highlights the achievement of calibrating these complex works within the museum’s towering 4-to-10-meter spaces, reinforcing TcAM’s mission to connect local culture with global art discourse.

Three environments, three temporal scales
The new works explore different temporal scales—from human bodily perception and computational systems to memory—forming three ever-shifting worlds. Together, they reveal how time operates across perception, computation, and creation, turning artworks into ongoing processes generated through time.

Room A presents an artificial-life world in which individuals are born, move, and pass through successive generations. Wall and floor projections and spatial sound present records of this world alongside dialogue among AI agents. The material shown during opening hours is calculated and produced in advance. Further computation and audiovisual production take place after closing, allowing visitors to encounter a world shaped during the hours when they were absent. 

Room B brings visitors into a shared virtual environment. Their positions and movements—including approaching, pausing, and moving through the room—affect imagery on three walls and spatial sound in real time. AI-authored visual code and dialogue shape the ways this environment responds. At the venue, the agent process is staged using material prepared in advance; visitors participate through their immediate interaction with the audiovisual world. The work connects the time of bodily response with the longer process through which its conditions of expression develop. 

Room C feeds visitors’ positions into a modified model of fly vision. The resulting neural activity becomes visible on a central four-sided display and audible throughout the room, with sound and light distributed across 24 overhead positions. The model’s circuitry is updated in response to visitor behaviour: pathways that carry more signals become more likely to carry signals again. These changes accumulate over the course of the exhibition, influencing subsequent audiovisual responses. Through a model of perception different from our own, visitors encounter how earlier activity can shape what happens next.