Machine Love

As artificial intelligence continues to shape and challenge the structure of daily life and the boundary between the virtual and physical grows ever more fluid, artists are navigating new terrain. The exhibition MACHINE LOVE, open in the Mori Art Museum in Tokyo until June 8, emerges at this threshold, tracing how digital tools like game engines, AI, and virtual reality are not only transforming creative processes but also prompting urgent reflections on identity, ethics, and the future of human expression. These technologies, which surged further into mainstream use during the COVID-19 pandemic, are now being embraced by artists to both critique and reimagine the world we live in.

The exhibition presents around fifty works that span disciplines and mediums, from AI-generated imagery to immersive installations and interactive game environments. Many of these pieces explore how digital forms can give rise to new ways of seeing and being — fluid identities, synthetic landscapes, and narratives that move beyond conventional frameworks. Whether touching on environmental collapse, history, or emotional memory, the artworks collectively suggest that the digital realm is no longer a mirror of reality but a new kind of canvas for human experience.

Artists featured in MACHINE LOVE come from a wide range of backgrounds and include internationally recognised names such as Lu Yang, Hsu Chia-Wei, and Kim Ayoung, many of whom have been awarded major prizes in media and contemporary art. The exhibition invites viewers to engage with responsive, interactive works that dissolve the separation between observer and artwork. In this shared space, the tactile and the virtual merge, offering a sense of presence that is bodily and disembodied, familiar and uncanny. It’s not just about watching technology unfold but finding your own place within this network.

The title MACHINE LOVE itself poses a philosophical question: can a machine feel? And if not, can it still express something that moves us? Here, “machine” doesn’t recall the industrial apparatus of the past but refers to the living, computing systems of today: networks, algorithms, and data flows. “Love” becomes a stand-in for all the intense emotions that humans project onto and receive from machines. It also gestures toward a possible future, one where technology isn’t just a tool but a partner in creativity. By staging encounters between human emotion and mechanical logic, the exhibition invites us to imagine what kind of empathy might emerge in a world where the artificial becomes deeply intimate.