
INTRO
An invisible thread connects the elusive, rapidly changing world of today to Hokusai’s prints—known as ukiyo-e, or «pictures of the floating world» — which celebrate hedonistic pursuits and have ancient roots in Buddhism. Initially, this term referred to the fleeting, impermanent nature of human life, set against the backdrop of a higher, timeless reality.
Hokusai once declared: «From the age of six, I had a passion for drawing — and by the time I was 70, I had mastered the art.» His life was defined by reinvention, curiosity, and a restless pursuit of artistic mastery. With over thirty pseudonyms adopted throughout his career, each marking a new chapter of exploration, Hokusai embodied transformation and the timeless ethos of embracing change. These values are at the core of AI Hokusai: The Legacy Encoded, a space where contemporary artists engage with Hokusai’s spirit through the lens of artificial intelligence.
This project is not a static homage but a dynamic exploration, where AI serves as a collaborator to reimagine tradition. The artists — working in media including video, digital art, sound, painting, printing and performance — use AI as both a partner and a tool.
During a three-month virtual residency hosted by the AI Hokusai project, artists developed personal projects, shared ideas, collaborated using AI tools, engaged in online lectures, and actively participated in discussions with curators and experts on AI and the future of creative processes.
Their works echo Hokusai’s fascination with impermanence, interconnectedness, and the boundless possibilities of artistic creation. They foster a conversation that bridges the historical with the contemporary, the human with the artificial.
The talented professionals at NADK. io worked with architects at Bechu & Associates to create an impressive virtual world inspired by Hokusai. Vincent Barué, Julien Barbier and Valentine Boesch designed the Mysterious Temple and Creative Castle, an ethereal realm that seamlessly expands the AI Hokusai project.
With a deep appreciation for tradition and innovation, the space mirrors the floating realms of Hokusai’s imagination. Rising nearly 40 meters high, the elegant glass structure creates a bridge between reality and the mystical, with interconnecting bridges and passages evoking traditional Japanese architecture. This virtual exhibition space, where architects extend their reach beyond the physical, reflects not only form but also emotion, time, and connection.
Each floor contains works by participating artists, creating a dynamic narrative that unfolds throughout the structure. Whether through digital installations, performances or soundscapes, these spaces allow for an immersive exploration of Hokusai’s legacy, reflecting the multiplicity of his work—his fascination with nature, movement, and impermanence—reinterpreted through contemporary mediums. Shrouded in serene gardens and tranquil lakes, it becomes a vessel for timeless exploration, uniting enigmatic folk traditions, the visionary genius of Hokusai and the profound mysticism that connects us all.
This space transcends boundaries, inspired by a commitment to contemporary creation and the preservation of intangible heritage. It offers a sanctuary where past and future converge, allowing artists to push the limits of creativity in an organic and transcendent environment.
ARTISTS

Katsushika Hokusai knew how to leave a legacy that remained intact over time. A triad composed of humanity, nature and time, where stability coexists with dynamism. Fundamental pillars of existence, explored through Humilis, Amirari and Sensus. Works that not only evoke the technical mastery of the Japanese artist, but reinterpret his ability to capture the essence of the ephemeral and the eternal in dialogue with our era, to continue his legacy.
The starting point of Humilis is Hokusai's obsession with the human figure, as seen in his series of anatomical studies. In this work, humanity is revealed in its vulnerability and movement, reflecting on humility, a reminder of our fragility in the face of time. Dynamism and introspection dialogue with the lines that Hokusai drew, taking exploration beyond the physical to the symbolic. With Amirari, amazement takes center stage. Inspired by Hokusai's series of birds and flowers, this work celebrates nature as a constant and sublime element. As in the master's woodcuts, each detail seeks to convey the interconnection of the living, underlining the stability of nature in the face of our impermanence.
Sensus immerses itself in the concept of time, inspired by Hokusai's ability to capture the ephemeral by combining all the elements that make up its formula: time, emotions, movement, stillness and present. This piece uses human emotions represented in a technological and dynamic flow, creating a bridge between the traditional past and a future driven by data and sensitivity. Thus, as Hokusai did, these works invite us to stop, observe and reflect on our position in the fabric of legacy: humanity as purpose, nature as constant and time as eternal witness.
Humilis – Admirari – Sensus
Used
Tools
ComfyUI | 3DAI Studio | Suno | Copilot | ChatGPT | OpenPose | StableDiffusion | Copilot | StreamDiffusion | DeepFace | TouchDesigner | Heartbeat Data Capture | Python | Kohya | Florence2 | MediaPipe


Sares
Argentina
Sares is a visionary digital artist whose work bridges the past and future, merging traditional aesthetics with cutting-edge technology to shape new forms of creative expression. Specializing in mixed media, Sares employs a variety of tools, including 3D modeling, artificial intelligence, and generative art techniques, to capture the chaotic essence of time. His goal is to transform passive viewing into immersive witnessing, inviting audiences to engage with his art on a deeply personal level. With more than a decade of experience in art direction, Sares has earned a reputation for his impactful pieces exhibited across the globe in iconic locations such as New York, Beeple Studios in South Carolina, China, Canada, Italy, London, and Madrid.
Each piece is layered with reflective messages centered on universal emotions and grounded in his lived experiences, exploring themes of identity, memory, and transformation. Through his work, Sares seeks not only to inspire change but also to challenge and break down digital barriers, pushing the boundaries of what art can achieve in a technologically driven world. His pieces offer viewers a moment to pause, reflect, and consider their own role in the ongoing evolution of art and society.
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Sone’s work delves into the intricate relationship between humans and nature, drawing inspiration from Hokusai’s profound reverence for the natural world. By integrating images of nature and mycelium elements, her choreography embodies the rhythms and patterns inherent in natural environments.
This connection facilitates a reflection on environmental themes, drawing parallels between the struggles depicted in Hokusai’s work and contemporary ecological challenges. The layers of meaning and cultural references present in Hokusai’s art are mirrored in Sone’s exploration of digital networks. By embedding these themes within choreography and AI-generated visuals, a dialogue is created that highlights the complexity of social issues, much like Hokusai achieved through his art. Through the fusion of dance and AI elements, the artist crafts narratives that raise awareness about the ethical implications of AI, environmentalism and warfare – echoing Hokusai’s method of conveying powerful messages through his prints.
This amalgamation fosters a rich dialogue between past and present, prompting contemplation on how cultural legacies endure and evolve in the digital age. As the project progresses, Sone aspires to maintain an open dialogue concerning the ethical implications of AI in art, the urgency of environmental issues, and the impact of digital networks on societal challenges. This ongoing discourse aims to enrich the work and invite audiences to engage critically with these multifaceted complexities.
Text to Nature's Voice
Used
Tools
Suno | Stable Audio | ChatGPT | Ableton (Max AI) | Modular Synth


Tomo Sone
Japan/USA
Tomo Sone is a choreographer blending artistic vision with scientific insight to create innovative, interdisciplinary dance works. Her MFA research focused on experimental choreography and AR technology, leading to internationally recognized dance films and solo performances.
Tomo's work spans stage productions, dance films, and workshops, where she aligns physical training with creative development. Her collaborations with animators, composers, and filmmakers often include original soundscapes, costumes, and scenography. She explores how digital technology intersects with the human body, aiming to foster empathy and social change through movement. Her performances have appeared at the Suzanne Dellal Center, Jerusalem Theatre, and Gdansk Dance Festival. In 2020, she was a finalist at Mexico's Festival Internacional de Danza Contemporánea.

Demons and Monsters is a digital mixed-media art project that reimagines the stories behind Katsushika Hokusai’s One Hundred Ghost Stories through the lens of artificial intelligence. Inspired by the ancient Japanese game Hyaku Monogatari, where people tell ghostly tales by candlelight, the project invites audiences to "play" alongside Hokusai, delving into the legends that shaped his iconic works.
The project reinterprets three stories — “The Mansion of the Plates” (Sara-yashiki), “Oiwa” (Oiwa-san), and “Kohada Koheiji” — by transferring their characters and narratives to modern-day Tokyo, with locations tied to Hokusai’s life. Each episode blends cinematic noir with surrealism, preserving the eerie mood of the original tales while exploring contemporary themes.
In “The Mansion of the Plates,” the story unfolds in a wealthy modern Tokyo home, drawing inspiration from real-life crime events and featuring an AI-generated version of Hokusai’s burial site. “Oiwa” reimagines its central character as a webcam model, reflecting the atmosphere of today’s Japanese restaurants. Meanwhile, “Kohada Koheiji” explores the duality of masks in modern Japanese theater and life.
This project uses video as its primary medium, crafting standalone works of video art that immerse viewers in a haunting yet contemporary retelling of Hokusai’s spectral dramas.
Demons and Monsters
Used
Tools
Freepik, Glif, Krea | Hailuo, Runway, Luma Dream Machine, Pika Labs, Topaz Labs | Suno | Adobe Premiere Pro | Adobe Photoshop | Adobe Audition


Saint Denis
France
Denis Semenov, known as Saint Denis, is a pioneering new media artist and co-founder of SAINT D Studio. His practice explores the creative potential of AI and VR through immersive installations and audiovisual performances. Blending technology and art, his works challenge traditional ideas of imagination and authorship.
In 2023, he joined the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences (IADAS). His work has received international acclaim, including an Emmy nomination, a Webby Award, and Red Dot: Best of the Best.
Saint Denis has presented at TEDxBrussels, SXSW, New Images Festival, Venice Film Festival, and Cannes. Based in France, he continues to explore how emerging tools reshape artistic expression.

This work explores the intersection of traditional Japanese printmaking and contemporary sound art through the use of artificial intelligence. At its core lies a creative investigation into selected drawings from the legendary Hokusai Manga and other woodblock print collections by Katsushika Hokusai. The artist has carefully curated a range of motifs—fantasy animals, expressive human figures, domestic scenes, and elements drawn from nature, such as wind patterns and underwater creatures—highlighting the richness and variety of Hokusai’s visual language.
These images have been processed and interpreted with AI technologies, which serve as analytical tools and generative collaborators. The resulting data was then transformed into sound, partially shaped by machine learning algorithms, and partially composed and refined within a studio environment. The outcome is a layered soundscape that shifts between the algorithmic and the human, offering a new way of experiencing visual heritage.
Crucially, the installation is interactive: sounds are activated by the viewers' way, the project transcends the static nature of traditional prints, inviting the public into a multisensory experience that celebrates Hokusai’s enduring influence while demonstrating how contemporary technologies can open new dimensions in interpreting historical art.
The Memory of Water
Used
Tools
Midjourney | Chat GPT for MIDI codes applied to sinthesizers | Luma and Kling for animation | Suno and Elevenlabs for sound | 3D software: MAYA | Animation: Touchdesigner + After Effects | Music: Ableton Live | Analog + digital synthesizers + samplers: Elektron, Moog

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Hyphae Collective — Roxana Vazquez & Carlos Wyszogrod
Argentina/Germany
Rox Vázquez is a visual artist from Buenos Aires working with site-specific installations, video, AI, and generative media. Her background in graphic design, photography, and music informs her dreamlike, performative works. With many years of experience in film and advertising, she also works extensively in video mapping, live visuals, and interactive systems.
Carlos Wyszogrod is a visual artist, synthwave music producer, and pianist. He combines analog/digital synths with 3D animation and AI-generated visuals. With many years in film and advertising as an art director and CG artist, he now leads a post-production studio in Buenos Aires focused on immersive multimedia projects.
Together, they present collaborative works blending sound, image, and technology.

This project explores the mythological imagery of Japanese art through the lens of Hokusai’s series «100 Ghost Stories». Drawing on legends that reflect ancient perceptions of fear, hope and the unknown, the work uncovers deep cultural codes embedded in Japanese tradition. Merging traditional techniques with digital technologies, including the use of artificial intelligence, the artist reinterprets Hokusai’s style while preserving its authenticity.
This synthesis places classical motifs into a contemporary visual language, creating renewed emotional resonance. The project aims to immerse viewers in the mystical world of Japanese folklore, highlighting its enduring relevance. By connecting past and present, the artist offers a poetic encounter between craft and code — reviving mythology in a modern context and inviting new ways of engaging with these timeless stories.
The Sounds of the Floating World
Used
Tools
Suno | Stable Audio | ChatGPT | Ableton (Max AI) | Modular Synth

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Julio César Palacio
Venezuela/Spain
Julio César Palacio is a sound artist whose practice explores acoustic phenomena, spatial listening, and decolonial approaches to sound. His work bridges ecology, collective memory, and identity, often using sound data to raise awareness of environmental issues such as noise pollution and bioacoustics. Avoiding fixed materiality, his projects promote new perceptions of human connection to nature and community.
Julio has presented his work across Europe, the US, Japan, China, and South Korea. His recordings appear on international labels and radio. He has received the Catalonia Research and Innovation Grant and the BKF MACBA Grant, and participated in residencies at EMS (Sweden), Islington Mill (UK), L’Estruch, and Fabra i Coats (Spain).

This project explores the mythological imagery of Japanese art through the lens of Hokusai’s series «100 Ghost Stories». Drawing on legends that reflect ancient perceptions of fear, hope and the unknown, the work uncovers deep cultural codes embedded in Japanese tradition. Merging traditional techniques with digital technologies, including the use of artificial intelligence, the artist reinterprets Hokusai’s style while preserving its authenticity.
This synthesis places classical motifs into a contemporary visual language, creating renewed emotional resonance. The project aims to immerse viewers in the mystical world of Japanese folklore, highlighting its enduring relevance. By connecting past and present, the artist offers a poetic encounter between craft and code — reviving mythology in a modern context and inviting new ways of engaging with these timeless stories.
The Wave of Spirits
Used
Tools
ChatGPT | Exactly.ai | Adobe illustrator

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Oksana Fedchyshyn
Ukraine
Oksana Fedchyshyn is a Ukrainian graphic artist currently living and working in Tel Aviv. She earned her BA from the Lviv National Academy of Arts (2020) and her MA from the Academy of Fine Arts in Gdańsk (2023). She is a Gaude Polonia scholarship recipient (2021) and studied at Shenkar College in Tel Aviv (2022).
Her work has been shown at Make Eindhoven (Netherlands, 2024), XIII Biennial of Graphics (Poland, 2023), Joan Miró Workshop (Spain, 2022), Koppel X (UK, 2022), LAZNIA CCA (Poland, 2022), and the Second International Triennial of Intaglio Graphics (Ukraine, 2021). Fedchyshyn’s practice blends traditional and experimental print-making within international contexts.

Two centuries ago, Hokusai’s lines and ink washes distilled human forms and mythic scenes into potent archetypal shapes, rich with personal and cultural echoes. Each mark reflected his mortal vision, shaped by lived experience and generational stories, offering an invitation into his mythic realm. In contrast, modern AI-based computer vision isolates objects as detached labels, removing narrative context and emotional resonance. Such algorithmic outputs lack spiritual or personal perspective, presenting a kaleidoscope of pattern-driven images that can entertain but can ultimately ring hollow.
This artwork explores that tension by juxtaposing Hokusai’s intentional simplicity with AI’s abstracting gaze. Where Hokusai’s context-laden minimalism captures deeper meaning, AI’s decontextualization highlights the precarious nature of our relationship with technology. We wonder: if the machine sees us as one object class among many, can we humans truly demand reverence?
The piece underscores the significance we assign to stories, myths, and mortal finitude. Removing real-world elements from their context provokes reflection on how easily we consume images without pausing to interpret their deeper narrative, creating feedback loops. Through Hokusai’s enduring spirit and the machine’s unblinking lens, this work invites viewers to revisit how meaning arises and vanishes when mortality and myth collide with pattern and form. It calls us to reclaim our responsibility as storytellers, remembering that machines reflect our willingness to imbue images with depth.
Essence
Used
Tools
YOLO 11 with the pre-trained COCO model | ChatGPT | Claude | Python | C++


Alex May
UK
Alex May is an internationally recognised British artist working at the intersection of art, science, and technology. His multi-layered works explore human experience in the digital age through custom software and diverse media including video sculpture, algorithmic photography, robotics, 3D-printed forms, projection mapping, AR/VR, and generative systems.
May's work has been exhibited at institutions such as Ars Electronica, ZKM, MIT Museum, Tate Modern, HeK, The Nobel Prize Museum, ZHI Art Museum, and the Beall Center for Art + Technology.
He has delivered talks at the Royal College of Art, Chelsea College of Art, UCLA, TEDxBucharest, and the Royal Academy of Sciences and Arts of Barcelona.
Dedicated Galleries

Construing Hokusai
The world is always shifting – fleeting, elusive, impossible to fully grasp. Yet across time, an invisible thread connects our present to Hokusai’s world. His ukiyo-e prints, “pictures of the floating world,” captured that transience – once celebrating life’s pleasures, now echoing realities both distant and familiar. As Degas said, “Hokusai is not just one artist… he is an island, a continent, a whole world in himself.”
About a decade ago, I found myself drawn into that world. Hokusai’s vision changed how I saw images, painting and art itself. His work felt less like something to admire and more like something to inhabit. I remember spending hours with his prints, slipping into his landscapes, seeing the world through his eyes. Eventually, I needed to respond – not by copying his technique, but by translating his vision into my own medium.
I layered paint the way he layered woodblocks – some-times thick, sometimes sparse, letting emptiness speak alongside color. Calligraphic forms drifted across the canvas, creating rhythm rather than meaning, as if the painting were breathing. I enlarged his images to nearly human scale, giving them presence. One image stayed with me: “The Lantern Ghost, Oiwa” – a woman betrayed and transformed into a vengeful spirit. Her story became an allegory of justice and memory, echoing across time. Hokusai’s work, full of folklore and history once dismissed or censored, now feels more real than ever.
For me, engaging with Hokusai is about seeing the world through his eyes – and reflecting on my own situation. His work reminds me that art is always in motion, always a dialogue. Hokusai understood this. He changed his name dozens of times, evolving like the waves he painted. In his ever-shifting legacy, I found a space for my own transformation.
Merman Hall

Hokusai Hall is an innovative digital space designed to immerse visitors in the vivid world of the visionary artist – who greets new arrivals as a virtual avatar when they come in. The first stop is an infographic summarizing his extraordinary career, which spanned the production of over 30 000 individual works during more than 80 years of constant creativity – followed by a GIF installation which chronicles how his enduring influence has percolated through global culture in the fields of design, fashion, animation, music and more.
Next, viewers can study woodblock prints from “Quick Lessons in Simplified Drawings” – an educational series which became fundamental for aspiring artists during the Edo period. They reveal both Hokusai’s profound dedication to teaching and his systematic approach to image-making.
A multi-channel video wall offers the opportunity to explore Hokusai’s famous manga by flipping through digitized original volumes from the private archives of the AI Hokusai team – a rare glimpse into his observational brilliance, humor and mastery of form. Last but not least is the seminal series “Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji” – which includes “The Great Wave off Kanagawa,” a woodblock print from 1831 that has transcended both time and space to become an iconic image recognized by art lovers the world over.