Occupying the 52nd floor of Tokyo’s Mori Tower, Mori Art Museum is internationally renowned for its visionary approach and highly original curation of contemporary art. The museum’s latest exhibition, Future and the Arts: AI, Robotics, Cities, Life - How Humanity Will Live Tomorrow, is a comprehensive investigation into the near future, a space in which speculation becomes reality for the duration of your visit.

The exhibition builds a diverse picture of what our world may look like in 20 to 30 years. Depicting a range of works that represent utopia, dystopia and everything in between, the showcase will ask fundamental questions about technology in order to establish what our future ought to be.

Here are three must-see highlights:

The momentous expo includes ecoLogicStudio’s “in-human” garden, H.O.R.T.U.S XL, where visitors can witness a productive meeting of biological autonomy and man-made creation. Within the installation, technology and nature find balance; the sculpture's 3D printed structure optimizes the growth of the algae inoculated into it by humans, and in turn, the algae purifies the air that surrounds it, making this living sculpture receptive to both human and non-human life. The project grapples with how developments in synthetic biology and design give the notion of "living" a new artificiality.

Drawing on developments in human reproductive technologies, Ai Hasegawa (an artist featured in our Reprodutopia project) will show her speculative project, Shared Baby. Hasegawa imagines a scenario in which the DNA of multiple parents can be used for the creation of one child, and additionally, the sex of the parent is irrelevant. The project asks, how will family structures be transformed by such developments, and what will the future of humans look like when individuals share the DNA of multiple people?

Delving into the social implications of robotic-human relationships, Vincent Fournier's photographic series, Man Machine, questions how humans will live alongside increasingly anthropomorphic robots. Fournier's aim was to "create a balance between the spectator and the robot, between a process of identification and distance.” In doing so, his photography addresses how the integration of robots in our daily lives sparks both fascination and fear when it comes to social acceptance of this change. 

These works join 100 projects from an impressive selection of visual artists, architects and designers, including Agi Haines, Daan Roosegaarde, Patricia Piccinini, Neri Oxman, XTU Architects and many more.

Read Benjamin Aldes Wurgaft's essay on judaism in relation to the production of laboratory-grown meat.

Next Nature Network also contributes to the exhibition by presenting six Bistro In Vitro meat dishes. Adding our unique perspective to this impressive future forecast, we provide a tangible narrative through which visitors can contemplate how our current food culture may be transformed by the normalization of in vitro meat. Indeed, before we can decide whether we are willing to consume lab-grown alternatives, we must consider how meat may manifest in our lives, our kitchens and on our plates.

What? A near-future forecast disguised as an exhibition 
Where? Mori Art Museum, Tokyo
When? Now, until 29 March 2020

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