Daito ManabeProfile

Daito Manabe | Artist, Programmer, Composer

Daito Manabe is an artist, programmer, and composer whose work investigates how life, intelligence, and society emerge through music, computation, and audiovisual media.

After founding Rhizomatiks in 2006, he developed an interdisciplinary practice spanning programming, music, visual art, and performance.

His early works explored the relationship between the body and technology by measuring movement, electromyography, and physiological signals, transforming them into sound, light, images, and vibration. Rather than treating the body simply as an input device, he constructed feedback systems in which generated media influenced the performer, creating new perceptual relationships between humans and machines.

His research later shifted toward the neural mechanisms underlying perception and behavior. Working with cultured neural networks, brain organoids, multi electrode arrays, and spiking neural networks, he began treating biological activity itself as a generative system capable of producing music and moving images.

More recently, his research has expanded beyond individual organisms to societies composed of humans, artificial life, and AI agents. Rather than using AI merely as a content generation tool, he investigates how biological processes such as adaptation, repetition, mutation, cooperation, and emergence can become fundamental principles for generating audiovisual works. His current projects explore multi agent societies as living systems from which music and images emerge autonomously.

Alongside this research, Manabe has realized numerous performances, museum exhibitions, and large scale public projects. He contributed technology development together with visual and lighting systems for the Tokyo Handover Ceremony at the Closing Ceremony of the Rio 2016 Olympic Games. He has collaborated with artists including Perfume, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Björk, Nosaj Thing, and Squarepusher, and has presented work internationally at Sónar, Ars Electronica, and MUTEK. He has also collaborated with research institutions including CERN and Jodrell Bank Observatory.

He currently leads Studio Daito Manabe, where he develops new research environments combining human expertise with AI while exploring the future of music and audiovisual expression through the interactions between life, artificial intelligence, and society.