METACITY is a research team that explores the form of a “possible city” through thought experiments and prototyping. The team’s vision raises an awareness of the fact that Japan’s regional cities are becoming degraded copies of Tokyo, where the priority on economic rationality has bleached out the unique culture of the regions. By working with artists and researchers who have not been involved in urban design and management before, they are engaged in a wide range of activities to transform the nature of cities through the process of rethinking issues from a dimension different from that of the existing framework. Currently the team is working on collaborative projects with an art collective creating an alternative tea ceremony The TEA-ROOM, Wired Japan, the volunteer engineering group Dream On, the 4D fabrication lab Hiroya Tanaka Laboratory, and the MIT Media Lab City Science research group, which seeks sustainable solutions for future cities. METACITY is a group of 40 members including artists, researchers, and engineers.
Interested in the invisible structures and fictional mechanisms that give rise to new concepts, Aoki is active in producing projects and exhibitions in the fields of art and science and creates artworks on the theme of exploring a possible society. He is also the co-founder and director of TEDxKids@Chiyoda, Art Hack Day, and the art collective The TEA-ROOM. Publication includes “Tsukutte-ugokasu-A Life [ALife – How to Make and Run ALife: Introduction to Artificial Life Model Theory through Coding]” (O’Reilly Japan, Inc, 2018)
