Shin Hanagata’s Ergonomic Embryo Blurs the Border Between a Chair and a Human

Most of us have sat in a chair, but few have probably ever tried to become one.

Working across performance and media art, artist Shin Hanagata has long been interested in how technology can transform the human body. At the heart of his practice is the idea: “Not using technology, but becoming technology.” One expression of this concept is his performance work, Ergonomic Embryo.

Ergonomics refers to “the idea of designing machinery and environments optimized for the human body.” But what if humans themselves crossed over to the side of the tools instead? Describing himself as “a very ordinary person,” Hanagata traces how familiar feelings of unease in everyday life led him to this idea, and the experiments that followed.

You moved from information science and engineering into art when you entered graduate school. What led you to make that transition?

I’ve been interested in using wearable devices to transform my own sensory perception since my days in engineering.

In engineering research, there's often an emphasis on usefulness and how the work connects to society. But the reason I was making wearable devices was that I found the experience of my own body changing fascinating in itself. I wanted to explore that sensation, but in the environment I was in at the time, it wasn't easy to communicate that interest directly.

I thought that approaching it as art would allow me to express what I truly wanted to explore more directly, so I decided to pursue graduate studies at Tama Art University.

Did moving from information science and engineering into art feel like a major change in direction?

Not really. What I wanted to do had always been the same. Rather than switching fields, it felt more like moving to a place that was more open to what I wanted to explore.

At Tama Art University, Akihiro Kubota and Akihiko Taniguchi were very receptive to what I wanted to do. It wasn't so much that I was drawn to art as a field. It was more about finding a place where I could express the interests I'd had all along.

What first sparked your interest in the idea of the body undergoing transformation?

I watched a lot of science fiction anime and films, including Blade Runner, AKIRA, Gattaca, and Ghost in the Shell. I was drawn to stories where technology transforms the human body in ways that are beyond one's control.

When I was in junior high school, I saw Pendulum Choir by Cod.Act at the Japan Media Arts Festival. It's a performance in which choir members sing while standing on platforms tilted by hydraulic jacks. I was fascinated by that kind of bodily state, where you can't move your body entirely according to your own will.

Looking back, I don't think there was one particular moment that sparked my interest. Perhaps I had unconsciously found a kind of solace in those experiences and works.

Was there a turning point that led you to start creating work using your own body?

One particularly significant experience was Paralogue. It's a work in which I used EMS (Electrical Muscle Stimulation) to allow another person to "parasitize" my own arm. When I first experimented with it, there was a moment when I felt as though another presence had entered my body.

I felt an incredible rush of excitement, almost like chills running through my body, and it seemed as though the whole world had slowed down. In that moment, I instinctively thought, "I'll probably be doing this for the next ten years."

Did it feel like you were experiencing, in your own body for the first time, the kind of bodily transformation you had previously only seen in films and artworks?

Yeah that might be true.

How would you describe Ergonomic Embryo to someone who isn't familiar with contemporary art?

Although I call myself an artist, I don't really approach my work thinking, "I'm going to make a piece of art." My creative process starts with my own desires, or with trying to figure out what to do with the parts of myself that don't quite fit into this world.

For example, we sometimes find ourselves endlessly scrolling through short-form videos or moving our bodies according to instructions from an app. More recently, even our decision-making has become intertwined with conversations with AI. We think we're using technology, but sometimes it feels as though our bodies and decisions have become part of a system or an algorithm instead. In that reality, the boundaries of what it means to be "myself" or "human" become increasingly unstable.

I used to watch Fight Club a lot. It's about men who have been reduced to their functions within capitalist society, almost emasculated by it, fighting each other in an underground fight club.

What I find interesting is that they're not necessarily fighting to win. It's more about the euphoria of being hit, or that moment of realizing, "My body is right here." I loved those scenes where people who had become accustomed to functioning within society seem to awaken to something through physical sensation.

I've always been thinking about how to escape the reality I'm trapped in. How can I step outside a body that can only behave in certain ways, or a self that can only exist in a particular way? I've been exploring that same question through different approaches for about ten years.

Ergonomic Embryo is one of those attempts.

What first led you to the idea of “becoming a chair”?

In this work, I use generative AI to create images in real time. Based on bodily movements captured by a camera, the projected imagery continually shifts between chair-like forms and the human body.

When I first encountered this technology, I had the feeling, “Ah, this is going to make my body all wobbly.” When I'm searching for ideas for a work, there are moments when a completely unfamiliar sensation or experience suddenly emerges, and I think, “This could work.” This was one of those moments, and it led to the creation of this piece.

At the heart of my practice is a larger concept: “Not using technology, but becoming technology.” I approach the connection between the body and technology through ergonomics, the idea of designing machinery and environments optimized for the human body.

A chair is designed to fit the human body, but it also seamlessly incorporates our bodies into various institutions, on trains, in workplaces, hospitals, schools, and theaters. In Ergonomic Embryo, I reverse that relationship: rather than sitting on a chair, I become the chair.

But the chair itself isn't everything. What interests me is the boundary where bodies and technologies have continually shaped and reshaped one another. The chair is one representative object within this broader inquiry. In the future, I might also explore motifs such as stone tools and CPUs, which sit at opposite ends of the history of tools.

As you prepare for the performances at the Performing Arts Festival: Autumn Meteorite 2026 Tokyo, what kind of rehearsals are you doing with the performers?

There are elements of rehearsal in my work, but we're not practicing fixed movements or working toward a predetermined final form. Instead, I repeatedly create situations in which we "become chairs" together with the performers, experiencing the sensations that emerge. After each session, I ask the performers to make audio recordings describing what it felt like to become a chair.

We call these sessions "experiments." Of course, there are significant differences between an experiment and an actual performance, but I don't really see the experiments as rehearsals for the performance. Sometimes the sensation of becoming a chair emerges, and sometimes it doesn't. Even when we do the same thing, something different happens every time. That's why I consider each experiment an important exploration in its own right.

What matters far more to me than how it looks from the outside is the sensation of what actually happens within us.

For practical purposes, I'm referred to as the director, and the other three participants as performers. But to me, they're companions exploring this situation together. Rather than simply hiring them as performers, I think of them as people who can explore these sensory pathways in directions different from my own.

When I give someone the task of "becoming a chair" and the equipment to explore it, I'm interested in what they experience and how they transform. Their words and movements surprise me every time. That's why the experiments themselves are just as important as the final performance.

During the performance, I don't want the audience to simply come and watch a work. I want them to witness another reality in which "becoming a chair" is actually happening. A system different from the one we're accustomed to in everyday life is operating right there, and I want the audience to enter into that situation.

That's why I'd actually love for people who aren't familiar with art or theater to come. Rather than approaching it with the expectation of seeing "art" or "theater," I want them to encounter what's happening without any preconceptions. I think part of the reason people come to experience art is to encounter a reality different from their everyday lives. If that's the case, then for me, creating that very situation is itself the artwork.

Were there any ideas you wanted to pursue during the creative process but ultimately had to set aside due to technical, physical, or time constraints?

First of all, a human can't literally become a chair. Physically modifying the human body into a chair would be beyond what I could psychologically accept, and it would also be unrealistic from an ethical or medical standpoint.

But I still believe there are ways to "become a chair."

Something that's become important to me recently is the idea of "finding" a chair in something. For example, we sometimes sit on rocks or guardrails, right? Those objects weren't originally designed to be chairs. But when someone recognizes a chair in them, they become chairs.

So I started thinking that if someone could recognize a chair in a human being, perhaps a human could become a chair, too.

Conversely, imagine a being with a body completely different from ours. Even if it saw a chair designed for humans, it might not recognize it as a chair at all. The very act of "sitting" might not even exist for that kind of body.

Thinking about it this way, I feel that what makes something a chair isn't determined by the object alone. Rather, it emerges through the relationship between the object and the person who perceives it or sits on it.

Was there a particular moment during the creative process that moved you deeply?

Every time, there are moments when I think, "What on earth is this?"

In this work, there are moments when my body transforms into a chair in the AI-generated imagery, then returns to a human form. When I successfully become a chair, I feel as though I'm exploring my own body in that transformed state.

For example, moving my hand by just one millimeter might turn what was a backrest into an armrest, or cause decorations resembling those of a Western throne to grow from the end of that armrest. One moment, my body might become a medieval chair, and the next, something like a contemporary designer chair.

Even though I'm moving incredibly slowly, there are moments when it feels as though I'm being reborn as dozens of different chairs in a single second. It's as if extreme slowness and extreme speed coexist in the same place. That experience comes very close to the idea of a "body undergoing transformation" that I've been exploring for so long.

We normally live on two legs, with bodies shaped the way they are, under the same direction of gravity. But in those moments, I feel as though I've suddenly moved somewhere beyond the sense that this is the only possible form my body can take.

That's the feeling of "What on earth is this?" I can't tell whether it's good or bad, whether I'm sad or happy, or whether the experience is positive or negative. There's comfort in it, but also discomfort.

Yet when I'm thrown into that kind of sensation, everything else seems to stop mattering. Sometimes I find myself thinking, "Maybe this is what I've been living for."

Looking back afterward, I realize that it was an incredibly joyful experience. But while I'm in the middle of it, I don't even know what it is I'm experiencing.

What have been some of the challenges of bringing the work to the stage, or difficulties you've faced during the creative process?

As an artist, turning the sensations I've discovered into works that can grow in scale or take forms that can be communicated to others requires all kinds of "procedures." Lately, I've found myself dealing with an overwhelming number of them.

Those incredible moments I mentioned earlier probably add up to only about five seconds in my entire life.

But reaching those moments requires all sorts of things beyond making the work itself. I have to put my ideas into words, write proposals, and bring people together so that the work can reach an audience. Sometimes, that means having to articulate even sensations that seem impossible to put into words. In the end, I think these procedures are really about communication.

When I'm occupied with that kind of administrative work, my body is clearly in a different mode. Ideally, I'd like my brain to follow my body. But when administrative work takes over, it feels as though my body becomes an appendage hanging from my head. If I devote too much of my mind and body to those tasks, I become less receptive to the interesting sensations I described earlier, like those moments when my body seems to turn all wobbly.

One dilemma I've noticed as an artist is that even people with incredibly interesting sensibilities can struggle to sustain their practice if they find it difficult to translate those sensations into a concrete form, explain their work, or bring people together. Sometimes it almost feels as though the ability to manage everything matters more than the sensations themselves.

Finding the right balance is something I'm struggling with right now.

Listening to you, I feel that what you've described gets at the very essence of what makes an artist an artist.

I've been interviewed a few times before, and people often ask me what makes me unusual.

Maybe that's the impression people get from my work, but the truth is, I'm actually a pretty serious person. Even as a student, although I had a rebellious side, I was always trying to figure out how to adapt to the values of whatever environment I was in.

Part of me wants to break free from that. But at heart, I'm a very serious, ordinary person.

People often talk about my "weirdness," too, but isn't it actually rarer to find someone who isn't a little weird? Nobody is made up entirely of the values society expects them to have. I think even people you pass on the street probably have unusual interests or strange sides to them.

I feel a little uncomfortable with the idea of treating artists as special beings. The moment you think, "This person is an artist," you've already created a distance between that person and yourself.

Instead, I'd like people to see that someone who shares experiences they recognize in themselves, like getting stuck endlessly scrolling through YouTube, can end up taking a completely different direction. If things had been just a little different, they might have gone down the same path themselves.

I want people to come face to face with the fact that someone who feels so familiar, someone not so different from themselves, has ended up choosing to "become a chair."

Finally, is there anything you'd like to say to people coming to see the performance?

Rather than thinking of it as going to watch a performance, I think it would be better to come with the feeling that you're going to confront something. Instead of going to see a great work of art and deciding whether it's interesting or not, I want people to encounter a set of ethics and a reality completely different from what they're used to. It's like stepping into that unfamiliar world with no defenses.

If people come with the willingness to throw themselves into that situation, I think they might witness something extraordinary.