Emi Kusano (Japanese, b. 1990) is a Tokyo-based multidisciplinary artist who uses AI-generated self-portraiture, photography, video, and music to rework archetypes from Japanese pop culture — magical girls, office workers, retro idols — into speculative, retro-futurist images. She began as a street photographer documenting Harajuku fashion before moving into music and, later, generative AI.
As lead singer of the synthwave project Satellite Young, she has described writing lyrics about AI, online dating, and planned obsolescence within a 1980s idol pop sound. In 2022 she co-founded Shinsei Galverse, an NFT collection of 8,888 anime characters, with the animator Ayaka Ohira. Its tokens topped OpenSea's 24-hour sales ranking after launch. The following year she turned to generative AI, presenting Neural Fad for Bright Moments Tokyo — AI-generated street fashion drawn from an imagined Japanese history. For the same year's Christie's and Gucci auction “Future Frequencies”, she collaborated with Claire Silver on Shinjitai, an AI-generated work whose auction winner received a roll of fabric mimicking the digital piece. In Melancholic Magical Maiden (2024), made with the creative coder Yurika Sayo in p5.js for Art Blocks, she deconstructed the 1990s magical girl anime genre to examine how it shapes gender expectations.
