hasaqui (b. 1982), also known as Hasaqui Yamanobe, is an artist and researcher based in Tokyo who works with drawing, code and AI. Yamanobe has made drawings and paintings since 2016, digital works using AI image generation since 2019, and generative art with p5.js. Yamanobe also researches and writes critical texts on the NFT art scene.
Yamanobe completed a master's degree in aesthetics at Tokyo University of the Arts in 2009, with a thesis on Lessing's Laocoon. Yamanobe began presenting NFT works in February 2021. A 2022 artist statement describes the work made since the Covid-19 pandemic as built around “Artist as a Generative Machine”, a way of co-creating with AI. Yamanobe began making art in p5.js in February 2022, after a discussion on Twitter Spaces following research into Art Blocks, in order to understand generative art at the level of code. On fxhash, Yamanobe released the series FLUX (2022), in which images are deliberately broken down into pixels in a recursive process. The pixelation suggests an idea decaying over time, in contrast to the persistence of the blockchain.
