Kaoru Tanaka is a Japanese generative artist based in Osaka who creates real-time installations, wall art and interactive works with the software TouchDesigner.,,Self-taught, she moved from a background in graphic design into creative coding.,Her work explores the relationship between organic human nature and the mechanical nature of computer programming, bringing together order and chaos.
Tanaka's practice began in graphic design, working with Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator, before she discovered the work of John Maeda and taught herself Processing from books and online tutorials. She went on to build an interactive necklace with a variable design and multiple sensors using Arduino, experimented with a 3D printer, and eventually settled on TouchDesigner as her primary tool. She draws inspiration from everyday experience, such as flowers seen on a walk or passing views of the city, as well as Japan's distinct seasons and the traditional events tied to them.
In 2023 Tanaka took part in the second edition of “FEMGEN”, held at Glitch Marfa as part of Art Blocks' Marfa Weekend, an exhibition established to counter the exclusion of female-identifying artists from generative and AI art. Her contribution, This is how it goes, visualized the rice paddies she passed on daily walks, rendering the sound of rice swaying in the wind, the movements of insects and the leaps of frogs as individual presences rather than background noise. In the accompanying interview she described the camaraderie among certain influential figures in Web3 as akin to a bro culture that monopolizes power, and said she considered NFTs a valuable way of assigning worth to one's identity.
In 2024 her sound-based work Path of Tones appeared in “Patterns of Flow”, a Feral File exhibition shown at NEORT++ in Tokyo that took Hiroshi Kawano's K-system as a reference point, collecting everyday sounds into a work built from the accumulated noise and events of daily life.,For Bright Moments Tokyo she created Inhabitants, a collection of creatures inspired by her great-grandparents' Edo-period wooden house, which had been relocated intact through the traditional hikiya process.Her work has also been shown at Art Basel Miami Beach, the Neues Museum Nürnberg, TODA in Dubai and Prada Extends Tokyo, and included in the group show “Artists Who Code: Generative Art NFTs by Women Artists” at Vellum LA.,
