YUKO ITATSU LABORATORY, THE UNIVERSITY OF TOKYO

By Jingzhi “Ginger” Huang

On March 11th, Itatsu Lab and Hisano Lab embarked on a two-day retreat to the Hoki Museum in Chiba, the first museum dedicated to contemporary Japanese realistic paintings, and Cyberdyne, a pioneering company in hybrid assistive limb technology located in Tsukuba. The tour delved into the discussion on today’s world, where art and technology intertwine, challenging our perceptions of reality and reviewing authenticity and narratives around human capability and machine augmentation. 

In addition to the field visits, the retreat also held three intensive bootcamps where lab members presented their in-progress research projects and engaged in comments and suggestions. The topics were diverse, spanning from examining the social network’s influence on food, idol culture in shaping nationalism, power structure in languages, social identity in fashion, to investigating innovation ecology within the context of prosthetic hackathons. The bootcamps provided a fantastic opportunity for the lab members to come together, share the discoveries and challenges encountered in research journeys, and collaboratively seek solutions.