Works

Into the Womb -I want to be born again-

2024

"Into the Womb” is an XR content with a simulated experience of being born again. The author who has a developmental disability expresses her hope that if she could be reborn without her disorder, she would feel universal love. The work raises social issues about women with developmental disabilities, who have lost love, which is the most important human emotion, due to trauma. The protagonist, who suffers from a developmental disability at the beginning, is verbally tricked by people and expresses her difficulty in living, having been traumatized by love and other things. The story begins with a scene of the world from the perspective of a girl with developmental disabilities in a night city called Kabuki-cho in Shinjuku, Tokyo. Participants will see the transition from the dark night city back into the womb of their mothers, experiencing a simulated escape from a society filled with contradictions. They can hear the mother’s words and the encouraging words around them, which confirm their love. Then, they realize that they are being born again by moving their hands inside the womb to be born again. In the end, they assimilate with the fetus and are enveloped in light, and they are born again and ‘alive’ in the world. When they finish the experience and remove the headset, they feel a world full of hope after they have been born again. This work aims to help people feel free from trauma and have heart-warming feelings by going through a simulated experience of being born again. Shoko Kimura, Ayaka Fujii, Kenichi Ito, Rihito Tsuboi, and Yoshinori Natsume. 2024. Into the Womb -I want to be born again-. In SIGGRAPH Asia 2024 XR (SA '24). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Article 9, 1–2. https://doi.org/10.1145/3681759.3688911 Contributors Shoko Kimura, Aoyama Gakuin University / Nagoya Institute of Technology Ayaka Fujii, National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST) Kenichi Ito, Diver-X Inc. Rihito Tsuboi, Game Sound Creator Yoshinori Natsume, Nagoya Institute of Technology

Inclusive Quiet Room -for building an inclusive society-

2022

There are “Emotional barriers” that separate “healthy” and “disabled” people in the world. We believe that if those “Emotional barriers” were removed, the world would be filled with people who are just a little bit kinder and gentler, promoting mutual understanding among people and reducing discrimination and prejudice against others. For example, some people are prone to be in a panic when they are in a place with a lot of stimuli or in a crowded place due to sensory sensitivity. Our art work team creator members of this work have such as sensory sensitivity. “Inclusive Quiet Room” is a “calm down room” that combines a space in which people can calm their minds with visual and sound expressions. These are based on the experiences of the creators. It creates the digital rehabilitation experience using an instant house which is an easy-to-create enclosed space, snoezelen using colorful lights, immersive VR videos, relaxing music, soft cushions, and heavy blankets. We hope that you can feel the process of people with sensory sensitivities regaining their composure. This exhibit aims to promote understanding of the Room where you can calm down by displaying the Calm Down Room, which is used by people with sensory sensitivities to calm their feelings, in a form that can be easily experienced. Our team member that consists of creators of this work strongly desire to eliminate the world in which people are divided into “able-bodied” and “disabled” people. In 2022, the United Nations recommended that the Japanese government revise a total of 200 items to ensure the human rights of persons with disabilities, including the revision of laws and education that separate able-bodied persons and persons with disabilities. However, the Japanese government has announced that it is hesitant to respond to that recommendation at this time. We want many people in Japan to understand that people with disabilities have human rights and the right to live as human beings. Even if they have a disability, they are no different as human being. We believe that the future of our world will have more possibilities if people can mix and share the joys and pleasures of life regardless of whether they are able-bodied or disabled. Shoko Kimura, Kenichi Ito, Ayaka Fujii, Rihito Tsuboi, Kazuki Okawa, Hibiki Kojima, Keisuke Kitagawa, and Yoshinori Natsume. 2023. Inclusive Quiet Room -for building an inclusive society-. In ACM SIGGRAPH 2023 Emerging Technologies (SIGGRAPH '23). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Article 9, 1–2. https://doi.org/10.1145/3588037.3603420 Credit Team Shoko KIMURA Kenichi ITO Rihito TSUBOI Kazuki OKAWA Hibiki KOJIMA Ayaka FUJII Keisuke KITAGAWA Actors Mone KITAZATO Miyuna HAYASHI Rihito TSUBOI Special Thanks Yasuhiro MINE Lagom Japan Co., Ltd. Philknot Co., Ltd. Yogibo Inc. Materials Teruteru Bozu by Atto_VRC ExWire by Hirai Real Stars Skybox Lite by Geoff Dallimore Skybox Rotation Shader by Guilty Star Nest Shader HLSL by Feyris77 Mandelbrot with “smart” AA by mrange (CC0) Digital Abyss by kishimisu (CC BY-NC-SA 3.0) Trip2016 by ophilbinbriscoe (CC BY-NC-SA 3.0)

Resonate with Fetus

2021

“Resonate with Fetus” is an experience-based content about the fetus and pregnancy that promotes a positive understanding of pregnancy and childbirth. This work consists of a fetal virtual reality (VR) system and a haptic communication system. In a fetal VR system, the state of the fetus is represented with artistic video and sound. A user is swaddled in an elastic cloth and experiences VR content that imagines the inside of the womb. By using audio middleware to change the sound depending on the state during the experience, the narrow range in which the fetus can move within the womb is represented. A haptic communication system reproduces the interaction between the mother and the fetus, such as the mother stroking the belly and the baby kicking, using vibration. In an experiment of fetal movement in which women with pregnant experience participated, all of them said that the tactile sensation of the device “resembled” the movements of a fetus in the late 6-7 months of pregnancy. We also aim to have the vibrators respond to the interactive sounds of a fetal VR system so that the user can be presented with vibrations that match the state in the womb. Introducing these interactive changes in both sound and haptics can create a more immersive experience of the fetus and pregnant woman. We hope that this work will be adopted in the future as teaching material for medical and maternity classes, and give an opportunity to deepen mutual understanding among people who will experience pregnancy and childbirth and their families. We are happy if this work will give a positive impression of pregnancy and childbirth, and help to create a society that is tolerant of pregnant women and their fetuses.

SUGO-MIMI

2021

Facial expressions convey emotions. However, not all people are good at understanding such expressions in daily communication. To address this issue, we herein use “SUGOMIMI,” a lightweight device that does not require a power source to expand facial expressions. SUGO-MIMI expands eyebrow movements by connecting the eyebrows to thin plates, imitating cat ears attached to the headband with wires. In our experiment of conveying facial expressions, the emotion denoting happiness was conveyed better when wearing SUGO-MIMI.

Touch Love

2020

As an extension of the VR fetal experience “Into the Womb,” we developed “Touch Love,” a haptic transmission system that simulates the interaction between a mother and her fetus. In this system, when the person playing the mother touches the pregnancy belt, which is wrapped around her abdomen and equipped with an accelerometer, the sensation of being touched is transmitted through vibrators on the back of the jacket worn by the person playing the fetus. Conversely, when the person playing the fetus moves their legs while wearing the accelerometer, the sensation of being kicked is transmitted through the vibrators in the pregnancy belt. Shoko Kimura (JAIST / Nagoya Institute of Technology) Ayaka Fujii (The University of Tokyo) Kenichi Ito (The University of Tokyo) Yoshihiro Tanaka (Nagoya Institute of Technology)

Re:born -The VR Experience of Childbirth-

2019

In this work, participants take on the role of a fetus to experience the moment of birth. By passing through the birth canal and “giving birth” to themselves, the work aims to convey the joy of thinking, “I’m so glad I was born!” As participants pass through the “Birth Canal Tube”—a cylindrical device constricted by pneumatically controlled balloons—they experience the sensation of navigating a dark, narrow birth canal, allowing them to truly appreciate the hardships of birth. Furthermore, by expressing the sense of celebration surrounding birth through visuals and sound, the work conveys the message that being born is a miracle and that everyone comes into the world surrounded by blessings. By fostering respect for babies through this work, we hope to contribute to solving social issues affecting babies and their families. Shoko KIMURA, Ayaka FUJII, Hiroyuki HOSHI, Rei TAMARU, Ryoma MIYAUCHI, Kazuki ASAKURA, Akihiro SUZUKI and Rihito TSUBOI

Into the Womb -Born Again-

2019

“I want to reborn” Since I strongly felt such emotions, I made this work. I encountered the greatest point in life at the time of suggesting this work. At that time, I strongly felt that “If I could redo my life” many times. I started thinking that if I could return to my mother’s womb, I might be able to lead a different life. In this demonstration, people can watch the body of the fetus and the inside of the womb through HMD and feel like returning to the fetus. In order to get closer to the feeling of being in the mother’s womb, people are wrapped in cloth by the Japanese method called “Otona-Maki”. In this method, people take a rounded posture and bend the limbs in the sheets, and they are confined in dark and narrow space surrounded by warm and soft material like the womb. In the future, we want to apply this work to the field of medical engineering as a device which provides relaxation for people with panic symptoms and reduces tension. I believe that this work can provide relaxation by wrapping in warmth like a mother’s affection and let the panic condition subsidence. Shoko Kimura Ayaka Fujii Shoichi Hasegawa Kazunori Miyata

Shining Baby -little-

2019

Life is bright. Beautiful life transcends all things. We think a fetus which is the root of humanity is “light”. A fetus living in mother’s womb is the hope and future of humanity. We want to watch the new future which starts from a fetus to the end. What is the life for you? Shoko Kimura (Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology) Ayaka Fujii (University of Tokyo) Ryo Okube (University of Tokyo) Takumi Watanabe (University of Tokyo) Ray Tamaru (Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology)

Electric World

2018

Robots all over the world stopped moving because of a large-scale computer virus. In that situation, two robots which can move were left in a big bird cage. The big bird cage is a protector that guards against computer viruses. The “Montone chair” which is in the big bird cage is an interface that allows people to communicate with robots. The two robots wanted to know what caused the other robots to shut down. While pursuing their investigation, they discovered that it is due to humans who feared robot rebellion and it is necessary to collect and understand human emotional data to remove the virus. Robots wanted to live with human beings once again, so they wanted to know the human’s feeling. One robot went outside of the bird cage and went out to look for humans. To make it possible for robots and humans to live together again, you touch and communicate with the robot and create a new world of science and technology. This work is created with the tribute to the worldview of “Electric Lolita City” by JH Science. The BGM was created remotely by connecting Tokyo and Vienna. Ayaka Fujii (University of Tokyo) Shoko Kimura (Tokyo Institute of Techonology) Rieka Satomi (University of Tokyo) Rihito Tsuboi (Meiji University) Hibiki Kojima (Musik und Kunst Privatuniversität der Stadt Wien- Komposition)

Robot Love

2018

If robots and humans fell in love, what kind of future is ahead? Is there love between life and non-life? Furthermore, is there birth of hybrid presence between humans and robots as children? With faith that love exceeds everything, using virtual reality system and a humanoid robot, we imagine and express the future that humans can romance, touch and leave offspring with robots, and “destroy” current common sense. The authors made a work that adults return to the fetus before. However, after making the work, we strongly wished to be reborn as a complete existence. Humans are incomplete existence and their intelligence and body are likely to be overtaken by artificial intelligence and robots. If the future that humans can leave offspring with robots comes, I thought that a perfect existence both as physically and intelligently will be born, therefore I made this work. This work uses the virtual reality system and the actual robot, and it is a work in which the virtual world and the real world are linked. The person who experiences this work first receives a confession of love from the robot within the VR. After that, it becomes sperm and advances toward the robot egg in VR world, and at the same time it reaches the egg fertilization which is carried out by wrapping it in the balloon and formed the ovum in the real world. In terms of acoustics, not only the voice of the robot’s utterance and navigation, but also the sound of amniotic fluid and the sound of the heart which was sent to the background, express an euphoria towards fertilization. When the person who experiences this work remove HMD goggles after fertilization, a child robot actually appears as a hybrid existence born between the human and the robot, and he/she can experience walking with the child robot holding hands. It became a work with strong message by increasing the reality of the experience by combining the VR world experience and the real experience that touches the robot in the real world. Ayaka Fujii (University of Tokyo) Shoko Kimura (Tokyo Institute of Technology) Hide Akiyama (Musashino Art University) Kyohei Kondo (Tokyo Institute of Technology) Psy39 Wataru Yasunishi (Tokyo Institute of Technology) Taisuke Yoshioka (Keio University) Kosei Yamagami (Toyohashi University of Technology)

Into the Womb

2017

I want to return to the womb I want to go prebirth I want to link with Mother I want to watch me before birth I want to float in the waters I want to be wrapped in warmth Coming to myself, I want to wander about the microcosm of womb When we go through hardships, the idea of going back before birth and being born once again comes into our minds. When we met various trials in our life, we sometimes think “If I could be born again …,” “If I could go back before I was born …”. In this work, through the VR prenatal experience of being wrapped by a big womb, you can get the feeling of before being born. It is our pleasure that this work become a trigger to regain true natural self by being wrapped in the warmth of parents through returning to the fetus and being aware of the feeling that “People are surely loved by someone.” Trigger “I want to reborn.” “I want to look at my own origin.” Since I strongly felt such emotions, I made this work. I encountered the greatest point of life at the time of suggesting this work. At that time, I strongly felt that “If I could redo my life” many times. I cornered myself to think about accidental things. At such time, I started thinking that if I could return to my mother’s womb, I might be able to lead a different life. As a result, this work was completed. This is an art work but we also want to apply this work to the field of medical engineering in the future as a device which provides relaxation to people with panic symptoms and reduces the tension. I believe that this work can provide relaxation by wrapping in warmth like mother’s affection and let the panic condition subsidence. Credit Ayaka Fujii (University of Tokyo) Shoko Kimura (Tokyo Institute of Technology) Hide Akiyama (Musashino Art University) Media 子宮VRでの胎児体験！？東大制作展（III Exibition）での「ありえない展示」のリアルに迫る