Born in 1996. Mr. Sakuma has been engaged in the research on the new form of communication using avatars and agents at Osaka University. At Expo 2025 Osaka, Kansai, Japan, he is in charge of the exhibition "Future Virtual Being" as a director of Osaka Pavilion. He is also a principal investigator of the research on the design of future societies, a joint research project between Osaka University and the Japan Science and Technology Agency. In addition to his current position as a chairperson of Shape New World Committee, Osaka Chamber of Commerce and Industry and he is also a member of Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of Japan. In 2021, he was appointed as a team leader for a research study on the Moonshot Research and Development Program. He was selected as one of the Forbes 30 Under 30 Japan 2023 and is a recipient of the Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology Award of the Japan Open Innovation Prize.

Joseph Lee is a choreographer, performer, and performance curator based in Hong Kong. Lee graduated from the Chinese University of Hong Kong and The Place, London Contemporary Dance School and was appointed as the Artistic Director of Unlock Dancing Plaza in 2022. Lee’s curatorial work focuses on the unheralded aspects of the local contemporary dance culture, such as the production, archive, and dissemination of knowledge in the creative process, the dialogue between cross-cultural contexts and cross-artistic mediums, such as residency-based dance festivals #DANCELESS complex, and Unlock Body Lab: Open Research Week of the co-learning platform, etc., in an attempt to broaden the creation perspective on the body as the main medium. His recent curatorial project #DANCELESS complex 2026 attempts to create a translocal network for contemporary performance within Asia Pacific to raise the visibility and sustainability of the artists in this region. Lee is active in creating works around pop culture, queer body, physical labor, and the overlap and gap between dance and its images. Lee’s choreographic works have been toured in the UK, Germany, Japan, Australia, South Korea, Shanghai, and Beijing, and his video works has been selected and screened at prestigious experimental film festival such as EXiS in Seoul, Image Forum Festival in Japan and South Taiwan Film Festival and so on. Lee is the recipient of the Award for Young Artist presented by the Hong Kong Arts Development Council in 2017.

Prior to his postdoctoral appointment at The Department of Comparative Thought and Literature, Chris was a Blakemore Freeman Fellow in 2020-2021, a Japan Society for the Promotion of Science visiting research fellow at the University of Tokyo in 2021-2022, and, most recently, an AGHI graduate research fellow in 2023-2024. Chris completed his PhD in Comparative Thought and Literature with a certificate in film and media at Johns Hopkins University and holds a BA in Philosophy from Yale University. His current project investigates the production of novel concepts of artificial humanity—human-constructed humans—and animacy in 20th-century Japan. His comparative research interests focus on the history and theory of animated media (broadly conceived) in relation to modernism, visual culture, world cinema, and the history of technology.

Born in 1995 in Fukuoka, Japan. Spent ages 8 to 18 living in Canada and Hawaii. Returned to Japan for university and graduated from Musashino Art University in 2018 with a degree in Oil Painting. After working as a curator at an art gallery, joined Aww Inc. in 2020, a company specializing in virtual humans. Selected as a Forbes JAPAN 30 UNDER 30 honoree in the Science, Technology & Local category in 2023. In April 2024, gave a TED Talk titled “The Rise of Virtual Humans — and What They Mean for the Future” at TED Conferences.

A girl with enigmatic eyes who likes to sing Japanese, English, and Korean songs. With a mysterious voice that combines transparency and luster, she is a next-generation virtual singer with the potential to cross genres and borders.