Takakurakazuki Builds Walter Benjamin Machine for Oni Kappa

Takakurakazuki is premiering a new "Walter Benjamin Machine" stage of the game Oni Kappa and the Giant of Knowledge in a group show at ISLAND in Shibuya, Tokyo, which opens Oct. 17 and runs through Nov. 1. Beside it stands a sculpted statue of the Walter Benjamin Machine, which the artist's announcement calls a "Buddhist statue (?)."

The first stage, Oni Kappa and the Giant of Knowledge: 001_Descartes Machine, came out free on itch.io in May. Players switch between an oni and a kappa, travel through the body of a giant built on René Descartes, fire "fumu fumu" agreement bullets and collect four philosophy fragments to weaken the boss. Takakurakazuki drew the pixel art and made the music; an essay on note says the code was written with Claude Code and OpenAI Codex.

NEW MEDIA / NEW TECHNOLOGY / NEW ARTISTS is curated by Yoshidayama and organized by ArtFanders. It opened in Fukuoka in May and traveled to Seoul in August. The Tokyo show also includes Kenta Cobayashi, known for photographs stretched with Photoshop's smudge tool; Myoji Namae, who makes installations about the body and sexuality; the painter Shunsuke Saiki; and the Fukuoka programmer Aoi Ito. The opening reception, Oct. 17 from 6 to 8 p.m., is free.

Takakurakazuki, born in Yamanashi in 1987, works under the motto "PLAY = PRAY," draws on Esoteric Buddhism and had a solo show, Mechareal, at the Yamanashi Prefectural Museum of Art in 2023.

For more reading, see Takakurakazuki Puts a Game Inside a Buddhist Altar in Arles, Takakurakazuki Debuts Ghost Gion Matsuri at PAC-MAN Show and the artist's site.