Shunsuke Takawo

Shunsuke Takawo is an artist, creative coder, and educator who was born in Japan in 1981. He studied photography at Kyushu Sangyo University during the transitional period from analogue to digital media, an experience that sharpened his sensitivity to color, texture, and detail. He later attended the Institute of Advanced Media Arts and Sciences (IAMAS) in Ōgaki, where he earned his master’s degree and developed his focus on digital images and creative coding. Takawo is Associate Professor in the Department of Media Expression at Konan Women’s University as well as founder and director of the Japan Generative Art Foundation, through which he promotes generative art in Japan and abroad.

His practice centers on daily coding, a discipline he approaches as a poetic activity rather than a result-oriented task. For Takawo, programming is a way of weaving everyday life into art, attentive to small, unplanned discoveries rather than predetermined outcomes. This perspective reflects his background in photography, where close attention to detail and variation guides his approach to generative systems. He created the social media project #takawo杯, a large-scale online pun contest using IT and technology terms that drew over a thousand participants and highlighted his skill for building playful, engaged communities. In 2021 he launched Generativemasks, a landmark generative NFT collection of 10,000 unique algorithmically generated pieces. The project sold out in less than two hours, generated thousands of ETH in trading volume, and fostered a vibrant collector community. Each mask changes color when refreshed on OpenSea, and proceeds from the project were donated to organizations including the Processing Foundation, reinforcing his belief in software literacy and shared creative tools.

Takawo has exhibited internationally, including participation in NODE20 in Frankfurt, where he contributed to GreenHouse NAXOS, the Choreographic Coding Lab, and the festival Second Nature. He has presented his work in academic and cultural contexts, notably at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts in 2023, where he spoke about daily coding and the role of generative systems in education. Takawo has helped to advance the future of generative art by serving on the selection committee for the 25th Japan Media Arts Festival and directing blockchain-focused programs at Civic Creative Base Tokyo.