EXHIBITION

Keiken (経験), meaning “experience” in Japanese, is an artist collective pioneering a collaborative approach to creating immersive worlds through embodied storytelling, empathetic technologies, and deep world-building. Their work moves fluidly between games, films, installations, and performance, crafting experiences that prototype future realities. Keiken creates interconnected experiences that invite audiences to feel, connect, and transform. Their practice is research-based, and they are constantly developing tools to explore the future of experience through speculative worlds. By testing the limits of perception and lived experience, Keiken creates works that prototype the future, navigate multiple realities, and help us rethink how we can shape the world around us.

In this North American debut, the exhibition Sensory Oversoul features two of Keiken’s major installation works presented together for the first time.

Spirit Systems of Soft Knowing ༊*·˚ which debuted in 2024 is an immersive and participatory installation that explores empathetic connection and communication. A “haptic wearable womb,” which is an embodied sound and touch-led technology created by Keiken, is placed on the participant’s abdomen, becoming an artificial extension of the body. Through headphones, participants will encounter a musical composition that is connected to the vibratory sensations of the womb, and references a surrounding soundscape. The six-minute experience features underwater mammals, sandstorms, and space.

Keiken sees the wombs as “tools of consciousness” that can be used to create an empathetic connection with the unknown. The background research for the piece is based on studies by neuroscientist Paul Bach-y-Rita, that focus on expanding the senses. Bach-y-Rita discovered that the neuroplasticity of our brain allows it to be rewired. With this work, Keiken explores the hypothesis that we may be able to expand our consciousness to tune into non-verbal connections with different forms of existence that may not even be attainable on a verbal or intellectual level. With this greater ability to connect, perhaps our capacity for empathy might also grow.

First presented in 2023, Morphogenic Angels: Chapter 1 is an immersive and simulated video game installation with CGI film, set in an ever-evolving universe 1,000 years from now. Each scene experienced within it is rendered in real time, which means players are experiencing a suspended reality. Yaxu is the game’s protagonist, and the player’s avatar. Yaxu must piece together memories from other lifetimes that have been lost due to interspecies genetic experimentation. Their amnesia mirrors the player’s own state of unknowing, creating an immediate sense of disorientation. Burdened by the universe’s weight, Yaxu grapples with identity and location, oscillating between fear and panic. On a mysterious mission, they embody uncertainty—reflected in their name, derived from the Téenek word for blue and green, a swirling mix of the unknown. Some of Yaxu’s character traits include being confused and vulnerable, self-reflective, resilient and hyper-sensitive.

Throughout the game, Yaxu is introduced to a series of events designed to teach compassion and connection to the unseen, with the guidance of a mysterious and spiritual companion named Anamt’u’ul. Together, they embark on a magical adventure. Anamt’u’ul exudes a captivating presence, combining an air of authority with an ethereal, regal, and slightly animalistic quality. Although Morphogenic Angels: Chapter 1 reveals little about Anamt’u’ul, we get that sense that they are at the beginning of a profound and enduring relationship with Yaxu. Their name, derived from the Téenek word for “earthly body of the human being,” embodies the magic and profound beauty of life itself. Some of Anamt’u’ul’s character traits include being enigmatic and experienced, open-minded, adaptive, serendipitous, spiritual, and philosophical.

There are many options for experiencing this work. Visitors are invited to play the game one at a time, to simply relax and watch others play, or to view the game as it plays out like a film.

An additional space created for this exhibition offers insight into Keiken’s practice of world building, as well as insight into the characters of Morphogenic Angels: Chapter 1, behind the scenes game engine process and development information, and more, all within an otherworldly setting inspired by the landscape and scenes from the game. You are invited to take your time, to read, rest and contemplate the experiences you have had.

The presentation of Spirit Systems of Soft Knowing ༊*·˚ and Morphogenic Angels: Chapter 1 along with the addition of the “world-building” room culminates in a cohesive multi-sensory environment that reveals Keiken’s deep critical engagement with human experience in order to challenge dominant models of existence.

The word “oversoul” refers to the spiritual unity of all beings. In a “real” world which threatens our actual existence, Sensory Oversoul proposes a way to survive into the future through connection, empathy, and transformation.

Text: Cheryl Sim

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