Curator in Conversation | JIZAI Body Project

What does it mean to redesign the human body?

This is the central question animating the Inami JIZAI Body Project, a collaborative research initiative based at the University of Tokyo that brings together robotics, cognitive psychology, haptic feedback, and industrial design to explore the outermost edges of human augmentation.

For NCM's exhibition FRIEND, which investigates the intimate relationships between humans and machines, Senior Curator Jemimah Widdicombe sat down with three members of the project team to discuss their work. Dr Azumi Maekawa is a Project Lecturer at the Research Centre for Advanced Science and Technology (RCAST) at the University of Tokyo, whose research explores the boundaries between humans and artefacts; Dr Mitsuru Muramatsu is a designer and design engineer at Takram who contributed to the development of the JIZAI ARMS; and Fumiya Nakano is a designer and engineer at the Institute of Industrial Science at the University of Tokyo, who has accompanied the project to exhibitions around the world.

In their conversation, they explore what "jizai" — a Japanese concept meaning to act freely, by one's own will — really means in practice, and why a project about extra limbs is as much about the mind as it is about mechanics. The team reflects on questions of aesthetics and the uncanny, on the challenge of control, and on what it feels like, emotionally and psychologically, to wear a body that has been expanded beyond its biological limits. They also consider where this technology is heading, and what a future shaped by augmentation might look like for all of us.

The JIZAI Body Project is led by Professor Masahiko Inami at the Research Centre for Advanced Science and Technology (RCAST), the University of Tokyo. The project brings together researchers, designers, and engineers to develop wearable robotic technologies that augment the human body — most notably through the addition of extra limbs that operate alongside, and in coordination with, the wearer's own movements. Central to the research is the concept of "jizai-ness": the idea that technology can expand what the body is capable of while remaining intuitive and responsive to human intention. As much as it is an engineering project, it is also an inquiry into embodiment, how the body shapes the mind and how changing the body might change the way we think, feel, and relate to the world around us.