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Inside Qubibi’s Shinjuku Studio

Artist Kazumasa Teshigawara—known by the label “qubibi"—invited Peter Bauman (Monk Antony) and thefunnyguys to his Shinjuku studio, offering a rare glimpse into the quiet center of his practice. Bauman reflects on how the experience highlights key themes in the artist’s approach—contradiction, cyclicality, repetition and discovery through stillness.
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The first time it happened I was ten.
It was an accident.

The second time I meant
To last it out and not come back at all.
I rocked shut

As a seashell.
They had to call and call
And pick the worms off me like sticky pearls.

-From Sylvia Plath’s “Lady Lazarus”

Worms are contradictions—alive yet symbols of decay. Known as ミミズ [mimizu] in Japanese, worms transform, deconstructing organic forms to regenerate life. Vital to ecosystem cycles, they blur the line between death and life, challenging their polarity.

While worms are the subject of qubibi’s mimizu series, they also serve as a metaphor for his practice’s key themes: apparent contradiction, reconciliation and cyclicality. In cycles, the tension of polarity isn’t rejected but welcomed. We can’t discover the light without embracing darkness. Saying “hello world” also means saying goodbye.

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Hello

We exchange greetings on a sleepy, two-lane, tree-dotted Shinjuku street—an exhale from the breathless Shinjuku proper. It’s 2 p.m. but the sun struggles through overcast gray skies before capitulating to cavernous eight-story brick buildings.

We stand outside a ground-floor neighborhood supermarket, bicycles and shopping carts crammed outside. The five of us—qubibi, his studio manager, his translator, thefunnyguys and myself—exchange excited and polite, two-handed greetings. Offering to continue up to the studio, our hosts must have sensed a bit of hesitation or glances towards a food source.

“Do you need something else?” his manager asks.

We explain that even though it’s 2 p.m. neither of us have eaten lunch yet due to a tight Tokyo itinerary. We insist not to worry and that we should continue to the studio to stay on time. Reluctantly, they agree and lead us around the corner to a narrow Tokyo alley—where only ten meters separate four- to eight-story tiled structures, neatly generative in their cohesion yet singularity.
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World

We enter a worn, industrial elevator with gray carpeted walls and tread-plate metal floors, framed by wooden planks, fossilized by shoe prints. The lift aches upward, moaning open to reveal floor-to-ceiling iron gates a few meters ahead. Through the gates, the unfinished concrete of a shared studio space—Shinjuku Kaibutsu Studio—expands before you, covering an entire industrial building’s floor.

A quick scan behind the bars reveals floor-to-ceiling exposed concrete interrupted by a grid of pillars. An organic scene bursts from the gridded order: rows of house plants line the near wall’s windows, a rubbish bag lies beside a bucket of umbrellas and a bicycle. Large tables fill the space, denoting workstations, amid skateboards, workout equipment, and, why not, a red-and-white racing motorcycle.

Immediately left of the gate, welcoming you as you exit the lift, stands a life-sized bear statue with raised arms and bared teeth. A fetching joker's hat and ruff around the neck betray the menacing face. Demure, the bear wears a corset of colorful Christmas ornaments with two painted tears streaming down its growling face. Welcome to qubibi’s studio.

The tour begins with qubibi: “I used to have a studio somewhere else until early 2023. That was a beautiful space in a very old house—about eighty years old—and I really loved it. But because it was so old, they decided to do renovation. When they started renovating, all the mice and all these little things came out and I couldn't stay there anymore. That's how I got here. This is actually my friend's place. When I told him about my old studio, he said, ‘You can come stay at my space for a while.’”

“It looks like you’ve been here forever,” I remark before qubibi shares a literal cycle in his life.

“That's probably because I used to use this place six years ago and then I came back after six years. That's maybe why I feel so familiar. When I had my solo show in Zurich in 2018, I had the show in a museum and I made a video profile of myself. That was filmed here.”

Then, refreshments, of course. His manager brings us orange juice, tea and water, with qubibi serenely pouring them himself.

He then invites us to sit in a circle of stools and chairs beside his standing desk area. I notice the questions I’d sent him printed on a stool in English and Japanese, scrawled with handwritten notes. As we sit drinking, qubibi stands with our attention fixated on him. In front of his desk lay a wobble-balance board. “You always work standing?” thefunnyguys asks.

“For the past two years I've been standing, almost all the time,” he replies.

Ten seconds of quiet sipping pass.

“There is a big golden fish over there. Do you want to see it?”
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Fish

Yes, we want to see the fish. Qubibi brightens up around the fish.
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“Is it popular, the golden fish?” qubibi asks us. We are slightly puzzled. “There were many more before. These are the ones who are stronger; they even ate the other fish.” The fish are not so different from worms.

As we walk back to his desk, past exotic plants, haphazard items and cluttered workstations, he sometimes stops to point something out. “This is a mirror from one hundred years ago.” He confesses, “It’s a very strange place that I work in.”

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Lunch

Returning to the circle of chairs near his desk, the stools were now arranged in the middle. They were full of food, like magic.

“Pancakes, apple pie. And that’s bread with custard cream,” his manager gestures. On a stool beside these sat bento boxed lunches. “Please eat and make yourself comfortable,” qubibi implores. A bit in shock—and not for the last time—we didn’t even know how timing-wise this had all worked out. Apparently during the fish show, his manager had gone down to the supermarket. After roughly a thousand “thank yous,” “you shouldn’t haves,” and a brief time spent eating, we continue.

“Where does the tapestry come from?” Asks thefunnyguys, pointing to a three-meter tall, identifiably qubibi textile work draped against a large frame nearly reaching the ceiling.

Qubibi explains: “This is from a previous exhibition. It's printed fabric of my work. My friend who owns this place bought it and this is how he handled that work. It's not me who displayed it.”

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Music

Music is playing noticeably in the otherwise quiet space. Maybe the sound is more pronounced because it’s not your regular background music. With repetitive hand drums, it sounds like an orchestra playing while dancing around a campfire at night. We ask what he’s listening to. It’s Moondog, the eccentric, blind American avant-garde composer, known for dressing up like a Viking, living part of his life on the streets and deep admiration from contemporaries, including Charlie Parker, Janis Joplin and Philip Glass.

“It's easy to have the music going on in the background because it's a lot of repetition and not a lot of ups and downs.” Repetition and cyclicality are central to the artist's process, stretching to his revisitation of the 2010 hello world algorithm.
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I’m curious about the impact of sound on qubibi’s practice. “What other music do you expose yourself to during the creative process?”

“I basically like any type of music. I listen to all genres and all different kinds of music so it's hard for me to choose a specific genre or style. When I was a teenager, I was so into music that I was thinking it would be really nice if I could make a living working in the fields of music or sound. I felt so close to music from a very young age.”

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Textiles

And we’re off.

I continue: “Going back to this textile,” the large floor-to-ceiling one, “you’ve described mimizu as a ‘digital stitch.’ As a teenager, you worked at a textile factory. Can you tell us more about the influence of that experience on your work?”

Qubibi begins: “I can say there is influence from my younger age and the experience in the textile company and everything. But I can only say that retrospectively because I never know what I'm aiming at. I never have a goal. When I'm making work, I don't know what influences come from where. Only afterwards, I look back and think, ‘Okay, there maybe was this influence from before.’ Now I think there was an influence.”

I not so subtly prod. “When I see your mimizu work, for example, I see threadwork. It’s even more striking in a large piece like this tapestry. Your work suits the textile medium.”

He proceeds, “When I was younger, TV was the CRT screen. The RGB pixels were more apparent on the screen than LCD TVs. When I was working in that textile factory, it wasn't the factory that made the fabric itself. I did cutting and rolling or I was folding a lot. To deal with those fabrics, I needed to train for at least one year, almost like an apprenticeship to handle the fabric properly.

When you learn how to handle the fabric, you learn that every fabric is woven. It's almost like a grid. There is this certain direction that you should put your scissors in because it cuts nicely this way but might not cut nicely the other way. You learn all these minimum units that make a bigger fabric.
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That awareness of having this minimum grid—it's almost like pixels. Maybe that kind of familiarity with these units, making a bigger picture, is something that I'm very used to, something that I embody from a young age.”

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In the textile factory, the precision of woven grids and the discipline of cutting fabric prepared qubibi for the logic of digital pixels. In his generative art, these same rigid structures produce fluid, organic forms.

“Is that around when your digital practice began?” offers thefunnyguys.

“Yeah, I have been working in the digital world from my teenage years because around that time, when I was working in the textile factory at age 17, I got my first Macintosh computer. That's when I got really into creating with computers, using HyperCard and all the software that was available back then.
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Really, my start from the beginning has been in the digital realm and for music as well. 

Making music, I started off using synthesizers. It's analog but it's also combined with digital expression. I do see myself like a digital native in terms of creation.

I think my very first digital work is a pixel picture that I made in Photoshop. Back then, in the ‘90s, my motivation was to use HyperCard. The ‘90s was when in Japan we started to see this trend of ‘Oh, let's create something with computers.’ In places like Akihabara in Tokyo, you started to see computers in all these shops that are selling them for making images.

My first encounter with the idea of programming was another software that I used previously to HyperCard, which was FileMaker. That was database software that probably came out around the same time as HyperCard. I got to know that when I was about 17. It's almost like Microsoft's Office nowadays. When I looked into it, that was my first time learning the ‘if command.’ It was really eye-opening for me because nowadays it's almost common sense. When I first saw that you can command the computer by making ‘if statements,’ I thought that was really interesting.”

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Magic

A supposed contradiction in qubibi’s practice I want to unpack involves the connection between the magical and the mundane. “I wanted to ask about this trace of whimsy in your work, which has been described as magical realism similar to the literature of Haruki Murakami. Can you talk about the relationship between the magical and the mundane in your work? Do you think they’re in conflict or in harmony?”
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Qubibi’s eyes brighten as he begins.
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“The magical and the mundane strongly affect each other in my life. Sometimes I feel like I need to distance myself from reality, especially when I'm trying to create something. 

When I'm in this creation mode, if reality comes to me, it feels like it can destroy what I'm creating. I try to focus and when I do, I tend to see reality as something negative—something I want to avoid. Maybe we can say the magical world or magical place is an escape from reality. I think about the relationship or the effect that has had on me since my teens.

I used to be able to control my dreams—lucid dreaming. I can start imagining where I want to dream and then I can control it. I was doing that all the time, which gave me a lot of freedom and was really interesting. At the same time, if I imagine myself falling, I will fall in my dream and I can feel the guts going up—that very physical emotion and sensation. That made me a big insomniac at a point. If I call these dreams something non-mundane, something magical or something not ordinary, it is really strongly affecting my physical life.”

For qubibi, the magic and the mundane don’t contradict each other; they coexist and both powerfully impact his physical life. The "magical mundane-ism" on full display, in mimizu qubibi asks, "Have you ever seen a dancing worm?" He invites the viewer into his magical world.

I then ask with embarrassing directness, “How does this relate to your accidents earlier in life? How did those experiences at a young age with injuries transform your views on art? Other artists have famously been through similar experiences, like Frida Kahlo, who was then directly influenced in her Surrealist work by escaping reality.”

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Accidents

Qubibi thinks before replying.
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“Retrospectively, I think I almost wanted to have that accident. 

Of course I didn't want to get injured; I didn't want to get hurt. When I think about the result, when I make generative art and maybe also from the work that I made before generative art, it instilled a passivity in my work and about art. I try to keep that in mind all the time. That might also influence the work I make. I'm almost waiting for something to come to me.”

The artist doesn’t force creation. Instead of a binary between creating and waiting, qubibi reconciles these opposites in his process. Tree-like, he waits through cycles of passivity and inspiration. The act of pausing allows for creativity to reemerge—stillness into art—as with his revisitation of the algorithm, hello world, that he first discovered in 2010.

“I can speak in detail about all the individual accidents. I can explain how I have a metal stick stuck in my knee and everything.

The worst time was when I was in my late teens. I was hit by a truck on the street. When I was hit, I basically floated in the air. Then, I don't know why, but my neck got stuck on the rim of the window of the truck when I came down. But the truck was still running. It was my second hit and I was basically flown again. That was the most severe accident.

I think it's a really funny story, but there was this passerby who was watching the whole accident. I was told that when I hit the ground, I was covered by blood. Then apparently I stood up and I said, ‘I'm sorry,’ and then I went back to the ground again.”

Embracing the darkness, qubibi finds humor in the trauma. I have a million questions but still stunned, I only sputter, “How long were you in the hospital?”
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“It took months, almost half a year, to recover. My mom didn't want to put me in the hospital so she took me back to the house. I was just lying in my bed the whole time. The person who saw me in the accident didn't think I would survive but I somehow survived. I don't even remember getting hit because it was just a very strong impact.

I don't really remember the feeling of the other accident when I got the metal stuck in my knee. That was the one that hurt the most, though. After I first made generative art, hello world, I was very happy that I made something substantial. I was really satisfied with the work. The accident happened a few days later. I was on my bed again for quite a long time.

I started making generative art but I couldn't make a living out of it before NFTs came out. I was doing other work as well, like commercial work until about seven years ago. Around that time, I also had another accident related to something I was working on—this very popular anime called Attack on Titan.

It was a big hit and I was dreaming one night that I really was one of the Titans. I was running as a Titan on the beach and I was really excited. Then I was going to jump off the beach and everything, but when I did that, in my dream, I was physically moving. I jumped out from my window down to the garden. I was on the second floor. I was still sleeping when I jumped. I hurt myself really bad because I fell on these really pointy rocks in the garden to prevent the thieves.

I have a bald head so I was bleeding from my head but I was really too ashamed to call an ambulance or anything. There's just this middle-aged man suddenly jumping out of his window at five in the morning. My son was sleeping very peacefully beside my bed. I quietly went back to my room and then went back to bed.”

Through these heartbreaking accidents, qubibi’s relationship with art mirrors his life: moments of impact followed by cycles of stillness and renewal. We also learn his comfort level with the unknown, turning darkness, patience and randomness into a space for discovery.

Randomness

Qubibi begins showing us his work from Attack on Titan, mentioning how “if statements” and randomness are central to his creative discovery.

“I like drawing; I like making pictures, but I also like to use programming to make pictures and images move. I like to work integrally with different techniques, including sound. Randomness is another very important element for me. ‘If statements’ and randomness are the two main ideas that struck me the most. It had a huge impact when I learned about programming and all these techniques.
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By combining ‘if statements' and randomness, you can let the program create itself. You can just watch and observe. That passiveness also interested me. 

Those two things were the biggest impact on my discovery in terms of creation.”

Randomness and passivity acquire new depth of meaning when understood in the context of the artist’s traumatic accidents. We see how they shape both his life and work. Through generative systems, watching and observing, qubibi reconciles the apparent contradiction between passivity and creation.

Randomness being our favorite topic, thefunnyguys continues, “On the topic of randomness, for Bright Moments Tokyo, you created Margaret, your first long-form generative art collection. Why long form at that time? How has this changed your relationship with randomness?”

“My understanding of long form is a bit different. When I make generative art, I always use the same code, the same script. I come from a moving image background. For example, this dice is from zero to nine. If I have control over the curation, I can accept the zero as well, but if I try to incorporate the randomness into the minting process for the collectors, I cannot include the zero.
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If I try to do the long form in your definition, to have that successful outcome, I need to work with a range of numbers that can promise me to create a satisfying result. I cannot include risky numbers or numbers that are not stable, like a zero that will create nothing. I need to work within this safe range. I don't mean to be totally negative, but I do see that as a limitation.”

Again, qubibi demonstrates his comfort with darkness, embracing nothingness, the zero—even if that means working beyond a safe range.

He continues, “When I make NFT work, I need to think about the collectors who pay money for it. That limits me from thinking outside the box because I don't know the boundary in terms of what is okay for them to accept.
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I need wild things happening in my process. I need unexpected things happening in the process of making work and that actually stimulates me. That becomes my inspiration and everything. That's the dilemma between creating and responding to the expectations.”

Dice have played an outsized role in the history of creativity and chance. He’s playing with a couple in his hands. “Do you ever incorporate dice into your practice? Even hundreds of years ago, Mozart would occasionally use dice to make music. More recently, John Cage used dice.”

“Sometimes I decide my price. Yeah, yeah.”

After the room finishes bursting into laughter, we continue.

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Algorithm

“Can you tell us about discovering the hello world algorithm?” I inquire.

We see another apparent contradiction: accidental discovery. “I found the hello world algorithm by accident when I was playing with code. I was playing with code, like I can show you on Photoshop. I found it—I found the potential. I was deeply fascinated but also a bit scared, like resistance. I knew I couldn't just show this as it was. It wouldn't be art—still only phenomenon. As an artist, I had to take care of those phenomena, look at them in my own way, and connect them to myself.
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The artworks I've been creating over the last fourteen years are definitely generative art but it's also the history of how I've wrestled with algorithms. I feel like I can't lose, but I also shouldn't win.”

For qubibi, even winning and losing aren’t a binary choice. He proceeds, “Meeting 'coincidence' always gives me a shock.
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I always hope and wait for those coincidences when I make art.

But I can't just accept that as is. If I could plan for them, it means that coincidences weren't happening coincidentally. "Unexpected" makes them a coincidence. Maybe that's one of the reasons why I avoid trying to draw exactly what I've imagined. I've always tried to create artwork that absorbs a lot of my time. This process brings me to who I am now.
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I think I should make art that has a gravitational pull. 

Why? Well, everyone has a reason for making art. You guys are trying to figure it out—why I make art, right?”
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Qubibi’s reflections hint at core themes of his practice: reconciling control and surrender, accident and intention, stillness and meaning. By creating time-absorbing artwork, he echoes his desire to escape the constraints of reality—where planning and the expected can destroy creativity.

Continuing thefunnyguys asks, “Does the algorithm of Margaret also come from hello world?”

“Yeah, it’s the same algorithm,” the artist explains. He then invites us to his computer to show us something. We immediately recognize it as hello world. I ask, "Online, you have a four- to five-minute version but this is the live Infinite version.”

“Yeah, when I had the solo show in Zurich, I had this on display, so it went on generating live for over a month.”

Thefunnyguys then poses a question on many’s minds when it comes to qubibi: “What are your plans for after hello world?”

“I want that algorithm to come to me because I'm not the type of person where I can create something or find something new just because I want to do something new. I cannot really start from having a goal,” the artist reminds us.
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“I decided to work with it until I get bored. I'm not bored yet. 

With other algorithms, I think, ‘Well, if there are other algorithms that other artists make. I'm okay with it.’ I don't have to try that. Maybe in the future, there will be another encounter with something else, and then I will embrace it, but I will never know.”

The artist’s persistence in repetitively exploring the algorithm in a creative cycle of discovery underscores the deep engagement between artist and algorithm—the strength of their relationship. I jump in with another question on the minds of many: “Can you tell us how you isolate a static Margaret or a mimizu from the real-time animation of hello world?”

Qubibi reveals, “I can create a new manipulation or new version of the algorithm when I have a new name for it. So with mimizu and Margaret, the word came to me first and then I could create something new. Without it, I cannot create something. I feel like this algorithm has a lot of potential, and finding that potential is my role. If I run out of possibilities, then maybe that's the end of it. That possibility only comes to realization when I have the name.

From hello world—themed around boundaries—eventually mimizu emerged. I found there were details that hello world lacked. I have two things I want to share with you. One, I felt these details couldn't be perceived when the artwork is moving. I remember when I went to Russia, there were still people who drew pictures every day and sold them on the streets. I felt a longing and fondness for them. Another is the story of the filmmaker Jonas Mekas. He was having difficulty earning money and sold parts of his film as photographic works.
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I had been creating filmic pieces, which essentially means stacking still images to represent time. Deconstructing them back to still images seems regressive. 

I've been saved by things that steal my time, and I thought such an effect might be achievable in still imagery as well—maybe with mimizu. Selling artworks is somewhat like manual labor to me. Or, I'd like to think of it that way.”

Deconstruction, distilling moving imagery into the still—the worms were active from theoretical conception.

Qubibi changes tracks. “When I properly display this [live-animated] work in an exhibition space, the audience can watch it for hours and hours. I think they go into this state of meditation. When I see that, I feel like there are more potentials and possibilities but I don't know how many more. When I have a negative state of mind, I see it as a very vicious thing that eats up all my time.”

“I think I'm in the meditative state,” admits thefunnyguys.

Like the artist, we embrace the stillness, offering our own mobility to the dancing work.

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Influences

Getting clarity on qubibi’s influences is on my mind next. “Growing up, you read books on the avant garde and have mentioned their influence before. Do you recall what books those were? Which avant-garde movements in particular inspired you?”

Qubibi begins: “Probably outsider art—I think I have the book. It's not my favorite but these are some of the artists I like. I like them not because they are outsiders or anything, but I often find very specific rules that apply to their making process. At first, it might appear as very chaotic drawings but each of them has a very specific rule.

I originally come from the realm of experimental film. It might be completely different from what is usually considered the history of computer art. I have always loved music and used to do home recording. The record store I frequented had many films and video works.

Some artists who influenced me include Dusan Makavejev, a former Yugoslavian film director who completely shocked me with his film Sweet Movie (1974). It was as if my simple values up until the age of 17 were destroyed. It's a grotesque, vulgar, chaotic film so I don't recommend watching it but the visuals are stunning. Each shot is beautiful in its own right and yet it's all cut and pasted together in a nonsensical way.
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It seems to mean something, but it might mean nothing at all. 

This film made me feel like anything goes.” For qubibi, the grotesque and beautiful aren’t opposites but a freeing juxtaposition to explore from lived experience.

“Once you know someone like Makavejev, you end up learning about a whole host of incomprehensible film directors, like Jean-Luc Godard, Federico Fellini, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Andrei Tarkovsky and so on.”

Qubibi later sent us a detailed diagram of his influences from experimental film, which you can find below.
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He then concludes, “Since I didn't learn systematically in school, I mainly learned in a chain from the works I encountered, gaining some kind of name or keyword, and learning from there. Well, there was no internet back then. I don't know how these are influencing me. They might have become a part of me.

Techniques like Norman McLaren's scratching film to make pictures and sounds, Švankmajer and Bickford's stop-motion technique, or Yuri Norstein's technique of dissecting and moving humans part by part, I was directly influenced by them when I look back.”

Nearing—or already over—our scheduled time, we wind down. “I do have one more question,” adds thefunnyguys. “Outside of art, do you have any other passions or hobbies?”

Smiling before replying, qubibi says, “Yeah, games and video games. When I was small, I used to play the family computer. It doesn't do this anymore but back in the days, those video games, when you put the power on, the title comes up, and then if you don't do anything, it automatically plays the demo mode. It shows the demonstration of the gameplay. I really like that, and I really enjoyed watching that demo.

That's my very important experience with the games. I think games nowadays are too active, and also they involve too much subjectivity. It's different for me now. I still play games but that's the state I like.” Again, we see how repetition and stillness inform the artist's practice.

Picture taking and chants of “one, two, three” become interspersed with our conversation.
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“That relates to my impression about long form, where in hello world I also embrace this moment that it goes completely dark.”

“Okay. This way. One, two, three. One, two, three.”

“It's dark again. I really like that. Having that space for nothing, basically.”

“One, two, three.”

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Goodbye

Embracing the moment it goes completely dark gets to the center of understanding qubibi’s relationship with art. It’s the place—zero, stillness, nothingness—where both artist and worm reset, where transformation occurs, where contradictions are reconciled. Comfort in the dark also reflects his affinity for coincidence and the randomness of the unknown.

Our time with the artist is now going dark. We finish taking pictures and saying our “thank yous” and “goodbyes” to our exceptionally hospitable hosts. Qubibi returns us to the elevator, showing us out where we began. From behind the gate, we take out our camera to photograph the artist almost as he simultaneously does the same, our two worlds colliding, contradictions reconciling.

For an artist accustomed to cycles and punctuated change, a permanent end can be a challenge. Qubibi prefers a cyclicality, a fade to darkness—only to return. Saying “hello world” means saying goodbye. But also saying hello again.



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Peter Bauman (Monk Antony) is Le Random's Editor-in-Chief.

Special thanks to qubibi, thefunnyguys and the artist's team.