Yoshinari Nishiki
Yoshinari Nishiki has been questioning the efficiency of money as a driving force behind the world's operations. As a barefoot practitioner working at the intersection of art and technology, he has explored issues related to work ethic, resource modes, logistics systems, and supply chains. His projects include the infinite multiplication of bananas (Banana Multiplier, 2013), randomly distributed digital coins exchangeable for free ice cream (Pickcoin, 2016), single-handedly rolling a full-scale 1:1 shipping container without external energy sources (Panjancontainer, 2019), and producing a premium energy drink from waste materials (EROI Drink, 2022), among others.
Since October 2024, Yoshinari has been pursuing an engineering PhD focused on "(un)making," a potential new general mode of production. His research aims to establish the so-called "(un)made certificate," a concept intended to replace high-value ecolabels on quality products.
Session
In this talk, an advocate of (un)making, Yoshinari Nishiki, dives into the historical foundation of the concept. Starting from the Maker movement, transitioning to Critical Making, evolving into unmaking, and culminating in (un)making, Yoshinari emphasizes a process defined by the deliberate absence of production, where (un)making itself embodies the act of not producing. Unmaking is a newly emerged term in the fields of HCI and design that references the idea of unlearning. In unmaking, researchers have explored the realms of making beyond the pursuit of plastic perfection: one prominent study investigated the aesthetics found in the processes of decay in 3D-printed objects. In (un)making, however—a variant of unmaking—Yoshinari attempts to step away from production itself while still generating monetary value.