Gil Kuno Combines Nature, Technology and the Arts to Create Breathtaking Work

We often view the natural world as something mystifying and beautiful in spite of its unjust cruelty. Artist Gil Kuno attempts to incorporate this reality into interdisciplinary artwork. Kuno’s work represents beauty in chaos, following the Japanese concept of Wabi-Sabi. Kuno’s unique method of combining space, sound, and technology invites his audiences to interact more immersively with his work. Gil Kuno’s innovative exploration of the intersection of the arts, technology, and the environment implores his audience to come at art from a new angle, relating to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals of Life on Land and Industry, Innovation, and Infrastructure.

We had the opportunity to speak to Gil Kuno about his background as an artist. Gil Kuno’s artistry stems from his unique cultural background. Kuno was born in the United States and moved to Japan when he was 19. While reminiscing on his passion for the arts, he shared how his father taught him to draw. Kuno's leap into creating art started with him using HTML and Flash, making his first digital artwork called Unsound (1994). Through his site, audiences can combine images and sounds, request the creation of ‘QuickTime Films,’ and more, creating a fully collaborative artistic environment through interactive artworks.

\In an era of futurism, Gil Kuno’s approach to creativity showcases an innovative method of audience and artist collaboration, which has caught the eye of thinkers like Timothy Leary, who wrote about Kuno and his work on Unsound: “This is a breakthrough I have been hoping for. This is a meta-interactivity because the viewer can become creative with sound and vision, in real time, interacting with other constructors. This is the future."

2025 marks the 30th year of Gil Kuno’s artistic journey. His innovative works demonstrate a variety of themes and environments. Kuno explores the concept of interactive sound and sight in many of his projects, from collaborative performances in physical venues to Kuno’s digital band, Wiggle. Kuno encourages his audience to interact with his work through a different perspective.

Many of his works also represent his interest in underground subcultures. Kuno states that many of the artworks that he finds interesting have a balance of subcultural expression while being mainstream enough for audiences to understand. In his work, Pogophonic, Kuno creates a composition where the instrument is a pogo stick, collaborating with the Guinness World Record holder for Highest Jump using a Pogo Stick to create unique compositions. In his other work, NAMIURA, Kuno used electromagnetic technology and flip dots to visualize and emulate different natural sounds inspired by The Great Wave of Kanagawa (c. 1831) by Hokusai.

Much of Gil Kuno’s body of work emulates natural environments. Much of his work attempts to create aleatoric systems. He also works with the chaos of nature, the beauty of which can be attributed to its randomness and imperfection, as philosophized in the Japanese Wabi-Sabi.  In his installation, The Antmaster, Kuno turned a big storefront into an ant farm using projection technology over a painted background, combining dynamic and static media to showcase the intricacies of ant societies. Kuno reflects on this piece, discussing the elements of karma integrated within it. The ants reflect the way societies function, as our lives are often defined by rules of culture and social systems.

When asked about the environmental themes within his work, Kuno reflects on his Japanese heritage and the Japanese cultural relationships with nature. Japanese culture is heavily integrated with nature and spirituality, as the native Shinto religion teaches that the ever-present kami (spirits) bind the Japanese to their environment. “We are in nature and vice versa, so I think it’s smarter to live amongst nature instead of against it.”

Themes of interactivity and the human’s relationship with nature are also present in Kuno’s more explicitly environmental works. When asked about how the audience reacts to his interactive pieces, Kuno reflects on the emotional reaction the audience had when viewing his waterfall piece and that their response was as a result of its beauty. 

Kuno encourages the audience to create an image in their mind when viewing his work, immersing themselves in the image by filling in the empty areas between the dots. In this way, the audience can experience the various sensory elements of the piece: the sound that the work creates, the visual appearance, and the feeling the art evokes when touched. Kuno states that the more senses you can trigger, the more the audience can relate to the piece as a whole. 

Gil Kuno’s work allows his audience to immerse themselves in environments through new sensory methods. His use of technology, both retro and futuristic, pushes the boundaries of the relationship between the arts and technology. This, in turn, creates an intricate relationship between sensory elements and the audience. This is a remarkable feat in creating aleatoric systems through organized chaos.