About the artwork

The artist accompanied a robot seal on a long journey from Tokyo to the Arctic circle. The resulting multi-channel video artwork is about climate change and the relationship between humans and machines. In its slowly evolving story, the seal robot hears about damage caused by global warming to real seals living in the Arctic, conducts research, and confirms its findings at the North Pole. This artwork includes interviews with elderly people both in Japan (in Echigo-Tsumari) and in the Arctic region. The robot asks them how their lands have changed over their lifetimes.