Data Pilgrims is a series of artworks by Emi Kusano that explores mythological pilgrimages through digital spaces, created in collaboration with AI.
Human societies have always bonded through shared stories and collective fictions. The imaginary frameworks of myths, religions, and social norms— have enabled us to cooperate on a massive scale. But today, the abundance of information threatens to overwhelm rather than unite us. In Data Pilgrims, Kusano visualizes this tension by drawing on motifs from Japanese mythology—including spirits (kami), yokai, drifting souls, and anonymous crowds—reimagined through a contemporary take on traditional ukiyo-e aesthetics.
The works are created through repeated cycles of AI image regeneration and recombination, which cause the images to "hallucinate"—distorting original meanings and generating entirely new visual realities. By revealing this iterative and transformative process, the series highlights both the creative potential and the existential risks of artificial intelligence. Information, depending on how it is used, can either illuminate or mislead, clarify or confuse.
Anonymous pilgrims traverse these virtual landscapes, stepping into the fragile yet sacred domain of the glitch—where prayers become data, souls are archived, and faith itself is rewritten by algorithms.
