Rio Nakada
Media Artist
Embedded Files
Works
Tactus
Selected for the Agency for Cultural Affairs' Media Arts Creator Development Project
The Society for Art and Science, NICOGRAPH2024 Demo Exhibition Award
Nox
Selected for the CineMart "Lightroom" section at the International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR)
Selected for the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) "So-Fu" Project for two consecutive years
Beyond the Frame Festival 2026
Biography
Rio Nakada (Photographed by Kaoru Ijima)
Born in 2007.rio264575@gmail.com Nakada is a Japanese artist, filmmaker, and creative technologist whose work explores perception, consciousness, memory, and embodied experience through immersive technologies.
Drawing from both personal experience and interdisciplinary research, Nakada creates XR works that investigate the fragile boundaries between reality and imagination, self and environment, presence and absence. Her practice combines storytelling, interactive design, human-computer interaction, and emerging technologies to transform invisible psychological and sensory experiences into shared spaces that audiences can physically encounter.
Working across virtual reality, mixed reality, spatial computing, and sensory interfaces, she is particularly interested in how technology can reveal aspects of human experience that are difficult to communicate through language alone. Her projects often explore themes of perception, dissociation, touch, memory, and the relationship between body and mind.
Nakada's work has been presented internationally through film festivals, academic conferences, and media art platforms. Her XR documentary Nox was selected for CineMart Lightroom at the International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR), while her mixed reality research project Tactus received the Demo Exhibition Award at Nicograph and was later exhibited by invitation at CEDEC.
In 2022, she became the first Japanese female and youngest recipient of the Apple WWDC Swift Student Challenge. Her work has also been supported by initiatives of Japan's Agency for Cultural Affairs and the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry.
Currently studying at Keio University’s Faculty of Environment and Information Studies (SFC), Nakada continues to develop new forms of immersive storytelling and sensory expression at the intersection of art, technology, and human perception.
Awards & Grants
Jan 2026 | Official Selection, CineMart "Lightroom" Section, 55th International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR) — Nox
Jan 2026 | Finalist, Art & New Media Category, NEXT YOUNG ARTIST AWARD 2025 (NYAA 2025) — Tactus v4
Nov 2025 | Excellence Award (Student Category), AIxR CREATIVE AWARD 2025 — Nox
Jun 2025 | Selected, "So-Fu" Creator & Entertainment Startup Creation Program, Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) — Nox
Nov 2024 | Demo Exhibition Award, NICOGRAPH 2024, The Society for Art and Science — Tactus v3
Jul 2024 | Crowdfunding Success: 1,576,500 JPY raised (130 backers) — Tactus
Jun 2024 | Selected, "So-Fu" Digital Creator Talent Development Program, Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) — Nox
Aug 2023 | Selected, Media Arts Creator Development Project, Agency for Cultural Affairs (Bunka-cho) — Tactus v2
May 2022 | Winner, Apple WWDC22 Swift Student Challenge — KIMONO AR
Exhibitions & Presentations
Mar 2026 | Beyond the Frame Festival in Tokyo University of the Arts (Invited)
Feb 2026 | METI "So-Fu" Final Showcase, Akihabara UDX Theater
Nov 2025 | Solo Exhibition: Nox, Daikanyama Hillside Terrace
Nov 2025 | Solo Exhibition: Dissolving Contours, Filling Water, Daikanyama Hillside Terrace
Nov 2025 | Asia-Pacific Mensa Gathering (Invited)
Nov 2025 | AIxR CREATIVE AWARD 2025, DNP Plaza
Jul 2025 | CEDEC 2025, Academic Research (AC) Interactive Session (Invited)
Feb 2025 | METI "So-Fu" Final Showcase, Akihabara UDX Theater
Feb 2025 | Sumitomo Corporation MIRAI LAB PALLET (Invited)
Nov 2024 | NICOGRAPH 2024
Oct 2024 | Beyond the Frame Festival
Oct 2024 | Solo Exhibition: Tactus: Echoes in the Flow
Feb 2024 | ENCOUNTERS, Omotesando Hills
Statement
I am an artist working across drawing, moving image, interactive media, and emerging technologies.
Beginning from my own lived experiences, I explore perception, embodiment, memory, and the fragile boundaries between inner and outer worlds. My practice investigates how sensations, emotions, and states of consciousness can be translated into forms that others can encounter and experience.
Drawing occupies a central place in my work. Through automatic and intuitive mark-making, I record thoughts and feelings that emerge before language—not as illustrations of experience, but as the raw traces of perception itself.
Alongside this, I develop interactive and immersive works that transform personal experience into shared spaces. By combining artistic expression with technology, I seek new ways to make invisible phenomena tangible and create encounters that challenge conventional understandings of reality.
My work is driven by unresolved tensions: between profound existential struggle and an irrepressible desire to find beauty in the world. I am drawn to the friction that emerges between opposing forces—pain and hope, fragility and resilience, solitude and connection.
Through both analogue and digital forms, I continue to explore how perception shapes our understanding of ourselves and the world, and how art can open pathways toward experiences that are otherwise difficult to see, describe, or share.
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