Exhibition
Jellyfish Pavilion
Top Floor
Top Floor
Vibrations of Life
This is an open, park-like semi-outdoor playground where everyone can get excited through exhibits that engage all five senses and immersive sound experiences. It features various interactive and playful installations that use all five senses, as introduced later in this guide.
There is no single “correct” way to play, you can find your own way to enjoy it, or make music together with others in the space.
The venue also includes experience-based exhibits designed for co-creation and ensemble with many different people.
By bringing together and harmonizing everyone’s diverse ideas and creativity, you can feel the “Invigoration of Life.”
You too can be a musician! An artist! A researcher! An inventor!
Through play, feel the diverse creativity of life from around the world, recognize the many future fragments welling up inside you, and take your first step forward.
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FLOOR
01
Tree of Creation
The “Tree of Creation” stands at the center of the “Vibrations of Life” atop the hill you climb via the “Play Mountain.” It symbolizes the creativity inherent in all life and beings. About 4,600 Yoshino cedar blocks are joined in a way that can be carefully dismantled, forming a complex, gently undulating shape based on slime mold algorithms, evoking the translucent membrane of a jellyfish.
Beneath the Tree of Creation, there are three jellyfish videos provided by an aquarium and three virtual jellyfish, each producing its own sounds to contribute to the light and sound of the tree. When the jellyfish approach one another, they even create dissonance.
Moreover, when visitors interact with surrounding exhibits like “On-Shoku” or “Kaku-Mei,” those interactions influence the sound and light of the Tree of Creation and the entire Jellyfish Pavilion. Please enjoy this fantastical harmony of light and sound, co-created by the jellyfish and all of you!
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02
Middle Jellyfish: Umi-tsuki
“Middle Jellyfish: Umi-tsuki” is a trash-art installation created through a collaboration between artist NAGASAKA Mago and Producer NAKAJIMA. NAGASAKA creates art using discarded materials from slum areas in Ghana. For this project, workshops were held not only in Ghana but also in Cambodia and schools across Japan (Future Earth School), collecting PET bottle waste to form a large collaborative artwork. Each bottle is inscribed with participants’ dreams and wishes for the future. Powered by solar energy, the jellyfish structure lights up, while piano music by NAKAJIMA and NAGASAKA plays from its center.
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03
Co-Kurage
“Co-Kurage” is an interactive exhibit where visitors write their thoughts and ideas in response to various “inquiries.” At the base of the Creation Tree is a large scroll-like fabric with eight “inquiries” in both Japanese and English, each inspired by the Pavilion’s eight symbolic colors. Visitors can write their answers in any language or style around these questions. As Expo progresses, these scrolls will grow and multiply on the Creation Tree. The fabric itself is woven from discarded, colorful LAN cables into intricate designs by textile coordinator/designer ANDO Yoko and her team.
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04
Kaku-Mei
A monument composed of 910 equilateral triangles where mathematics, life, and art intersect. The Kaku-Mei play unique sounds alongside organic light patterns generated from reaction-diffusion equations (the Gray-Scott Model). The patterns and lights even change when placing your hand over the Kaku-Mei, almost like you are "playing" the equation! Even more, the Tree of Creation responds with the movement of the pavilion, including the Kaku-Mei, like a symphony of creation with a living thing. Enjoy the strange pattern and sounds interwoven with Mathematics, Life, and Art!
*The equilateral triangles are created from recycled egg trays and PET bottle caps via thermal recycling.
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05
On-Shoku
“On-Shoku” is an instrument that generates sound, light, and vibration when you press its soft, slime-like gel surface on a table. Located under the Creation Tree in various sizes, it invites visitors to co-create with friends or even strangers they meet on the spot. Playing together can even affect the heartbeat of the Creation Tree itself. Enjoy this immersive experience of music and sound through touch, light, and vibration.
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06
Gochamaze Orchestra
“Gochamaze Orchestra” is a music playground using Augmented Reality (AR), built on the concept that “everyone is a musician, and everything is a musical seed (instrument)!” By showing various cards with pictures or drawings to a magic camera, sounds burst from the monitor as if they’re playing together. For example, showing a piano, bass, and cow card will make them jam like a real band. Even if you can't play an instrument, you can enjoy spontaneous jam sessions with others, experimenting with echo effects, slow-motion, and more. There are also special Kurage JAM cards, greetings in many languages, cards with funny hats or festival scenes, offering playful ways to reveal unseen, unheard worlds. Become a musician and enjoy creating with all kinds of life!
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07
Jellyfish WAVE
“Jellyfish WAVE” is a monitor-based exhibit where you can see the invisible jellyfish pulsing beneath the "Tree of Creation." These six jellyfish (three from aquarium footage and three virtual jellyfish) are unseen but produce unique sounds and swim beneath the Tree, their movements shaping the Pavilion’s overall sound and light. The monitor visualizes where they're drifting and what kinds of waves (sound and light) they generate. You can even see them react to nearby sounds or installations like On-Shoku and Kaku-Mei.
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08
Piano of Hope
The “Piano of Hope” is a CFX street piano (available for limited playing times) wrapped in artwork of around 900 jellyfish drawn by children aged 0–120 from around Japan and the world. Many participants were children in hospitals who couldn’t visit Expo themselves, their fragments of creativity are all gathered here.
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09
Revived Organ
The “Revived Organ” is an interactive installation made from dismantled, discarded PC parts from homes and offices across Japan. Components like keyboards, memory sticks, circuit boards, CPUs, monitors, and cables have been reborn to give new life to what was once trash. By stepping on a foot pedal (or pressing with your hands or feet in any way you like), you can make sounds using fans salvaged from old PCs. It was created so people of all ages and genders can enjoy performing while reflecting on the “Cycle of Life” and the importance of proper PC recycling.
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10
Mozambique Weapons Art “Man playing the Timbila”
“Weapon Art” is art created from decommissioned weapons in Mozambique, symbolizing a prayer for peace. After the civil war, which is said to have produced Africa’s first “child soldiers” in 1992, citizens began collecting and exchanging leftover weapons for essential goods while promoting peace education. 95% of the collected weapons are destroyed, but around 5% are cut apart and turned into artworks by local artists to advocate peace. (Based on material from the NGO Shikoku Global Network’s “Weapons into Art” project.) At the Jellyfish Pavilion, with support from Shikoku Global Network, the “Timbila Player” Weapon Art and an actual mini-Timbila (Mozambique’s oldest type of xylophone) are on display.
Artist: Cristovao Caniavato (Kester)
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11
Rejoicing Wall
The “Rejoicing Wall” is made of countless tiles created by children and teachers from all over Japan and the world, people with disabilities, elders in nursing homes, and many others, all based on the theme of “Life” and “Invigorating Lives.” It stands watching over the “Playground of Life: Jellyfish Pavilion” as a testament to these heartfelt expressions. Some tiles have jellyfish drawings that, when scanned with the dedicated app, reveal AR jellyfish and videos from the approximately 40 schools that created them. Enjoy exploring everyone’s feelings about life in many dimensions!
Top Floor
To the top floor,
up the slope of playPlay Mountain
This is a sensory “play hill” that you climb to reach the “Playground of Life” area on top. It’s designed so that as you climb, you naturally return to a childlike, playful mindset: a prologue to the Jellyfish Pavilion experience. Along the way, you can explore quirky installations like the wiggly “FULUto,” the cheese-like “OKArina,” and the white sittable “beISU,” perfect for taking detours and lingering. There’s even a "Curtain of Earth and Water” with flowing water and beautiful sound where you can stop for a relaxing break.
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12
FULUto
“FULUto,” found partway up the Pavilion’s Play Mountain, is an installation designed by students from architect KOBORI Tetsuo’s seminar at Hosei University. Its odd, wiggly shapes look like they sprout from the ground, and when blown by the wind or touched, they ring with delightful bell-like sounds. Give it a shake and enjoy the music of FULUto!
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13
Jellyfish Sundial
For around 500 million years, jellyfish have drifted gently through the oceans, embodying the origins of life, growth, and evolution. The sundial is humanity’s oldest timepiece, letting us know time through the sun: our ultimate source of life. The cycles of time it reveals have continued unchanged since before humans existed, nurturing countless forms of life. Through the “Jellyfish Sundial,” visitors are invited to reflect on life, evolution, and creativity. Stand there and feel the ancient connection of life itself, tied to the unchanging movement of the sun that has always shone on us.
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14
Curtain of Earth and Water
This installation features a “curtain” of clay bars made from six historic Japanese kilns (Echizen, Seto, Tokoname, Shigaraki, Tamba, Bizen), showcasing their unique ceramic styles. Children’s signatures are hidden on the back of the tiles. Water flows through it, offering visitors a refreshing, rippling sound and a cool, welcoming atmosphere.
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15
Persistent Left Arrow
This is a mathematical optical illusion artwork by famous Meiji University mathematician SUGIHARA Kokichi. No matter how you turn it, the arrow always appears to point left. Hunt for it around the Pavilion, turn it, and try looking at it from the other side—it’s sure to surprise you!
Jellyfish Pavilion
Basement Floor
Reservation-Only Area
Basement
The Roots of Life
“The Roots of Life” is an underground area beneath the "Tree of Creation." In the dim space “Listen to Myself,” visitors immerse themselves in sounds from around the world and confront their own senses. It culminates in “Celebrate Myself,” a 360-degree audio-visual journey with jellyfish, where you experience global festivals and performing arts, ending by walking and dancing yourself to elevate your life. Unlike the open, playful “Playground of Life” upstairs, “The Roots of Life” is a space focused on discovering and drawing out the creativity hidden within you.
Basement 01
Listen to Myself
This dim underground space within the “Roots of Life” is designed for visitors to sharpen their senses and fully experience sound with their whole bodies. Field recordings curated by YANAGISAWA Eisuke (sound culture researcher and field recording artist, known for work on Vietnam’s gong culture) combine with collaboration from Producer NAKAJIMA, the KURAGE Team, and Dai Nippon Printing to create a multi-layered sonic environment with sounds from all over the world. Sit among the roots, feel their subtle vibrations, and simply listen. There's no set choreography, just time to face inward and sharpen your awareness. The sound experience even varies depending on where you sit. You'll hear everything from Aeolian harp and underwater sounds to ultrasonic bat calls transformed into audible frequencies, as well as the forest sounds of Hokkaido’s Memu, fires on Sado Island, and frog calls from Vietnam, ending with a circle of gongs that surrounds you.
Basement 02
Celebrate Myself
This is the final stop within the “Roots of Life,” an immersive 360-degree audio-visual experience that takes you on a journey of life with the jellyfish. Participants can feel their life force rising through interactive, embodied participation. The first half features play with jellyfish drawn by children and ancient jellyfish forms, traveling through awe-inspiring natural landscapes that evoke universal creativity. Thanks to collaboration with the National Museum of Ethnology, the second half introduces masks from cultures around the world. Visitors also experience creative festivals from Japan (including Ainu traditions) and three other countries (five of 17 versions chosen at random each time), finishing with everyone walking and dancing together. At least two live musicians accompany the immersive visuals, performing improvisational versions of “Journey of Life” (composed by NAKAJIMA, performed by the KURAGE Band Special), turning the entire space into a new, collective festival celebrating all life.
Basement 03
3D Jellyfish
At the start of the “Celebrate Myself” stage, a 3D jellyfish appears, projected by the "brightvox system." This jellyfish responds to sound, drifting and pulsing in three dimensions in sync with the music.
