What is Digital Nature?

A worldview put forward since around 2015 by the media artist and researcher Yoichi Ochiai. It refers to a state in which computers stop being tools inside screens and merge with light, sound, objects and bodies to become an environment like "nature". A text under Ochiai's name says it parts ways with Plurality over whether humans or the environment take the lead.

Today we use computers through the "screens" of smartphones and laptops. But what if computers leapt out of the screen and melted into our surroundings, like air, light or sound? "Digital Nature" is a term for thinking about how to understand such a world and how to live in it. In Japan, it is sometimes discussed in comparison with Plurality.

In short

Digital Nature (計算機自然, literally "computational nature") is a term of Yoichi Ochiai, a Japanese media artist and researcher. It refers to a state in which computers stop being "tools" inside screens and become the "environment" around us itself, like air or a forest [1].

It is also the name of a question: how to live in a world where the boundaries between people and machines, and between the natural and the artificial, have become blurred [2].

For example

Research on levitating objects with sound (2010s). Ochiai has done research on using sound waves to float small objects in the air and move them. An essay under Ochiai's name looks back on this as an engineering realization of the idea of releasing information that had been confined to screens into real space: the stage at which computation leaves the screen and can be felt as sound, light, air and touch [2][1].

The null² pavilion at Expo 2025 Osaka, Kansai (2025). The pavilion null² ("nullnull") created by Ochiai combined mirrored architecture, digitization of visitors' bodies, and generative AI (AI that produces text and images). An English essay under Ochiai's name treats it as a case of letting many people experience Digital Nature. According to the record, about 580,000 people went through the experience inside [1].

Conversations with Audrey Tang (2025 and 2026). On May 6, 2025, Ochiai held a conversation with Audrey Tang at Yasuda Auditorium of the University of Tokyo. Just before that, Ochiai published a memo discussing what Digital Nature and Plurality have in common and where they differ [3]. In March 2026, the two talked again on the program WEEKLY OCHIAI [4].

In more detail

Origin and definition

According to an essay under Ochiai's name, computational nature was first set out systematically in the 2015 book 魔法の世紀 (roughly, "The century of magic"). It was reworked further in the 2018 book デジタルネイチャー (Digital Nature) [2][5]. Its core, the essay says, is to build a new relationship between the physical world and the virtual world, in a world where computers and nature can no longer be told apart, and to bridge what can be computed and what cannot [2].

A 2026 English essay under Ochiai's name gives its shortest definition as a state in which computation stops being an external tool and becomes a living, organism-like layer dissolved into senses, objects, memories, bodies, rituals and human relationships [1].

Ten years of change

The same essay says that the thinking behind Digital Nature has changed over ten years, and divides it into five stages [1].

A stage of giving computation physical form (such as research on levitating objects with sound)
A stage in which the boundary between the natural and the artificial dissolves
A stage of using it in society as technology that supports disability and bodily diversity
A stage turning toward the Expo's null², mingei (the beauty of everyday tools) and ritual
A stage of "digital fermentation" after generative AI

The 2026 book マタギドライヴ (roughly, "Matagi drive") takes inspiration from the Matagi, traditional hunters of Japan's Tohoku region. It is described as the stage of advocating a way of living with the "forest of AI" that does not take too much and keeps relationships intact [2][1].

Note: texts written with AI's help

The 2025–2026 essays by Ochiai cited in this article (texts on note.com and Medium) appear to have been written in the form of papers with the help of AI [3][2][1]. Because they were published under Ochiai's name, they are presented here as Ochiai's claims, but this article calls them "essays under Ochiai's name" and distinguishes them from what Ochiai said in person in conversations.

The fermentation metaphor

On WEEKLY OCHIAI, Ochiai used the example of making sake, tea or cheese: "We don't control biological molecules or even genes. We control the environment itself, but we cannot control each agent. Getting along with nature is making the environment, and inside it, every agent happens" [4].

Tang took this up and rephrased it: "So this is what I call 'AI in the loop of communities,' not 'human in the loop of AI'" [4]. This idea also connects to Tang's vision of Kami (small AIs that serve only one place or group).

What is debated

Criticism as "dreamlike and dangerous". The philosopher Hiroki Azuma once criticized Ochiai's arguments as dreamlike and dangerous. The two's first conversation, on WEEKLY OCHIAI in January 2023, was held in response to that criticism (according to the program's title) [6]. In a 2023 interview, Azuma referred to Ochiai-style "AI + BI (basic income)" thinking (according to an editor's note, in Digital Nature Ochiai describes a future society split into a layer of AI and investors (venture capitalists) and a layer living on AI and a minimum payment, a basic income). Azuma said that unless we devise a system of many small societies so that the people living on the payment can still live stably, society will certainly become unstable [7].
Dangers the essay itself names. The English essay under Ochiai's name itself lists several dangers: that calling computation "nature" or "magic" hides the labor, electricity, surveillance and flows of money behind it; that it gets absorbed by huge internet companies as a matter of visual beauty; that Eastern thought gets used as decoration; and that the burden of the electricity and water AI uses gets normalized like unavoidable weather. If that happened, it writes, Digital Nature would have failed by its own standards [1].
It is not the same idea as Plurality. The two arise from the same currents in technology and seem similar, but the deeper you dig, the clearer the differences become, the memo under Ochiai's name writes [3].

Where it fits in Plurality

Digital Nature does not appear in the book Plurality. The points of contact are the conversations between Ochiai and Tang, and Ochiai's own essays [3][4].

A comparison in the memo under Ochiai's name (May 2025). The memo published before the conversation (a text that refers to Ochiai in the third person and appears to have been written with AI's help) lists three things in common: a fundamental endorsement of open source; seeing technology as the foundation for designing society itself; and recognizing the limits of modern human-centered thinking [3].

The differences, the memo says, come down to a single question. Should society hand the leading role to the environment (nature = computers), with humans becoming part of the environment? Or should humans take the lead and keep adjusting the environment? The memo sorted Ochiai's side as an algorithm-led (led by calculation procedures) picture "after democracy", and Tang's side as a democracy that builds agreement through dialogue among people [3].

An attendee's record. One attendee at the conversation described the difference between the two like this. Ochiai starts from the view that the world becomes Digital Nature even if humans do nothing active. Tang starts from wanting a society in which humans can actively steer AI, even if AI evolves naturally. The writer adds, however, that this may be a loose paraphrase [8].

In Hirokazu Nishio's record of the day, Tang said, in effect, that humans should not step on the brake to slow down, but show a desirable direction with the steering wheel. Ochiai posed a question to the effect that Digital Nature is not something one "does" with an ideology but something the world "becomes", and asked what meaning democracy could have at that point [9].

"Nature" in Chinese and in Japanese. On WEEKLY OCHIAI, the difference between the Chinese and Japanese words for "nature" (ziran and shizen) came up. Tang quoted a passage from the Daodejing and replied: "it's basically saying conflict is a source of co-creation, which is a fundamental thesis of the Plurality book. But it presupposes conflict. Whereas the Japanese interpretation sees, of course, those conflicts, but they don't dwell on the dynamic of the conflict" [4].

The overall picture of how Plurality has been received in Japan is given in the article on the Plurality movement in Japan. For differences in thinking about AI, the article on superintelligence is also useful.

Sources

Yoichi Ochiai, "Ten Years of Digital Nature" (2026-05-17) — https://medium.com/@ochyai.manage/ten-years-of-digital-nature-from-computational-materialization-to-fermentative-conviviality-967fcf79b7a1
Yoichi Ochiai, "計算機自然からマタギドライヴへ" (From computational nature to Matagi Drive) (2026-02-07, in Japanese) — https://note.com/ochyai/n/n6d470a8f0f75
Yoichi Ochiai, "〈デジタルネイチャー／マタギドライヴ〉と〈Plurality〉" (Digital Nature / Matagi Drive and Plurality) (2025-05-06, in Japanese) — https://note.com/ochyai/n/n2904ec32f363
Weekly Ochiai (2026-03-25) — https://archive.tw/2026-03-25-weekly-ochiai ［CC0］
Yoichi Ochiai, デジタルネイチャー (Digital Nature) (PLANETS, 2018, in Japanese) — https://ndlsearch.ndl.go.jp/books/R100000002-I029294965
WEEKLY OCHIAI, first conversation with Hiroki Azuma (2023-01-19, video, in Japanese) — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qGQCTJgyk1c
Ledge.ai, interview with Hiroki Azuma (2023-10-22, in Japanese) — https://ledge.ai/articles/azuma-hiroki-series-1
Report from the University of Tokyo AI study group's Tang × Ochiai event (in Japanese) — https://note.com/ekoron/n/n042c8fc6339c
Hirokazu Nishio, "20250506東大AI研究会特別講演会" (Special lecture of the University of Tokyo AI study group, 2025-05-06) (in Japanese) — https://scrapbox.io/nishio/20250506%E6%9D%B1%E5%A4%A7AI%E7%A0%94%E7%A9%B6%E4%BC%9A%E7%89%B9%E5%88%A5%E8%AC%9B%E6%BC%94%E4%BC%9A

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