Data Trash Snack Bar — YurikaSYamamoto

Yurika Sophie Yamamoto

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Data Trash Snack Bar - Data Mama

Data Mama is an artist collective composed of Naoto Hieda (JP/EE), Pinyao Liu (CN/QC), Dan Xu (CN/NL), Yurika S. Yamamoto (JP/DE). As Asian diasporas based in Europe and North America, their members got to know each other on a long distance train from Germany to Romania, a trashy park in Amsterdam, a posh but empty museum during the lockdown, and started to form a constellation of four artists. Digital technologies are central to their practices, both as creative tools and critical subjects. Data Mama grows from their shared experiences of navigating hybrid identities and digital spaces shaping their emotional and artistic lives.

Data Trash Snack Bar is an experimental interactive performance interrogating how AI reshapes intimacy, empathy, and human connection. Inspired by Japanese snack bars and the Shinto belief that all things possess a spirit, the work features a human performer as the host, the “Snack Bar Mama”, whose advice and responses are generated entirely by an AI. The tension between body and algorithm becomes a poetic lens to question agency and authenticity in blurred human–machine relationships. The piece takes place as an immersive, participatory experience in which audience members become late-night customers seeking comfort, advice, and connection from the AI-controlled mama-san, exposing the absurdity of a world increasingly mediated by machines.

Dan Xu, artist and creative computer researcher (NL/CN)
Pinyao Liu, immersive environment & AI developer / performer (CN/QC)
Naoto Hieda, interactive system developer / visual designer / performer (JP/EE)
Yurika S. Yamamoto, choreographer & director /singer / performer (JP/DE)