Soul/Soil by Ricoh 3l
milano design week 2025

Ricoh’s special exhibition, “Soul/Soil: Designing the Invisible,” at Milan Design Week 2025. 3AND created the main visual, the website, the direction and design of the two of main cuttings edge experiences, Soul Bubble and Soul Motion.

SOUL BUBBLE

SOUL BUBBLE is an immersive art installation that visualises an individual’s mental and physical state. Inside a private room surrounded by eleven screens, a visitor sits on a single-seat chair embedded with AI and sensors. The chair records posture, shifts in the centre of gravity, heart rate, breathing, and hand movements, translating these signals into real-time visualisations of the visitor’s inner condition.

Emotional states such as relaxation, focus, tension, anxiety, excitement, meditation, or confusion are analysed and expressed as dynamic microbial patterns that unfold across the surrounding screens. At the end of the session, visitors can view their complete data, which is stored and used to refine the AI system.

As more participants take part, both individual and collective data accumulate, revealing differences, distributions, and emerging tendencies. This ongoing process allows the installation to evolve continuously, creating an ever-expanding record of human states. Interestingly, many visitors approached the experience with the expectation of seeing a high relaxation pattern in their results.

SOUL BUBBLE is a bubble-like prototype of future sensing, where technology surrounds the body, responds to the soul, and reveals the hidden layers of mind and being.

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SOUL MOTION

SOUL MOTION is an interactive map and art installation that visualises the live movements, distances travelled, and communications between six staff members wearing sensor-embedded garments. The sensors capture both real-time data as well as archive records from the past three days, including weather conditions, levels of communication, visitor numbers, and individual activity trails.

As participants approach the soil or sofa zones, virtual microbes begin to cluster around their positions, echoing how microorganisms thrive or diminish depending on environmental conditions. A simple tap on the sensors makes the microbes disperse, transforming the experience into a dynamic microbial map that constantly shifts between presence and absence.

By rendering these invisible processes such as microbes, technology, and the subtle rhythms of human interaction, SOUL MOTION invites visitors to reconsider the hidden environments around them and to reflect on how we connect not only with one another, but also with nature itself and encourages communications.

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CONCEPT

The installation explores SOUL (human spirit) and SOIL (soil and microorganisms) through a futuristic, immersive prototype experience. Inspired by the invisible microorganisms that support our health—and using similarly invisible AI and technology—the exhibition invites you to engage with what can’t be seen.

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"Soul/Soil" reveals the hidden connections between people, nature, and technology by focusing on two invisible realms: spirit and soil. By making the unseen visible, it encourages us to look again at the environments and inner depths that shape our lives, and to search for new ways of living in the future.

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Haruki Murata (Ricoh): Exhibition Director / Creative Director

Satoshi Itasaka (the design labo): General Art Director

Yusuke Murakami (3AND): Digital Art and Experience Direction / Main Visual / Director (BUBBLE, MOTION)

Alexander Reeder (art and program): Technical Art Director

Yuuya Kato, Yuuta Kimura (Ricoh): Lead Engineer (AURA, BUBBLE, MOTION)

Toshiki Tanaka, Shuhei Watanabe (Ricoh): Engineer (AURA, BUBBLE)

Eisuke Umino (Ricoh): Designer

Takashi Ueno (Ricoh): Coordinator

Hiromi Murao (art and program): Designer

Kei Kawakubo, Nandham Jeeva (the design labo): Designer

Kayo Tokunaga (KT and CO): Coordinator

Sakiko Kobayashi (3AND): Web Designer

Yusuke Kamiyama (Spline Design Hub): Technical Director / Motion Designer (AURA)

Makoto Sakamoto (Spline Design Hub): Engineer(AURA)

Hiroki Matsuse (Pipe): Engineer (MOTION, BUBBLE)

Kazuya Okamoto (Enrai): Web Developer

Kohei Ito (BIOTA): Microbiology Advisor

Yasuyuki Ogino: Art Director / Engineer (AURA)

Tetsuro Takayama: Designer (AURA)

Junichi Akagawa: Sound Engineer (AURA, BUBBLE)
Yutaka Kitamura (Rudesign / Go motion): Photographer / Cinematographer

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