NEW PLACE TO SEE & BECOME ART: TEAMLAB
TEAMLAB
You are a work of art. And now you can become many works of art the world’s first digital art museum. Created by teamLab, an interdisciplinary art collective, the Mori Building Digital Art Museum spans 10,000 square meters in the Odaiba area of Tokyo. In it, you will become so totally immersed in beautiful ever-changing colors, lights, and shapes, that you will become part of them.
TeamLab uses digital technologies such as sensing, networks, light and sound to expand both the definition and the experience of art. We previously featured their breathtaking genius Floating Flower Garden, as one example.
The new museum, funded by Mori Building, owned by a prominent Japanese real estate and art collecting family, is the first permanent place where this ever changing art can be experienced.
Digital art has a unique ability to express the capacity for change. When an artwork changes based on the presence or behavior of viewers, it causes the boundaries between artwork and viewer to become blurred. The viewer becomes part of the artwork itself.
Unlike other museums, teamLab’s museum is devoid of maps, guides, and captions. Instead, visitors are encouraged to learn about the art by touching and interacting with it.
“Borderless,” the current exhibition at Mori, plays to this blurred line between artworks, their creators, and their viewers. A forest of lamps changes color as you walk through it. In another space, you create a new universe, creating new planets and stars. Yet another space immerses you in an endless succession of crashing waves.
In total, there are more than 50 artworks that are seamlessly connected, that are constantly changing as people interact with them, resulting in a giant collective creative art experience. It is all produced by 520 computers and 470 projectors.
Digital art dining experience. Courtesy of teamLab.
TeamLab was founded in 2001 by engineer Toshiyuki Inoko. It now boasts over 500 members, including artists, designers, animators, programmers, mathematicians, and a diverse range of other creatives. Up until now, their exhibitions have been held at arts venues and public spaces around the world. There was no home base because no major cultural institution had the resources to support these massive installations.
Visitors interact with infinite lanterns in digital art installation by teamLab.
TeamLab has placed works in the permanent collections of museums as diverse as San Francisco's Asian Art Museum, Melbourne's National Gallery of Victoria, Istanbul's Borusan Contemporary and Singapore's National Museum, as well as with numerous private collectors.
TeamLab believes that digital art can create new relationships between the people who are present within the same space. Outside of the museum, all the world is both canvas and medium, from manmade objects and buildings to trees and rivers. Interestingly, digital art has no physical impact on the environment. By using such non-material digital technologies, nature can be turned into living art, without harming it.
Digital art installation by teamLab.
Next, teamLab wants to turn entire cities into interactive works of art… and perhaps, the entire planet.
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