LIGHT + TECH 129
‘Everything is super crazy and almost impossible to do’
Takashi Kudo, communications director, teamLab
Clockwise, from top left teamLab, a creative collective based in Japan, creates stunning lightworks, inducing wonder from every age group; its Universe Inside A Teacup, light flowers blooming; the works are some of the most immersive installations in the world; teamLab’s Levitation, where a large sphere reacts to touch and interference before returning suspended between floor and ceiling
TEAMLAB
An art collective formed in 2001, Tokyo- based teamLab is an interdisciplinary creative group that brings together professionals from various digital fields: artists, programmers, engineers, CG animators,
mathematicians, architects, web and print graphic designers, and editors. They call themselves ‘ultratechnologists’, with an agenda ‘to go beyond the boundaries between art, science, technology and creativity, through co-creative activities’. While it does work on collective principles, there is little doubt the creative force behind the project comes from founder and CEO Toshiyuki Inoko.
The group’s work is in permanent collections around the world, with widespread international representation by Pace Gallery. Its creations are often characterised by rich natural imagery, what it describes as ‘digitised nature’, and its ethos is based on making people more aware of their connection to the natural world. One of its most ambitious works to date – four years in the making – was a large outdoor collection of art installations entitled A Forest Where Gods Live (2017). They were scattered through Mifuneyama Rakuen, a 500,000m2 garden in Takeo, Japan.
‘When we’re in the city, we think we’re leading an independent existence,’ Inoko told the Japan Times in 2017. ‘But in reality, life has been around for at least four billion years. And even though humans have been around for a very long time, it’s hard for us to fathom that awareness that we are a part of nature.’ Its recent and
forthcoming projects include teamLab Forest, a new museum in Fukuoka, and, together with Es Devlin and James Turrell, dynamic, large-scale installations for an
inaugural group exhibition called Every Wall is a Door at the new experiential art centre, Superblue Miami in Florida.
Perhaps its most
extraordinary proposition to date is the planned teamLab Reconnect, a new art and sauna exhibition ‘where visitors experience art in their finest mental state’ – the so-called sauna trance. ‘Scientifically speaking,’ according to teamLab, ‘sauna trance is an exceptionally unique neurological state brought about by alternating hot and cold baths – repeated exposure to saunas, cold water and rest. When entering a sauna trance, the senses sharpen, the mind clears, [and] the beauty of the surrounding world comes into focus.’ Several pieces will be on view at Reconnect, including a new group of
works based on
teamLab’s new art project, ‘Supernature Phenomena’, a project that focuses on occurrences that transcend the laws of nature and result in changes in perception. One such work is Levitation, which features a sphere levitating in the space between the floor and ceiling, floating up and down as through defying the concept of mass and gravity. The sphere falls to the ground and rolls away when people hit or impact it. But if there is no external interference, it will slowly rise into the air again, as though restoring itself to an original state.
‘When a person views ‘Supernature Phenomena’, such as the defiance of universal gravitation, this causes their perception to change, thus leading to a new cognitive experience that differs from that of everyday life,’ teamLab said in support of the installation’s unveiling. ‘[Works by teamLab] might not fit into the traditional definition of artwork,’ the group’s Singapore gallerist, Ikkan Sanada, said in that same Japan Times article, ‘but it was the same thing when photography was introduced or video art was introduced. Ten years from now, people will recognse that what teamLab was creating was a new field of artistic expression, which is “digital art”.’
team-lab.net
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