Art Dubai 2018 | teamLab

This artwork is in a state of continuous change. Aligned to the passing hours of the day and over a period of one year, a seasonal year of flowers blossom and scatter.
Flowers are born, grow and blossom in profusion before the petals scatter and the flowers wither and fade away. The cycle of birth and death repeats itself, continuing for eternity.

The artwork is created in two versions: one with “A Whole Year per Hour, Dark” and another with “A Whole Year per Year, Dark”.

All oceans are connected to each other, and so are all the waves in this world.

In classical East Asian art, waves are often expressed using a combination of lines. These waves created by lines allow us to realize that each wave is one part of a larger flow, and conveys life as though the waves are a living entity.

When the waves rise, we can feel a powerful breath of life, as though life is blooming. It feels as though each wave has a life of its own. But when the waves collapse and disappear, we realize, with a sense of fragility, that they were a part of the ocean. And that ocean is connected to all of the other oceans. In other words, all of the waves in the world are connected to each other.
The waves seem alive because life is like a rising wave. It is a miraculous phenomenon that continuously emerges from a single, continuous ocean.

The waves are expressed through a continuous body of countless water particles. The interactions of particles are calculated, and then the movement of water is simulated in three-dimensional space. Lines are created along the trajectories of the water particles, and drawn on the surface layer of the three-dimensional waves.

The lines are created with what teamLab refers to as Ultrasubjective Space. In contrast to space that is created through, or cut out by, lenses and perspective, Ultrasubjective Space does not fix the viewer’s viewpoint and in turn frees the body. The wall that the waves are seen on does not become a boundary between the viewer and the artwork, and the artwork space is continuous with the space of the viewer’s body.

Fleeting Flower Series. Everything exists on a fragile continuity of life that knows no boundaries and has continued for a long, long time. The image of a phoenix appears in sunflowers that are born and blossom. In time the flowers scatter. At the moment each flower scatters that part of the phoenix scatters.

As a new capital city is being built, various people make appearances and their stories unfold in parallel in this picture scroll. The landscape of the city under construction is created on a computer in three-dimensions, in a three-dimensional space. The work comes to life as our viewpoint travels around the landscape. The lines of the work are expressed as Kirigane, an artistic technique which consists of cutting gold or silver leaf into fine lines and adhering them to the surface.