teamLab: Existence in an Infinite Continuity | teamLab

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Purchase on Pace Verso*From October 20, 2022 17:00 EST

Through the artwork, Matter is Void, teamLab explores the notion of ownership.

This is an NFT artwork. There is only one NFT of this work, but it does not make it exclusive. Anyone and any number of people can download and own the artwork itself. In other words, whether or not someone owns the NFT of the work, the downloaded artworks cannot be distinguished from each other and they are all authentic.
The artwork displays the words chosen by teamLab, “Matter is Void”. Only the NFT owner can modify these words, and those same words will be reflected in all of the artworks downloaded by people around the world.
Depending on the words chosen by the owner of the NFT, the value of the artwork will change. If the words rewritten by the owner of the NFT possess value, more people may choose to own the artwork; and if the words do not possess value, people may no longer choose to display the work. There may be great value in rewriting the words of an artwork that many people look at, and conversely little value in rewriting the words of an artwork that is not displayed anywhere. Depending on the words chosen by the owner of the NFT, the value of the NFT will also likely change.
Once the original words are modified, even if the owner of the NFT decides to change them back to “Matter is Void”, the words will appear differently from the original; the initial “Matter is Void”, once modified, will not be able to be seen in its original state ever again.

The letters of the words in this artwork continuously revolve and rotate. Depending on the angle we may be able to recognize the letters as they continue to rotate, and there will be moments when we can recognize the meaning of the letters as a whole, but once again, they will become indiscernible and the words lose meaning. The way in which the words revolve is visually perceived as moving simultaneously clockwise and counterclockwise, and depending on which movement is consciously followed, the words can appear to be moving in either direction.

Multiple seasons exist simultaneously, changing gradually across the installation space. The seasonal flowers repeat the cycle of life and death in perpetuity, and the places where they grow change. When people touch the flowers, the petals scatter, and when they keep their hands still, more flowers begin to grow.
The world of the artwork changes with the real flow of time of its location. The artwork grows brighter as the sun rises and darker when the sun sets. 
The time experienced by the viewer’s body, the time of the location, and the time of the flower's repeating the cycle of life and death, all intersect and overlap, whilst remaining connected to the body, the place, and the world of the artwork. In the artwork space different times and spaces overlap.
The artwork is not a pre-recorded image that is played back; it is created by a computer program that continuously renders the work in real time. The interaction between people and the installation causes continuous change in the artwork, so previous visual states can never be replicated, and will never reoccur. The picture at this moment can never be seen again.

The contours of life’s existence are not the surface boundary of the body, but something ambiguous that includes the environment that is continuous with it.
As long as people live, they dissipate energy and affect the environment, such as the flow of air.
In this artwork, the existence of a person is depicted through the energy dissipated by people into the world for as long as they live.

Being consists of the mind, the body, and the environment that is continuous with them.

Objects like stones and man-made creations so far have maintained a stable structure on their own. But life is different. Whereas a stone can continue to exist in a closed box, sealed off from the outside world, life would cease to exist.

Life is like a vortex created in the ocean. A vortex forms and exists in a flow of matter, and the boundaries of its existence are ambiguous.  

Although a vortex is steady, it is constantly moving and swelling like a powerful life-form. The vortex cannot maintain a stable structure on its own; rather, it is created and sustained by water that continuously flows inwards and outwards.

The same is true of life. It consumes external matter and energy as food and discharges it, sustaining its ordered structure as the energy dissipates. In other words, life does not exist by itself. It is the environment that is continuous with it that maintains the structure of life.

Life is a miraculous phenomenon that emerges from a flow in an open world. Like an ocean vortex, it is an existence with ambiguous boundaries in an infinite continuity.

To be alive is to be inseparable from the world, constantly dissipating energy into it.

Autonomous abstraction.
The dots of light blink and change color in cycles unique to each dot. A spontaneous order phenomenon occurs between dots that are close to each other, and their hues and the rhythm at which they blink gradually synchronize. When people touch them, the rhythm of the blinking hues change and are randomized, but the dots close to each other once again cause a spontaneous order phenomenon between them.
The dots of lights emit a tone each time they blink. The tones can be heard continuously throughout the space; what sounds like music is solely created by the continuous tones produced by the blinking lights.

A spontaneous order phenomenon occurs when different rhythms influence each other and synchronize. Examples include when the pendulums of two clocks gradually begin to swing together; when many fireflies gather in one tree and all start blinking at the same time, creating a larger light as a whole; or when the cells that make up the heart synchronize and tremble simultaneously to create the pulse of the heart. This can be seen in various systems, from physical phenomena, neurophysiology, to ecosystems. Although the individual parts do not have the ability to observe the whole, the phenomenon of self-organization is the creation of an ordered and larger structure, resulting from the autonomous behavior of each individual part influencing each other. This phenomenon is also known as spontaneous order.

It is believed that entropy (a measurement of the lack of order in a system) in the universe will steadily increase (the law of increasing entropy) and that entities with form eventually collapse. Despite that, it is a wonder that the sun was created and the planets were born, that life was formed and societies exist. However, the reason why the universe, life, nature, and society continue to be maintained in spite of this may be because order is continuously formed on its own through the shared phenomenon of self-organization in the midst of disorder. In other words, the universe and our own existence are a continuous order created by the same phenomenon.