teamLab: A Forest Where Gods Live, Ruins and Heritage - THE NATURE OF TIME | teamLab

Masses (Megaliths) of different space-times are clustered in the bath house ruins.
The forest surrounding the bath house ruins is home to 3,000-year-old trees, and it changes daily with the imperceptible, slow flow of time, repeating every year, as a space where the endlessly long time accumulates. The ruins from ages past scattered in the forest and the Edo-period garden which remains today each have their own respective space-times. The bath house was made in modern times, but after just a short period, it was abandoned, becoming a space-time where time had stopped completely. And this group of megaliths is also a mass made up of compressed space-times where the flow of time varies. Here, various space-times intersect and overlap.

Each megalith is surrounded by similarly standing megaliths, the space-times of which are all connected.

The artwork is continuously rendered in real time by a computer program. It is neither prerecorded, nor on loop. As a whole, previous states never recur, and the artwork is continuously changing due to the movement of people. Every moment is unique and can never be seen again.

The following artworks exist in the artwork space of the three-dimensional objects grouped in these bath house ruins.

・Flowers and People
This artwork is in a state of continuous change. Over a period of one hour, a year’s worth of seasonal flowers blossoms and scatters. The flowers bud, grow, and blossom before their petals begin to wither and eventually fade away. The cycle of growth and decay repeats itself in perpetuity. If a person stays still, the flowers surrounding them grow and bloom more abundantly.

・Universe of Water Particles
When people approach the artwork, the flow of the water changes. The movement of people influences the artwork, causing it to evolve continuously, while the artwork influences other works. For instance, the water causes the flowers in the work Flowers and People to scatter.

Water is represented by a continuum of numerous water particles. The interaction between the particles is calculated and then lines are drawn in relation to the behavior of the water particles. The lines are “flattened” using what teamLab considers to be ultrasubjective space.

All the various creatures drawn by visitors live in the ruins of the bathhouse in Mifuneyama Park.  Color in a creature on the paper provided, and see the picture you have drawn come to life and move in front of you.
Living things eat and are eaten by other living things in one shared ecosystem.The creatures you draw will multiply if they eat other living things, but they will die and disappear if they do not eat enough, or if they are eaten by other creatures. The salamanders eat the snakes, the snakes eat the lizards, the lizards eat the frogs, and the frogs eat the butterflies, each one propagating as they consume. Likewise, the butterflies multiply in places where flowers grow.Although flowers will bloom if people stay still, their petals will scatter if people walk around and step on them. Salamanders will die if people step on them too much.
The International Union for the Conservation of Nature’s Red List is a database of the conservation status of biological species. Wildlife assessed in the Red List, including threatened and endangered species, appear in this work.

Before the modern era in Japan, Kasane no Irome (nuances of layered colors) were seasonal colors created in silk. The complicated colors were the result of a combination of front and back colors (silk at the time was so thin that the liner was transparent, creating more nuanced colors), overlapping color gradations, complex weave colors, and combinations of warp and weft.
When a person stands still close to a lamp, it shines brightly and emits a color that resonates out. The light of this lamp becomes the starting point, and it spreads to the two nearest lamps. The light from the two nearest lamps transmits the same color to other lamps, one after another, spreading out continuously. The light transmitted from the lamp always resonates out as a bright light once, passing to close lamps, until all of the lamps have shone brightly once, and then returns to the first lamp. The light of the lamp in response to human interaction, divides in two, becomes one optical line through all of the lamps respectively, before finally, returning to the first lamp that was the starting point. People become aware of the presence of others in the same space.
All the lamps, seemingly scattered randomly, have a single connecting line (unicursal) that can be drawn. When drawing a line, the stroke (the same starting and ending points) is drawn from a lamp to the lamp that is the closest in distance in three-dimensions. By arranging the lamps in this way, the light of the lamp corresponding to the person is always propagated to the nearest lamp, and must always pass through all the lamps in the space in a single stroke, before finally returning to the first lamp that was its origin.
The arrangement of the lamps is mathematically determined to satisfy a number of restrictions outlined below. A large number of solutions were evaluated that take into account the variation and distribution in the height, the direction of the lamps, and the smoothness of the three-dimensional path (light trajectory).
The hanging lamps are arranged uniformly, in such a way that they form an orderly grid. This is the first constraint. The second constraint is that of the boundaries of the physical space: the distance between the floor and the ceiling, and the height and the width of the passages through which people can move. And the third constraint is that when a line is drawn from any lamp to another lamp in three dimensions, the starting point and the ending point must be connected as a single line (unicursal).
Since the arrangement of the lamps born from such a process seems to be random at first sight, the trajectory of the resonating light cannot be predicted: the light continues to the lamp that is physically closest, thus giving a natural feeling - like a fire burning. And since the light trajectory of the lamps is connected by a single line, the light born from any particular lamp and the light born from any other lamp will always cross each other.
The arrangement of the lamps is not only beautiful in a static way, but also in a dynamic way when activated by people in the space. It demonstrates the space of a new era that can be designed freely and change itself through digital technology, a space that adapts and changes due to the movement of the people in it. 
※The lamp are made of Murano glass (Venetian glass).

Location: Inside Mifuneyama Rakuen Garden
Hours: Can be viewed during Mifuneyama Rakuen opening hours

This enormous megalith, almost supernatural in its formation, is an iwakura (an ancient form of nature worship in Japan known as animism), within which a hokora (small shrine) has been preserved.

Location: Inside Mifuneyama Rakuen Garden
* Only available to guests of Mifuneyama Rakuen Hotel or Onyado Chikurintei

In the late Edo period when Mifuneyama Rakuen was built (1845 CE), the Hagino Ochaya Tea House was constructed with a thatched roof on the shores of a pond as the public villa of Nabeshima Shigeyoshi Nabeshima, the 28th generation lord of Takeo. This venue is open to the public in spring and fall.

Location: Inside Mifuneyama Rakuen Garden
Hours: Can be viewed during Mifuneyama Rakuen opening hours

It is said that the origin of "Mifuneyama" can be traced to Empress Jingu being named "Mifune" on her journey back from the ancient kingdom of Shilla on the Korean peninsula (around 200 CE).

Location: Outside Mifuneyama Rakuen Garden
Hours: On view 24 hours a day

Tsukazaki Castle is also known as Mifuneyama Castle.This castle is said to have been built by the second generation lord of Takeo, Sukeshige Goto, in the period around 1118-1120 CE.In the early Edo period (the first half of the 17th century), the Goto family received the surname of Nabeshima from the lord of Saga, Katsushige Nabeshima, and the Goto family name then became Takeo Nabeshima.Under the "One Castle per Province" law (1615 CE) of the Edo Shogunate, Tsukazaki Castle was eventually abandoned, but it survived to the present as a residence of the Takeo Nabeshima family through the Edo period.
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The private farm of EN TEA, from which the tea used at EN TEA HOUSE is sourced, is located around a 20-minute drive from Mifuneyama Rakuen in the woodlands of Kyushu's Ureshino, which lies along the borders of Saga and Nagasaki prefectures. This is the region where green tea was believed to have been produced in Japan for the very first time. Research on tea production methods is being conducted here, alongside the cultivation of tea in this small company farm where roaming goats eat the weeds growing in the tea fields.

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