Every Wall is a Door | teamLab

Life is an order of energy.
In this artwork space, like life, we created an order of energy. In doing so, a giant white mass is born, and emerges afloat.

The sculpture, a giant white mass, neither sinks down to the floor nor reaches the ceiling, floating as though transcending the concept of mass. The contour of this floating sculpture’s existence is ambiguous, becoming smaller when it tears and growing larger when the masses come together. People can enter this sculpture with their entire body, and even if the sculpture breaks, it naturally repairs itself like a living thing. But, as with living things, when the sculpture is destroyed beyond what it can repair, it cannot mend itself, and collapses. Even if people try to move or push this floating sculpture, they cannot do so. If they stir up the wind, the sculpture will scatter.

What is life in biological terms? Viruses, for example, are considered to exist somewhere between living and inanimate because they do not have cells, the smallest unit of biological life, nor do they have the ability to self-reproduce. What separates the living from the inanimate cannot be defined biologically to this day.

Objects like stones and man-made creations maintain a stable structure on their own. A stone can continue to exist in a closed box, sealed off from the outside world, but life cannot sustain its existence in such a box because it is not an independent structure that can exist on its own.

Life is like a vortex created in the ocean. 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 vortex is an existence within the flow, and its contour is ambiguous.

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. Life exists within the flow of matter and energy, and its contour, like a vortex, is ambiguous.
Life is a miraculous phenomenon that emerges in the flow of matter and energy, and its structure is the order of energy created by that flow.

In terms of material substance, the only things that exist in this space are ordinary soap, water, and air. The bubbles are soap bubbles.
Although life cannot be strictly defined with modern biology, everything that is structured upon cells, metabolizes, and self-reproduces, is conveniently labeled living things. In other words, all living things are composed of cells. All cells are surrounded by a cell membrane composed of a lipid bilayer with the hydrophilic part facing outwards and the hydrophobic part covered within the layers. Both the inside and outside of the enveloping membrane are liquid.
Soap bubbles are similarly enveloped by  lipid bilayer membranes, and the membranes of the bubbles that make up this sculpture are structurally identical to cell membranes. However, contrary to cells, the bilayer of the bubble membrane floats in and encloses air, so the hydrophobic part faces outwards, while the hydrophilic part is covered within the layers. In other words, if we consider cells to be pouch-shaped membranes in liquid, bubbles are pouch-shaped membranes in air.

The space is filled with soap bubbles to create a unique environment in which an order of energy is born. By doing so, an immense white mass emerges from this sea of bubbles that floats steadily in mid-air.
This sculpture is created from substances composed in the same ways as cells, the structuring units of life-forms, and the order of energy created from this unique environment.

This artwork is in continuous change, transcending the boundaries between itself and other works. Over a period of one hour, a year’s worth of seasonal flowers blossoms and scatters.
Flowers are born, grow, bloom, and eventually scatter and die. The cycle of birth and death repeats itself in perpetuity. If people stay still, more flowers are born. If people touch the flowers and walk around the space, the flowers scatter all at once.
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: previous visual states can never be replicated, and will never reoccur. The picture at this moment can never be seen again.
The water from the Universe of Water Particles artwork influences this work, causing the flowers to scatter.
In spring in the Kunisaki Peninsula, there are many cherry blossoms in the mountains and canola blossoms at their base. This experience of nature caused teamLab to wonder how many of these flowers were planted by people and how many were native to the environment. It is a place of great serenity and contentment, but the expansive body of flowers is an ecosystem influenced by human intervention, and the boundary between the work of nature and the work of humans is unclear. Rather than nature and humans being in conflict, a healthy ecosystem is one that includes people. In the past, people understood that they could not grasp nature in its entirety, and that it is not possible to control nature. People lived more closely aligned to the rules of nature that created a comfortable natural environment. We believe that these valleys hold faint traces of this premodern relationship with nature that once existed, and we hope to explore a form of human intervention based on the premise that nature cannot be controlled.

Although self and nature seem distinct, they are actually a single entity, inseparable from each other. The opposite of division is not unification, and we might  realize that existences that appear to be distinct are actually part of a single whole.The blessings and threats of nature, as well as the blessings and threats of civilization, are continuous. Neither is there a source of absolute malice, nor can it all be dismissed idealistically. Nonetheless, we seek to affirm life in all aspects. Life is beautiful.
In this artwork, 生 (sei), the character that signifies life, is written three-dimensionally using Spatial Calligraphy. Spatial Calligraphy is a form of calligraphy drawn in space that teamLab has been exploring since it was founded. The artwork reconstructs calligraphy in three-dimensional space to express the depth, speed and power of the brush stroke, and that calligraphy is then flattened using the logical structure teamLab calls Ultrasubjective Space. The calligraphy shifts between two and three dimensions.
The space of a traditional artwork, framed by a lens or perspective, appears to be on the other side of the artwork’s surface: the surface becomes a boundary, and the space where the viewer exists is separated from the artwork space. However, one of the characteristics of Ultrasubjective Space is that the artwork surface does not become a boundary. Thus the space in which the artwork exists, transcends the boundary of the artwork surface and is perceived as though it exists three-dimensionally in the same space where the viewer stands. The artwork space is continuous with the viewer’s physical space.