Interconnected Reality
2020
teamLab introduces Interconnected Reality (IR) technology, in which the real, physical space that surrounds people interacts with their individual digital devices.
IR uses an individual's digital device, such as their smartphone, to make changes in the real space that can be seen with the naked eye, and these changes in the real space affect that person’s digital device in turn. teamLab has developed and patented a technology in which the changes you see in your smartphone’s camera also occur in the real world.
In existing Augmented Reality (AR), the only thing that changes is the world as people see it on the screens of their digital devices. In IR, the world as people see it with the naked eye continues to be influenced and changed by the actions of people using their devices.
For instance, the Catching and Collecting Forest in teamLab Forest, which opened in Fukuoka in July of 2020, allows visitors to participate in the artwork using the IR Catching and Collecting Forest App.
If you look at an animal on the wall in the real space with the app’s camera, and swipe to shoot a study arrow at the wall, the arrow will fly in real space to the spot you are looking at through the camera. When the study arrow hits and captures an animal, it disappears from the real space and enters your smartphone.
When the captured animal is thrown back onto the wall as seen through the app’s camera, it is freed from the smartphone, returned to its location in the real world (the wall), and begins to walk through the physical space again.
In future societies, cities and other real spaces will become digital. We believe that IR technology will allow individual digital devices and cities to affect each other, and that individual people will have the ability to create changes in the cities around them.
RELATED EXHIBITIONS
FEATURED WORKS
Catching and Collecting Forest - A Whole Year per Year
teamLab, 2020, Interactive Digital installation, Endless, Sound: Hideaki Takahashi
The Catching and Collecting Forest is a new learning space based on the concept of Catch, Study, Release, in which people explore the world with their bodies, discovering, catching, and broadening their interests based on what they catch. Explore with your smartphone, catch various animals, study them, and create your very own collection book.
Depending on the season, different animals live in this forest and ocean that change with the flow of real time. When you touch an animal, it will turn to face you or run away.
Download the Catching and Collecting Forest smartphone application.
When you use your smartphone's camera to look at an animal moving in the space and shoot a Study Arrow at the animal in the camera’s view, the arrow flies out from your phone into the real space. When the Study Arrow reaches the animal, it disappears from the space and is added to your smartphone’s collection. Information about the animals you catch will be stored in the app's collection book.
When you swipe a captured animal towards a location you can see in the app’s camera, the animal is released and returns to that location.
You can also throw a Study Net at your feet to catch animals. Work together with those around you, use your body to drive animals into the Study Net to catch them, and watch as they disappear from the space and, at the same time, appear in your collection book. Swipe the captured animals away to release them at your feet.
The more you catch the same animal, the more detailed information you can record in your collection book.
Voir PlusDepending on the season, different animals live in this forest and ocean that change with the flow of real time. When you touch an animal, it will turn to face you or run away.
Download the Catching and Collecting Forest smartphone application.
When you use your smartphone's camera to look at an animal moving in the space and shoot a Study Arrow at the animal in the camera’s view, the arrow flies out from your phone into the real space. When the Study Arrow reaches the animal, it disappears from the space and is added to your smartphone’s collection. Information about the animals you catch will be stored in the app's collection book.
When you swipe a captured animal towards a location you can see in the app’s camera, the animal is released and returns to that location.
You can also throw a Study Net at your feet to catch animals. Work together with those around you, use your body to drive animals into the Study Net to catch them, and watch as they disappear from the space and, at the same time, appear in your collection book. Swipe the captured animals away to release them at your feet.
The more you catch the same animal, the more detailed information you can record in your collection book.