Catching and Collecting in the Dinosaur Forest

teamLab, 2023, Interactive Digital installation, Sound: Hideaki Takahashi

Catching and Collecting in the Dinosaur Forest

teamLab, 2023, Interactive Digital installation, Sound: Hideaki Takahashi

Catching and Collecting in the Dinosaur 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, capture various prehistoric animals such as dinosaurs,, study them, and create your very own collection book.

Prehistoric animals  that have already gone extinct live in this dinosaur forest. When you touch an animal, it will turn to face you or run away.

When you use the smartphone's camera to look at an animal moving in the space, and release a Study Arrow at the animal in the camera’s view, the arrow flies out from the phone into the real space. When the Study Arrow reaches the animal, it disappears from the space and is added to the smartphone collection. Information about the animals you capture 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 capture 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 capture the same animal, the more detailed information you can record in your collection book.