teamLab Islands Dance! Art Museum and Learn & Play! Future Park | teamLab

The seasons co-exist and change gradually across the installation space.
Flowers blossom according to the seasons, and the places where they grow gradually change.

The flowers bud, grow, and blossom before they begin to wither and their petals eventually scatter, repeating the cycle of life and death in perpetuity. If a person stays still, the flowers surrounding them grow and bloom more abundantly than usual, but if people touch or step on the flowers, they shed their petals, wither, and die all at once. Sometimes the flowers cross the boundaries of other works and bloom in other spaces, but scatter or die due to the influence of other works.

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.

In spring in the Kunisaki Peninsula, there are many cherry blossoms in the mountains and canola blossoms at their base. A visit to this region led teamLab to wonder how much of these flowers were planted by people and how much of them were native to the environment. It was a place of great serenity and contentment. 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 rule of nature, which perhaps 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.

Itō Jakuchū (1716–1800) was an early modern Japanese painter who was active in Kyoto in the mid-Edo period. Jakuchū has left us with a unique style of painting in which the surface is made up of a grid of tens of thousands of squares that are individually colored. This work was inspired by the screen paintings Birds, Animals, and Flowering Plants and Trees, Flowers, Birds and Animals.
Jakuchū’s square paintings remind us of computer-generated pixel art. It has been proposed that Jakuchū’s squares pictures were inspired by industrial production constraints in the designs of Nishijin (traditional high-quality silk fabric that is woven in Nishijin, Kyoto). Pixel art was also born from functional limitations. Those functional limitations no longer exist but pixel art is still a very popular form of expression. This is perhaps why we feel an intuitive digital sense to Jakuchū's square works. The colors of Jakuchū’s work are the result of the optical phenomena of visual mixing of color combinations within the squares. It appears as if Jakuchū understood optical mixing of colors at a time before Impressionism and Pointillism. 
This artwork was created in a virtual 3-D space in which 3-D animals move. The space was then converted into what teamLab calls ultrasubjective space. Then,  the color in the 3-D space is split by the color pattern of the squares. For example, if the pattern of a square is colored in red and blue, that part corresponds to purple in the three dimensional space. 
The squares of the screen are fixed while the space continues to move, and thus the color inside the squares is on a different time axis to the space. Seen as a whole from a distance, brilliantly shining  colors occur, and the world of plants and animals in the space will move at a slow time axis. When viewed up close, the colors divided by the finely drawn patterns of each square will change on a rapid time axis. Two time axes co-exist in this work.
In addition, parts of the image squares are filled in with the most frequent color in the squares, forming an abstract world. Furthermore, when a visitor stands in front of the work, the squares near them are similarly painted. The plants and animals move in space, but are abstracted by the fixed squares on-screen, creating a new visual expression through pixel art.

A digital installation in three dimensions on seven screens.

This artwork explores Japanese spatial awareness. It exists in a three-dimensional space that we call ultrasubjective space. The Japanese mythical bird Yatagarasu,* rendered in light, flies around the space leaving trails of light in its path, creating spatial calligraphy. As the crows chase and are chased by one another through the air, they turn into flowers and eventually scatter.

The Itano Circus is a unique technique pioneered by creator animator Ichiro Itano. In this technique, a screen is packed to capacity with swarms of flying missiles that are drawn in a completely distorted perspective. These distortions give the audience a stronger sense of dynamic movement and impact. Through ultra-high-speed camera work and staging that envelops the viewer’s perspective, this technique creates an overwhelmingly beautiful image.

In this digital artwork, an homage to the Itano Circus, teamLab has recreated this distortion of space formerly used in 2-D animation in a 3-D space. This is an exploration of 1) what sort of logical structure of perception constitutes this distortion of space pioneered by Japan’s animators, and 2) the hypothesis that this is in line with the continuous tradition of Japanese spatial perception. By recreating this distortion in a 3-D space, teamLab widens the perspectival viewpoint. This work is also an experiment in visual experience, as it divides the viewer’s perspective while deploying divided perspective into 3-D space.

*Yatagarasu, the three-legged crow, is a creature found in Japanese mythology. It is believed to represent the sun and the will of Heaven.

이 수족관에 여러분이 그린 물고기들이 헤엄칩니다.

종이에 자유롭게 물고기를 그려주세요. 그림을 그리면 눈앞에 펼쳐진 거대한 수족관에 여러분이 그린 물고기들이 나타나 함께 헤엄치기 시작합니다.
물고기들은 만질 수도 있습니다. 물고기를 만지면 도망가고, 먹이 주머니를 만지면 물고기에게 먹이를 줄 수도 있습니다.

이 마을은 여러분의 그림으로 만들어가는 마을입니다.

종이에 마을을 채울 자동차, 빌딩, 우주선 등을 자유롭게 그려주세요. 그림을 그리면 눈앞에 펼쳐진 거대한 마을에 나타나 움직이기 시작합니다.
여러분의 그림에 의해 마을이 만들어지고, 여러분이 어떤 그림을 그릴지에 따라 마을도 계속해서 변화합니다.
마을을 만질 수도 있습니다. 예를 들어 자동차를 만지면 자동차의 속도가 변화합니다. 마을을 구성하는 것들에는 각각의 역할이 있어, 소방차나 크레인은 마을을 지켜주기도 합니다.

징검다리 놀이(※1)의 코스를 자유롭게 만들 수 있습니다.다른 참가자를 위해 어떤 코스가 재미있을지, 난이도는 어느 정도가 좋을지 생각하며 창의력을 발휘해 코스를 만들어보세요. 서로가 만든 세계를 실제로 체험하며 규칙을 스스로 만들어보고, 발견할 수 있습니다. 
※1 : 징검다리 놀이○△□ 위를 뛰어다니며 노는 옛 사방치기 놀이의 디지털 버전입니다.물에 떠있는 ○△□ 위를 뛰어다니면 소리가 나면서 지나간 길을 따라 공간이 변화합니다.같은 모양을 연속으로 밟으면 크고 작은 ○△□ 모양들이 터져 나옵니다. 같은 색의 징검다리를 연속해서 밟으면 같은 색깔이 수면 위로 퍼져나갑니다.  

이 테이블에는 꼬마 요정들이 살고 있다.

테이블 속을 뛰어다니는 꼬마 요정들은 우리를 인식하지 못한다.
하지만 테이블 위에 손이나 물건을 올려두면, 꼬마 요정들이 물건을 인식하고 뛰어오른다.
올려두는 물건의 모양에 따라 꼬마 요정들이 미끄러지거나 점프하거나 기어오른다.
물건을 많이 올려두면 꼬마 요정들이 무척 기뻐하며 뛰어다.