teamLab: Digitized Kairakuen Garden 2022 | teamLab

A group of anonymous and diverse figures walk along the Moso bamboo forest in Kairakuen Garden.
People can stay with these figures or leave them, and watch as they continue.
The Zen expression “Hoho kore dojo” says every step is a place to learn. The figures of the artwork walk endlessly while confronting new situations. Walking after the figures or confronting new figures one after another, people also make choices along their own path.
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.

Flowers bloom and scatter for eternity on a giant tree (about 35m in height and 17.2m around the roots), which is said to be around 800 years old. A year’s worth of seasonal flowers from the area bloom over the course of an hour, continuously scattering and changing. Flowers are born, grow, bud, bloom, and eventually scatter, wither, and disappear. The flowers are in a continuous cycle of life and death, repeating forever.
Kairakuen Garden's giant cedar forest, created in the late Edo period (1842), changes daily with the imperceptibly slow flow of time, repeating every year. It is a space where endlessly long time accumulates. The giant cedar tree was probably here before the landscaping. The flowers that repeat the cycle of life and death have a different flow of time. Here, various space-times intersect and overlap.
Our own existence is part of this continuity of life and death, repeating endlessly, for an overwhelming length of time, for billions of years. However, it is difficult to perceive this in everyday life.
The eternal birth and death of the flowers on the giant tree that formed over an overwhelmingly long period of time and is beyond the boundaries of our cognition for long-term continuity, may allow us to realize that the existence of life itself is part of a continuous cycle of life and death.
The artwork is not a pre-recorded image that is played back; it is created by a computer program that continuously renders the artwork in real time. As a whole, it is continuously changing, and previous visual states are never replicated. The artwork at this moment can never be seen again.

Reality is not what we see. What we see is a world that we are capable of perceiving.

Spheres made of accumulated rays of light.
The light radiates from the center in infinite rays, creating its spherical shape. The light source remains motionless, yet the countless lines emitting from it wriggle continuously.

The spheres have no surface boundary, and the perception of the boundary between the artwork and the body is ambiguous. When you try to touch a sphere, your hand goes into the sphere.

Where does the continuous wriggling motion come from?
Our world is within us.

And once we recognize these spheres made of rays of light, our perception of the world expands, and we will begin to notice them wherever we go.

Flowers bloom and scatter for eternity in the decaying cavity inside the trunk of a large tree that fell due to a strong typhoon (1964). A year’s worth of seasonal flowers from the area bloom over the course of an hour, continuously scattering and changing. Flowers are born, grow, bud, bloom, and eventually scatter, wither, and disappear. The flowers are in a continuous cycle of life and death, repeating forever.
Kairakuen Garden's giant cedar forest, created in the late Edo period (1842), changes daily with the imperceptibly slow flow of time, repeating every year. It is a space where endlessly long time accumulates. This giant cedar tree was probably here before the landscaping. After it fell, the tree’s cavity became a space where time has stopped. The flowers that repeat the cycle of life and death also have a different flow of time. Here, various space-times intersect and overlap.
Our own existence is part of this continuity of life and death, repeating endlessly for an overwhelming length of time, for billions of years. However, it is difficult to perceive this in everyday life. People are unable to perceive periods of time longer than their own lives. There is a cognitive boundary in people’s recognition of the continuity of time.
The eternal birth and death of the flowers in the hollow of the fallen tree that formed over an overwhelmingly long period of time and is beyond the boundaries of our cognition for long-term continuity, may allow us to realize that the existence of life itself is part of a continuous cycle of life and death.
The artwork is not a pre-recorded image that is played back; it is created by a computer program that continuously renders the artwork in real time. As a whole, it is continuously changing, and previous visual states are never replicated. The artwork at this moment can never be seen again.