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

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.

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.

굴리면 색과 소리가 변하는 라이트 볼로 연주하는 오케스트라입니다.
위에 있는 볼은 다른 공과 연동되어 있어, 만지면 주위에 있는 볼에게도 영향을 주어 공간 전체의 색이 변화합니다. 밑에 있는 볼을 굴리면 색이 변하고 소리가 납니다. 사람들은 몸을 움직이며 크고 작은 볼을 만지고 굴리면서, 함께 공간의 색을 바꿔가며 자유롭게 음악을 연주합니다.

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.