teamLab exhibition "We are the Future" | teamLab

Created from 12 screens, this illustrated story features a theme of "the clash, cycle, and symbiosis between nature and culture.

The world of the artwork is created in three-dimensional space on the computer, visualizing a ultrasubjective space within 12 perspectives. The surface peels away, and the other side of the work rises to the surface.

Three-dimensional shapes are represented by a computer as abstract, higher-order information described by a mesh construction. When the surfaces of those three-dimensional rendered objects are peeled away, it is apparent that they are created from various combinations of mesh structures. By peeling away the surface, the underside of the work is revealed allowing a glimpse into the creative process behind it.

1: Flower and Corpse Glitch Set of 12 Capital City & Noble
The capital city in all its wondrous glory.

2: Flower and Corpse Glitch Set of 12 Disaster & Prosperity
An evil disease spreads throughout the capital.

3: Flower and Corpse Glitch Set of 12 Mountain People & Festival
Hikaru Genji follows the disease and ends up in a mountain village. To celebrate the blessings of nature, the village holds a festival.

4: Flower and Corpse Glitch Set of 12 Daily Life & Forest
The village festival is over and the village returns to ordinary life. Even under the influence of the disease, the people bravely live on. They receive the benefits of nature, living in abundance and cutting down trees to develop their civilization.

5: Flower and Corpse Glitch Set of 12 The Spirit Tree & Yamata no Orochi
The mountain village is asked to provide large amounts of timber to further develop the city. The villagers cut down a large tree deep within the mountains. When the sacred tree is downed, suddenly, Yamata no Orochi appears from the fallen tree. Yamata no Orochi is furious with rage and causes heavy rain and flooding in the valley.

6: Flower and Corpse Glitch Set of 12 Yamata no Orochi & The Gods of the Forest
Yamata no Orochi knocks down the houses of the mountain village. Following the rampage of Yamata no Orochi, the gods of the forest appear and begin to attack the people.

7: Flower and Corpse Glitch Set of 12 Weapons & Battlefield
The mountain villagers ask samurai to come to the mountain village, and a battle between the warriors, the gods of the forest, and Yamata no Orochi begins.

8: Flower and Corpse Glitch Set of 12 Destruction & Victory
After a fierce battle, the warriors make use of the developments of civilization, such as flaming arrows and swords. Eventually the samurai warriors begin to be victorious.

9: Flower and Corpse Glitch Set of 12 Hunger & Wasteland
After the battle, the burned-out forest is a wasteland. The benefits of nature are lost and the mountain village suffers hunger and despair.

10: Flower and Corpse Glitch Set of 12 Flower & Corpse
Hikaru Genji is surrounded by the dead bodies of the gods of the forest and Yamata no Orochi. Despairing, he spreads seeds over the corpse of Yamata no Orochi. Then, from the dead corpse, buds appear and numerous flowers bloom. The flowers grow over the trees and the forest is gradually restored.

11: Flower and Corpse Glitch Set of 12 Festival & Forest
The people of the mountain begin once again to reap the benefits of the forest and civilization is restored. The people of the village are determined to go on and live in harmony with the forest and the festival is once again held.

12: Flower and Corpse Glitch Set of 12 City & Festival
The evil disease subsides in the capital city. The people still do not know the cause of the disease, but they carry out a festival of thanks at this auspicious change of fortune.

This is an interactive diorama animation that uses hundreds of smartphones. Each smartphone becomes a small person. He or she has: perception (camera, microphone), intelligence (computer, software), expression (display), and communication (network). They interact with one another, and react to the external world (viewers’ actions). For example, the small people at the front sense the presence of a viewer, but those at the back may not sense the viewer. However, all of the small people communicate with one another, so the small people at the front can send information those at the back. Furthermore, sound is emitted individually by each and every small person. If a person holds a flute, then the sounds of that flute and their footsteps are emitted from the phone. If that person becomes tired and rests, that sound stops. If they detect another flute sound, they will join in with their flute.

This installation consists of three male-connection and three female-connection light cube chairs. Each cube, or block, is a stand-alone chair. The interconnecting blocks can be joined to make a bench, another piece of furniture, or a wall. When the blocks are joined, information passes from one block to another and their color changes.

Children freely join the blocks to change the design and color of the space. Their actions alone, especially those that change the form and function of the blocks, change the space and give enjoyment. This is the concept of new value in behavior.

Your canvas is your world, when you draw a line, the line becomes part of the world, the characters in your world bounce and slide on the lines, or objects like balls bounce and resonate sounds.
Sketch Piston is an artists tool and web contents project that gives new value to the act of drawing and creates new enjoyment from the act of drawing. This is the concept we call, “New Value in Behavior”.
The concept of a user interface and game and tool contents being combined into a “Contents Interface” was behind the development of corporate sites and promotion site Sketch Piston interfaces by teamLab.
Depending on the world drawn and created the characters in Sketch piston will jump or slide. Place a stamp on the canvas and it will start to move. For young children with great imagination, we have created a fantasy world, draw in this fantasy world and the imaginative possibilities are endless, the fantasy world they create starts to spring into action. It doesn’t matter if, as an adult your are no longer as imaginative as you were as a child, or that you are not so good at drawing pictures, through the process of drawing a line and starting the fantasy world in motion you can freely enjoy creating pictures and return to your childhood imaginative days – at least that’s what we would like.
There is also a musical versions of Sketch Piston. Sounds are produced by drawing lines or balls bouncing. At the time of childhood, free from the constraints of adult knowledge, things around us, everything, was an instrument. When you become an adult we become constrained by knowledge, and we can wonder why we are not musically talented. We created sketch Piston to give back the chance for anyone to freely enjoy making sounds, the world which you draw and create becomes an instrument and the instrument makes music.
Before the information society, design was about making high quality contents that could be appreciated. In the information society, however, all users can express themselves, the things that your friends have expressed become contents. Design in the information society has become a free form of expression. For us, design was t o make a tool that would enable the expression of a non professional user to make high quality contents.

teamLabHanger is an interactive hanger. Items are linked via a sensor that is installed in the hanger and when a customer picks up the hanger coordinated images and videos, or an items design concept, features, explanation of materials etc, additional information is displayed on monitors in the store.
teamLab has created and managed a number of fashion and e-commerce projects. In In the world of fashion e-commerce, rather than one stand alone photo, coordinated photos overwhelming increase sales. Even the space of the store can be coordinated visually and through adding information an item can be shown to be more appealing.
Considering the concept, “New Value in Behaviour”, when you take something into your hand, the subconscious movement is the result of an action of wanting to know more about the item. The teamLabHanger acts as an interface that provides additional information as a result of this action.
In order make the action of taking an item by the hand more enjoyable, displays can provide not only item information but additional information and sound.
In the information society added product value belongs more in the digital domain than in the item itself. The product exists in the same reality as we do and it is necessary to have an interface between us and the digital network domain.

A reception system that lets you see the faces of all members of staff
FaceTouch is a reception system that displays photos of your employee's faces on your touch panel display and calls when clients touch the appointed person's photo. Calls are sent through permanent* PC applications or emails to cellphones, notifying the person directly. In the information society, human connections are increasing through the likes of social networks and it can be come difficult to remember everybody’s name. With FaceTouch if you remember a person’s face you can retrieve information about them. This is a new way of communication suitable for a new generation of people using social media.

*Messenger of the original application Unlike typical applications, it can only be used to call members of staff so there is no fear of an information leak.


No hesitation when looking for personnel
Even if you do not know the name or department you can search for a person with whom you have an appointment from their photo only. You can also search for personnel from their name or department.
Intuitive, simple operation
Touch the photographic portrait of the person you want to call. Does not require any difficult operation.
Get to know more about the company
Visitors can get to know a member of staff and what kind of staff are in the company through the profile that is also displayed with the photographs.
Traditional reception

Phone Reception
A fixed phone in a company's entrance gives an old-fashioned impression that the company is not up-to-date. It's not cool to have a piece of paper with employee extension numbers written on it beside the phone; nor is it correct to assume that the visitor will remember the employee’s name.


Unmanned Reception System
Uncool and unthinkable. That uncool image will be projected out into the world.


With Receptionists
The common reception scenario presumes that a visitor will remember an employee's full name and department details.
Receptionist "May I ask which Mr. Tanaka you are looking for?"
Visitor "Ummm, I think Mr. Tanaka working in the Digital something department."
Receptionist "We dont have any department called Digital something department..."
like this, there are times we have trouble when others are not as flexible as expected. The era of being happy for cute receptionist girls is over. And when taking a bullet train ride, not all people want to buy tickets at the ticket counter. Some people prefer buying it at the ticket machine. Facetouch will let you choose by face, even if you don't know their name, It will be convenient if it was next to the reception desk.

Reception flow ? Call

1. Choose the person
Choose the person you want to call from the list of staff and touch their photo. You can also find a person by sorting the people by name or department.


2. Display profile
The employee’s profile will be displayed. You can learn about a member of staff, such as their home town, hobbies and skills, these things help you get to know them and serve as a talking point for when you meet them.


3. Start calling
When you touch the call button, the call is initiated.


4. Receive notification call
The call notification will be transferred by the messenger application that is installed on the employee’s PC. The employee can also receive mail at the time of the call. If you set up a web camera at the reception you can see the visitor in the web cam image.


5. Response is displayed
If the employee enters a message such as "I will pick you up immediately!" the message appears on the display.


In the case that a person is absent
If a person does not respond within a certain period of time, the call is transferred back to the office. They can respond on your behalf. The Back-office personnel can be set to more than one person.

Data can be easily entered from a browser

Registration and data-editing and department employees, and various settings, can be carried out from the management screen on the web browser. User authority can be set as either a general user or as administrator.


Profile registration
Change personal settings
Changing the password


Registration user information (staffs)
Registration of the department information
Time to transfer to back-office
Time until the call times out and additional etc

Choose display pattern 
The number of rows of photos on the reception screen can be changed in the management screen. If you have few staff, it is better to introduce them one by one with large photos. If you have many staff, we recommend you display small photos of them to make searching easier.

3lines 
 

4lines 


 5lines 
 

Created in 12 scenes, this illustrated story features the theme of “The clash, cycle, and symbiosis between nature and culture.”

The world of the artwork is created in three-dimensional space on a computer, visualizing ultrasubjective space within 12 perspectives. The 12 screens in the exhibition space are arranged in positions that are relatively identical to 12 perspectives on the world of the artwork.

The ultrasubjective space of the work is cropped from several perspectives in order to cut the space out of its surroundings, and it attempts to combine reality with the world of the artwork by creating a three-dimensional display using multiple screens to visualize the display space.

teamLabOximeter is a device for real time automatic tweets of blood oxygen levels.
 Mountaineer Nobukazu Kuriki performs an attack on Mount Everest without using oxygen. teamLabOximeter tweets “Now, I am alive!” to the world, a shared moment of life, a shared performance with all the people in the world.
Little maids live in displays in the wall and react to the situation in the cafe. For example, when a soda float is ready in the kitchen little maids become excited and they react with such expressions as; "Wow, soda float!", "Who's one is that?", "I cant wait!!".

This artwork is a cyclorama version of 100 Years Sea Animation Diorama.

The blessings and threats of nature, as well as the blessings and threats of civilization, are continuous. There is no single source of absolute malice, nor can it all be dismissed idealistically. There are no simple answers, and at times it is difficult to process our emotions. Even so, we want to affirm life in all aspects. Life is beautiful.

teamLab has been working on the Spatial Calligraphy series since the collective formed. Spatial Calligraphy offers a contemporary interpretation of traditional Japanese sho (calligraphy) in an abstract space. It reconstructs Japanese sho in three-dimensional space and expresses the depth, speed, and power of the brushstroke. Butterflies, birds, animals, plants, and flowers appear from the calligraphy expressing the passing of the seasons. According to Zen Buddhist writing, “In all living things Buddha nature dwells.” All things are impermanent and the natural appearance of things is the Buddha nature. What we put into shape is that which we, the living, think is the heart of life.