Reversible Rotation: Flying Beyond Borders - One Stroke, Cold Light

teamLab, 2019, Digital Installation, Sound: Hideaki Takahashi

Reversible Rotation: Flying Beyond Borders - One Stroke, Cold Light

teamLab, 2019, Digital Installation, Sound: Hideaki Takahashi

The Spatial Calligraphy artwork Reversible Rotation transcends the boundaries of the display and continues across the Borderless World in a single stroke. This single stroke influences other artworks, and causes the flowers in Forest of Flowers and People: Lost, Immersed and Reborn to scatter their petals. The calligraphy stroke draws images such as bamboo as it flows seamlessly into other artworks.


The Spatial Calligraphy in this artwork space rotates in the same direction, but because of the characteristics of Ultrasubjective Space, visually, the clockwise and counterclockwise rotation are logically equivalent. Hence, the work can appear to be rotating in either direction depending on how the viewer chooses to look at it.


Spatial Calligraphy is a form of calligraphy drawn in space that teamLab has been exploring since it was founded. The artwork reconstructs calligraphy in three-dimensional space to express the depth, speed, and power of the brush stroke, and that calligraphy is then flattened using the logical structure of space that teamLab calls Ultrasubjective Space. The calligraphy shifts between two and three dimensions.