Kagoshima Art Festa 2013 | 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.

This installation is a 10 minute condensed version of the artwork 100 Years Sea. The installation gives viewers the feeling that there is no border between the animated world and the real world, and the rising sea that eventually swallows them.

Historically Japanese artists painted and expressed waves using a combination of lines. These assembled lines give the impression of the life and energy of the sea as one living creature. Looking at the sea we feel awe, and it is probably due to this awe that Japanese artists chose to express the sea as a living entity. Japanese ancestors possibly saw the world as it is depicted in classic Japanese pictures.

Based on this idea, teamLab considered recombining the subjective view of ancient times with the fixed objective view of the modern world. The waves were created in a virtual 3-D space and then the space is converted into what teamLab calls, Ultra Subjective Space. In doing so, instead of viewing the work objectively, we may be able to discover a new form of expression in which viewers feel there is no border between the world of the movie and the world in which they exist. As a result the viewers may be able to feel the movie more physically.