Employees check digital displays at an exhibition during a tour of Japanese collective teamLab’s new location in the newly opened 325-meter-high Azabudai Hills Tower, Minato Ward, Tokyo on February 5.
13:56 JST, February 16, 2024
TOKYO (AFP-Jiji) — It’s immersive, interactive and, of course, Instagrammable — the digital art of Japanese collective teamLab, a major tourist draw, has a new home in the country’s tallest skyscraper.
A moving vortex of spotlights and a mirror room filled with ethereal ‘wobbling’ spheres are among the brand new works of art in the permanent exhibition ‘teamLab Borderless’, which opened on February 2.
They join dozens of other mesmerizing displays, from waterfalls of light to birds leaving colorful trails as they fly by, in a labyrinthine display at the 325-meter-high Azabudai Hills building in central Tokyo.
“Our goal is to touch people and get them to think about life and the world in a more positive way,” Toshiyuki Inoko, director of the internationally renowned teamLab collective, told AFP at a press preview.
“Our work is the continuation of our past efforts, but at the same time offers a completely new experience.”
Visitors to the Azabudai Hills attraction, which has towered over central Tokyo since its completion last year, can wander freely through the complex of artworks that combine projection and sound.
Some displays move from room to room, and others respond to visitors’ movements, with petals disintegrating as they approach and flowing lights rippling at their feet.
The exhibition includes more than 50 works of art with a mix of natural and otherworldly motifs, from slowly blooming flowers to a huge room with cables through which digital light appears to rain.
Many of the exhibits were on display during the previous incarnation of “teamLab Borderless” in Tokyo Bay, which was open from 2018 to 2022.
It is visited by stars such as Will Smith and Kim Kardashian and holds the Guinness World Record for the most visited museum dedicated to a single art group, with almost 2.2 million visitors in 2019.
In addition to visual and auditory pleasure, the installations in the new ‘teamLab Borderless’ also appeal to the senses of smell and taste, with green tea and ice cream served under special table projections.
People “perceive the world with their bodies, but nowadays our perception of the world often happens through the Internet or television,” Inoko said.
“So we wanted to create an experience” that appealed to all the senses, he added.
The exhibition is well poised to benefit from the recent boom in tourism to Japan, with visitor numbers reaching a monthly record in December.
TeamLab was founded in 2011 and also runs another museum in Tokyo called ‘teamLab Planets’.
The collective has shown its hugely popular artworks worldwide and has several permanent exhibitions in China.
