ART-PRESENTATION: teamLab-Transcending Boundaries

teamLab, BlackWaves Dark monitor, Pace GalleryIn the mid ‘90s when Toshiyuki Inoko was studying engineering at the University of Tokyo, he recognized that the future would be digital. While, at the time, the focus was on developing the technology itself, Toshiyuki Inoko began thinking about how digital art and technology could be integrated to form new cultural assets. These ideas took concrete form a few years later when he started bringing his friends together on a regular basis to exchange creative ideas, these gatherings were the seedbed of what later became teamLab.

By Efi Michalarou
Photo: Pace Gallery Archive

Since its establishment in March 2001, teamLab has been at the cutting edge of the digital art industry, working to create a range of captivating works, exploring the idea of “Ultra Subjective Space”. Since the renaissance, people in the west have been taught to construct their experience of spatial reality like perspective paintings with themselves as a point observer. Premodern Japanese art, in contrast, have taught people to experience a very different flattened perspective which places them inside each space: subjective instead of objective. To explore the idea of “Ultra Subjective Space”, teamLab starts with three dimensional computer models and uses mathematical techniques to create flattened perspectives which then form the basis for various animated experiences. I can’t say that the result actually changed my perception of reality, but the experience was both sublime and thought-provoking. The exhibition “Transcending Boundaries” by teamLab at Pace Gallery in London presents three rooms of Installations, two of which have never been seen before. The exhibition explores the role of digital technology in transcending the physical and conceptual boundaries that exist between different artworks, with imagery from one work breaking free of the frame and entering the space of another. The installations also dissolve distinctions between artwork and exhibition space, and involve the viewer through interactivity.   For their method of work Toshiyuki Inokos says “When we start a new project we have an overall idea of what we want to achieve, at the same time, we challenge each other with questions about the project until we can’t come up with an answer. This forces us to think about things in a new way and can lead to something very different from what was originally envisioned”.  The largest room in the exhibition includes the Interactive Digital Installation with sound by Hideaki Takahashi “Universe of Water Particles, Transcending Boundaries” (2017), with sound byHideaki Takahashi. The work is a virtual waterfall that extends beyond the wall onto the floor, flowing through the exhibition space and around the feet of the viewer. It engages with the concept central to teamLab’s theory that art shapes the way people of different cultures experience space. “Dark Waves” (2016) is a simulation of the movement of waves based on the behaviour of hundreds of thousands of water particles. The waves are created in a three-dimensional virtual space, expressing water as a living entity that immerses the viewer and suggests an intrinsic connection with nature.  Without people the installation “Flowers Bloom on People” (2017), is a dark space. When people enter the room and stand still flowers blossom on the people and before long the flowers spread out below their feet. When those flowers come close to another person they spread in that direction and connect. When the viewer moves the flowers begin to wither, die and fade away. This work is in continuous change, neither a pre-recorded animation nor on loop, the work is rendered in real time by a computer program. The interaction between the viewer and the installation causes continuous change in the artwork, previous visual states can never be replicated, and will never reoccur.

Info: Pace Gallery, 6 Burlington Gardens, London, Duration: 25/1-11/3/17, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 11:00-16:00, www.pacegallery.com

teamLab, Exhibition View,  1:Flutter of Butterflies Beyond Borders, Ephemeral Life (2016), 2: Impermanent Life, 3: Enso,   4: The Void,   5: Flowers and People, Transcending Boundaries - A Whole Year per Hour 6: Universe of Water Particles, Transcending Boundaries, Photo: Courtesy teamLab, © 2016 teamLab, Courtesy Pace Gallery.
teamLab, Exhibition View, 1:Flutter of Butterflies Beyond Borders, Ephemeral Life (2016), 2: Impermanent Life, 3: Enso, 4: The Void, 5: Flowers and People, Transcending Boundaries – A Whole Year per Hour 6: Universe of Water Particles, Transcending Boundaries, Photo: Courtesy teamLab, © 2016 teamLab, Courtesy Pace Gallery

 

 

teamLab, Flowers Bloom on People, 2017, Digitized Nature, Endless, Sound: Hideaki Takahashi, Photo Courtesy teamLab, © 2016 teamLab, Courtesy Pace Gallery
teamLab, Flowers Bloom on People, 2017, Digitized Nature, Endless, Sound: Hideaki Takahashi, Photo Courtesy teamLab, © 2016 teamLab, Courtesy Pace Gallery