XXThe Immersive Gallery Phenomena: teamLab’s Borderless World of Art and Technology

  • Marisa Velarde, The George Washington University

The teamLab Borderless permanent Museum of Digital Art opened in Odaiba, Japan in June of 2018. The museum was designed to house a “borderless” world in which visitors could fully immerse in breathtaking and kaleidoscopic borderless art that allows them to wander and explore a digital new world with others.1 Following its opening, the museum welcomed half a million visitors, in its first 85 days of operation with entrances constantly being sold out every day and attesting to the public’s response to the new immersive digital art.2 The Borderless deviates from a traditional gallery by allowing its artworks to interact with each other and with the visitors directly and eliminating the conventional boundaries of contemporary art galleries. To accomplish this, teamLab employs a digital projection-based exhibition paired with algorithmic programming that creates light effects to change ambient colors and brightness to effectively transform the space installation and generate an immersive experience where the visitor can help in shaping the overall experience.3

The philosophy and approach of teamLab as an organization dedicated to the creation and advancement of art creates curiosity to further explore their approach to the creative process in their artworks as well as the details of its internal structure in relation to what has made them succeed in their field. Their unique composition and interdisciplinary approach make them an ideal subject for exploring the advantages and constraints of approaching a vastly specialized subject from multiple angles. The non-hierarchical laboratory like structure of teamLab’s organization seems to be key in the development of effective workgroups where each specialists fulfills a key role in the creation process centered on the collaboration between artists, programmers, animators, designers, and engineers.4 Founder Inoko Toshiyuki started with a vision that encompassed the power of working as a team with the efficiency expected of a laboratory setting to develop a cross disciplinary collective team initially consisting of schoolteachers and students.5 From its creation, teamLab focused on targeted development to attain its current working methodology and with time the team began expanding to include an increasing number of artists, programmers, engineers, animators, mathematicians, and architects that managed to work collectively while sharing ideas on a level field. Team director Daisuke Sakai sought to enhance the existing teamLab base by incorporating experts in the field of engineering, product design, and robotics resulting in a team of over 400 members focused on the combination of technology and imagination through experimentation and the construction of large-scale light installations.6

A Unique Art Experience

The uniqueness of teamLab’s composition can be best experienced in the stories presented by their exhibits and their focus on delivering multisensorial experiences unique to each visitor as teamLab creators purposedly designed interactive environments that engage visitors individually. One can appreciate teamLab’s approach to immersion by examining their Forest of Resonating Lamps exhibition as it showcases their approach to art and exhibition design. This exhibit aims to present a seemingly infinite space filled with lamps of various colors that react to the visitor’s proximity in real-time by changing their intensity and emitting sounds. This changing in light intensity and resonating sound then travels to adjacent lamps allowing the visitor to follow a path of lighting and sound determined entirely by their interactions with the space. The apparent vastness of the space and seemingly random arrangement of the lamps instill a sense of timelessness in the visitors and immerses them in teamLab’s concept of a world without borders. Similarly, the Flutter of Butterflies exhibit employs an approach where digitally rendered butterflies appear to fly around and interact with visitors. The digital butterflies seem to react to visitor’s touch by changing color, position, intensity, and even dramatically disappearing. This experience is paired with an accompanying music track that follows the butterflies’ behavior and accentuates the multisensory experience. teamLab repeats this approach in their Universe of Water Particles. where computer generated images are rendered in real time and immerse visitors on another unique experience. Traditionally, the art market has developed closely around the traditional concept of collecting habits and holding static exhibition displays to showcase a collection and provide a uniform experience.7

To achieve high levels of individuality and interconnection, teamLab creates a sort of digital language that combines various elements of nature while analyzing them in terms of lighting, color, and movement.8 The result carries visitors through vastly personalized experiences based on their individual appreciation of the exhibit and their level of interaction with the environment and with each other. In addition to the technical and artistic features of the exhibition, the individualized nature of experiencing teamLab’s works allows for the exploration of the social and psychological effects of their work in relation to the concept of participatory experience.9 As indicated by researcher Jane McGonigal, a rewarding participatory experience can result from satisfactory work, a feeling of accomplishment, interpersonal relationships, or being part of a larger cause.10 Generally, a teamLab experience includes an opportunity to connect with other visitors through a shared interaction with the exhibit that produces unique results based on the inputs provided an can so be considered a participatory experience. Observing the relative success of an exhibition in terms of attendance one can then assess the effectiveness and quality of the participatory experience being provided and incorporate these findings into the design of future exhibitions.

teamLab’s Success

Exploring teamLab’s motivations and vision allows one to study the significance of developing a kind of specialized museum conceptualized entirely around a single focal point and built for that specific purpose. The emphasis teamLab places on the interactive aspect of their artwork installations arises from a concept of multidimensionality aimed at imprinting a long-lasting impression on the viewer while presenting a reinvented artistic experience through cutting edge art, culture, and technology.11 Although there exist other exhibits or institutions that have attempted various levels of similar digital artwork exhibitions, I believe that teamLab’s unique methodology has been able to surpass similar offerings in terms of scale, success, and execution. teamLab’s approach manages to include the input of many professionals from various fields that provide valuable perspectives for the creation of concepts, management of design, and execution of the final work.12 Moreover, the tremendous emphasis on the interactive aspects of their exhibitions and the scale of their work allows teamLab to surpass other offerings that rely on digital displays since these cannot compete in terms of magnitude, interactivity, and overall execution. Approaching digital art from the collective perspective of scientists, engineers, mathematicians, managers, and artists has allowed teamLab to deliver unique experiences of tremendous scale. While the scale of their work and the complexity of their design and execution have been key in their success, these aspects also represent the most difficult to properly maintain in the long term and so one must also explore teamLab’s plans for the future.

teamLab’s Future

Lastly, I would like to also explore the overall long-term effects of teamLab’s approach to digital art as one must consider aspects such as financial requirements and restraints, long-term project viability, facility size requirements, and overall rentability. Although one can perceive teamLab’s digital art approach as innovative, unique, and multilayered, one must also explore critically analyze their approach and philosophy to better gauge teamLab’s effectiveness and contributions as a museum institution and an art creator.13 Although visually appealing and greatly focused on the implementation of the latest advances in technology, one can suggest that teamLab’s future may become uncertain when dealing with physical constraints such as their building size requirements and location access as well as fluctuating economic factors that may render their vision unfeasible or their requirements too expensive to justify from an institutional perspective.

Even though teamLab’s first digital art museum in Odaiba enjoyed significant success over its initial four years of operations, it had to close its doors in August 2022. Due to the increased number of visits, specially foreigners coming to Japan, the lack of planning and infrastructure of the city of Odaiba to receive such a volume of visits, the decision to relocate the digital art museum was imminent. Although currently unconfirmed, a permanent museum location is expected to open in Tokyo in 2023.14

Additionally, teamLab’s commitment to offering multisensorial experiences resulting from interdisciplinary collaboration has gain them an opportunity to develop “teamLab Phenomena Abu Dhabi” in Saddiyat Island where the government of Abu Dhabi aims to strengthen their commitment to inspire innovators in their country and region. This cultural development in Saadiyat Island was first announced in 2007 and aimed to design and construct cultural buildings on the island. teamLab Phenomena will be the second museum after the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi to open on the island of Saadiyat cultural district. teamLab Phenomena will be a large windowless building housing a vast space for galleries of various sizes displaying TeamLab’s digital art.15 Despite the challenges ahead, I believe that exploring teamLab’s vision, philosophy, structure, and approach to art serve greatly to understand the potential and challenges faced by museum institutions in years to come. Although teamLab started operations without a defined profit model, founder Inoko Toshiyuki has managed to develop a rather successful business model that takes advantage of today’s era of rapid technological development to present a seemingly boundless offering of digital art experiences.16 The continuous growing demand for projection equipment and greater involvement of computer technology in art design will continue to drive the demand and participation in projects that will follow the boundless vitality of the teamLab approach.17

Notes

  1. “MORI BUILDING Digital Art Museum.” n.d. Digital Meets Culture. https://www.digitalmeetsculture.net/article/mori-building-digital-art-museum/. ↩︎

  2. Rea, Naomi. 2019. “TeamLab’s Tokyo Museum Has Become the World’s Most Popular Single-Artist Destination, Surpassing the van Gogh Museum.” Artnet News. August 7, 2019. https://news.artnet.com/art-world/teamlab-museum-attendance-1618834. ↩︎

  3. Grassi, Jacqueline. 2022. “Borderless: The Role of Play in Immersive.” https://spectrum.library.concordia.ca/id/eprint/990914/1/Grassi_MA_F2022.pdf. ↩︎

  4. “Takashi Kudo & Michaela Kane (Ep. 45).” n.d. Www.futureofstorytelling.org. https://www.futureofstorytelling.org/story/takashi-kudo-michaela-kane-ep-45. ↩︎

  5. Liu, Chinchen. n.d. “Digital Commons @ SIA Digital Commons @ SIA MA Theses Student Scholarship and Creative Work 2019 TeamLab Research TeamLab Research Part of the Contemporary Art Commons, Interactive Arts Commons, and the Interdisciplinary Arts and Media Commons.” https://digitalcommons.sia.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1029&context=stu_theses. ↩︎

  6. Grassi, Jacqueline. 2022. “Borderless: The Role of Play in Immersive.” https://spectrum.library.concordia.ca/id/eprint/990914/1/Grassi_MA_F2022.pdf. ↩︎

  7. Liu, Chinchen. n.d. “Digital Commons @ SIA Digital Commons @ SIA MA Theses Student Scholarship and Creative Work 2019 TeamLab Research TeamLab Research Part of the Contemporary Art Commons, Interactive Arts Commons, and the Interdisciplinary Arts and Media Commons.” https://digitalcommons.sia.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1029&context=stu_theses. ↩︎

  8. “TeamLab: Continuity - Exhibitions - Asian Art Museum.” n.d. Exhibitions. https://exhibitions.asianart.org/exhibitions/teamlab-continuity/. ↩︎

  9. Uchida, Yukiko, and Shigehiro Oishi. 2016. “The Happiness of Individuals and the Collective.” Japanese Psychological Research 58 (1): 125–41. https://doi.org/10.1111/jpr.12103. ↩︎

  10. Grassi, Jacqueline. 2022. “Borderless: The Role of Play in Immersive.” https://spectrum.library.concordia.ca/id/eprint/990914/1/Grassi_MA_F2022.pdf. ↩︎

  11. “TeamLab: Continuity - Exhibitions - Asian Art Museum.” n.d. Exhibitions. Accessed November 7, 2022. https://exhibitions.asianart.org/exhibitions/teamlab-continuity/.. ↩︎

  12. “The Sensory and Surreal Worlds of TeamLab - DESK Magazine.” 2020. The DESK Magazine. March 30, 2020. https://vanschneider.com/blog/sensory-surreal-worlds-teamlab/. ↩︎

  13. “TeamLab Reveals ‘Home for Infinite Curiosity’ on Abu Dhabi’s Saadiyat Island.” 2022. Dezeen. June 24, 2022. https://www.dezeen.com/2022/06/24/teamlab-phenomena-abu-dhabi-saadiyat-island/. ↩︎

  14. “JAPAN Forward - REAL ISSUES, REAL VOICES, REAL JAPAN.” 2021. Japan-Forward.com. July 7, 2021. https://japan-forward.com/. ↩︎

  15. “TeamLab Reveals ‘Home for Infinite Curiosity’ on Abu Dhabi’s Saadiyat Island.” 2022. Dezeen. June 24, 2022. https://www.dezeen.com/2022/06/24/teamlab-phenomena-abu-dhabi-saadiyat-island/. ↩︎

  16. Liu, Chinchen. n.d. “Digital Commons @ SIA Digital Commons @ SIA MA Theses Student Scholarship and Creative Work 2019 TeamLab Research TeamLab Research Part of the Contemporary Art Commons, Interactive Arts Commons, and the Interdisciplinary Arts and Media Commons.” https://digitalcommons.sia.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1029&context=stu_theses. ↩︎

  17. Liu, Chinchen. n.d. “Digital Commons @ SIA Digital Commons @ SIA MA Theses Student Scholarship and Creative Work 2019 TeamLab Research TeamLab Research Part of the Contemporary Art Commons, Interactive Arts Commons, and the Interdisciplinary Arts and Media Commons.” https://digitalcommons.sia.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1029&context=stu_theses ↩︎