teamLab Islands Dance! Art Museum and Learn & Play! Future Park | teamLab

Flowers bud, bloom, and in the course of time, wither and die. While eternally repeating the process of life and death, the places where they grow change gradually. When people stand still, the flowers surrounding them grow and bloom abundantly, but when people touch the flowers or walk around, they scatter and die all at once.The artwork is not a pre-recorded image that is played back; it continues to be rendered in real time under the influence of people's behavior. The picture at this moment can never be seen again.
In spring in the Kunisaki Peninsula, there are many cherry blossoms in the mountains and canola blossoms at their base. A visit to this region led teamLab to wonder how many of these flowers were planted by people and how many of them were native to the environment. It was a place overflowing with flowers, a place of great serenity and contentment. This nature is an ecosystem influenced by human activity, making us feel that nature and humanity are not in conflict. Perhaps a truly comforting nature is one that encompasses human presence as part of the ecosystem. Based on the premise that nature cannot be completely controlled, this artwork explores human activity that lives closely aligned to the rules of nature.
This artwork is an ecological pictorial space drawn through Ultrasubjective Space, which continues to be generated along with the body, others, time, and the environment. Viewers physically walk around and touch inside the world of the artwork, transforming it together with others in the same space.
This pictorial space differs from images or paintings flattened by a lens or single-point perspective. In such images or paintings, space appears behind the picture plane; the space that opens there and the space the viewer inhabits are split, and the picture plane becomes a boundary surface. The viewpoint is fixed at a single point, and bodily freedom is lost.On the other hand, a picture plane formed by Ultrasubjective Space is not a boundary that separates where we are from the world of the artwork. The world of the artwork is not outside a window; it appears as a single field that is continuously connected, without boundary, to the space in which the viewer’s body exists. Moreover, any position — front, back, left, or right — can become a viewpoint, so viewpoints exist in infinite number, and the viewer is physically free to move.Not bound to a single point, the viewer moves their body and lets their eyes roam freely, continually re-composing the world of the artwork as it changes over time, and building the pictorial space within themselves. In that moment, the artwork becomes a centerless, subjective, and embodied pictorial space in which the viewer walks and touches.
In this space, the boundaries between the viewer and the artwork become ambiguous. The artwork transforms simply by the presence of a body there, and the behavior of others also changes the world of the artwork. In conventional art, other people were often considered an obstacle that interferes with a one-on-one relationship with the artwork. However, here, the presence of others enriches and creates new changes in the artwork.
This artwork is an attempt to expand painting from a world on the other side of the screen into a space continuous with the body, others, time, and the environment. The artwork continues to be generated within the relationships among the behavior of people, the life and death of flowers, the passage of time, and the entire space. Here, the painting does not exist on its own as a completed entity; it relates to people's bodies and includes the presence of others, existing as an ecological field without boundaries.

Itō Jakuchū (1716–1800) was an early modern Japanese painter who was active in Kyoto in the mid-Edo period. Jakuchū has left us with a unique style of painting in which the surface is made up of a grid of tens of thousands of squares that are individually colored. This work was inspired by the screen paintings Birds, Animals, and Flowering Plants and Trees, Flowers, Birds and Animals.
Jakuchū’s square paintings remind us of computer-generated pixel art. It has been proposed that Jakuchū’s squares pictures were inspired by industrial production constraints in the designs of Nishijin (traditional high-quality silk fabric that is woven in Nishijin, Kyoto). Pixel art was also born from functional limitations. Those functional limitations no longer exist but pixel art is still a very popular form of expression. This is perhaps why we feel an intuitive digital sense to Jakuchū's square works. The colors of Jakuchū’s work are the result of the optical phenomena of visual mixing of color combinations within the squares. It appears as if Jakuchū understood optical mixing of colors at a time before Impressionism and Pointillism. 
This artwork was created in a virtual 3-D space in which 3-D animals move. The space was then converted into what teamLab calls ultrasubjective space. Then,  the color in the 3-D space is split by the color pattern of the squares. For example, if the pattern of a square is colored in red and blue, that part corresponds to purple in the three dimensional space. 
The squares of the screen are fixed while the space continues to move, and thus the color inside the squares is on a different time axis to the space. Seen as a whole from a distance, brilliantly shining  colors occur, and the world of plants and animals in the space will move at a slow time axis. When viewed up close, the colors divided by the finely drawn patterns of each square will change on a rapid time axis. Two time axes co-exist in this work.
In addition, parts of the image squares are filled in with the most frequent color in the squares, forming an abstract world. Furthermore, when a visitor stands in front of the work, the squares near them are similarly painted. The plants and animals move in space, but are abstracted by the fixed squares on-screen, creating a new visual expression through pixel art.

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.

All the various fish drawn by everyone swim around in this aquarium.

Color in a fish on the paper provided, and see the picture you have drawn come to life, swimming out into the massive aquarium in front of you together with the fish drawn by other people. If you touch the swimming fish, they will swim away. You can also feed the fish by touching the food bags.

Sketch Town is a town that grows and evolves according to the pictures drawn by children.

After the 2-D drawings of the cars, buildings, UFOs, and spaceships are completed, they are scanned, become 3-D and enter a virtual 3-D townscape. Every component of the town has a role to play; for example, the fire trucks and cranes serve to protect the town. Children can interact with the final townscape by touching individual components to alter their behavior.

Create! Hopscotch for Geniuses is the digital version of the childhood game hopscotch. Participants are invited to create their own hopscotch course, consisting of projected circular, triangular, and square shapes. Each participant is able to determine the level of difficulty while making full use of his or her imaginative and creative skills. Different sound effects and beautiful images emerge as participants land on the same shape or color in succession.

This is a table where little people live.
If you put something, such as your hand, on top of the table, the little people will jump on to it. Depending on the shape of the objects you place on the table, the little people will slide, jump, or climb. Place many objects on the table and see the little people’s world transform into a completely new world.