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“It's been a while since we had any updates from teamLab on the reopening of its world-renowned Borderless digital art museum, which closed its Odaiba location in August 2022. Now we have a bit of good news: the attraction is set to reopen in Azabudai Hills in central Tokyo in January 2024”.
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Our warm thanks to Toshiyuki Inoko, Takashi Kudo and everyone else at teamLab.
This story was first published in May 2018 and pre COVID. In the first year of its opening the new museum received 2.3 million visitors. teamLab’s world is a world of endless possibilities, it is a world without boundaries and an art without end.
This is now digital art history with an impending opening of the new museum in Azabudai Hills in central Tokyo in January 2024.
These are among the reasons that MORI Building DIGITAL ART MUSEUM: teamLab Borderless became the most visited ‘new’ art museum in the world when it opened in Tokyo in the northern summer of 2018.
“No longer limited to physical media, digital technology has made it possible for artworks to expand physically. Since digital art can easily expand. It provides us with a greater degree of autonomy within the space. We are now able to manipulate and use much larger spaces, and viewers are able to experience the artwork more directly”.
Secure in its own 10,000 square metre space, MORI Building DIGITAL ART MUSEUM: teamLab Borderless will begin to answer some of the questions about the historical context and future place of digital art and is the most significant step so far in the remarkable evolution of teamLab since the beginning in 2001. What the new museum did is to blur the borders between individual works of art, between the visitor and the art and between all of us as we interact and influence what is created here. In this experience we are immersed and become as art ourselves.
What is reflected in the development of teamLab as a collective of artists, computer programmers and animators, engineers, mathematicians and architects and the digital art that happens here, is a mirror of a transforming world of technology and convergence. What is demonstrated here is that the very process of convergence, the blurring of the boundaries between art, and design, technology and science, the natural world and so much more, can lead to new and unexpected journeys in the world of art and creativity.
On another plain, the convergence of Mori Building, the famous urban development company with its long history of association with contemporary art, and teamLab tells us an immediate story about the increasing importance of contemporary art in defining modern cities and societies.
MORI Building DIGITAL ART MUSEUM: teamLab Borderless was located in the Palette Town complex of Odaiba, which has developed from the small Edo Period fort islands in Tokyo Bay, built to protect the city from attack, particularly in relation to the USA’s attempts at gunboat diplomacy in the late Edo Period. So there is a rich history here.
This is now digital art history with an impending opening of the new museum in Azabudai Hills in central Tokyo in January 2024.
These are among the reasons that MORI Building DIGITAL ART MUSEUM: teamLab Borderless became the most visited ‘new’ art museum in the world when it opened in Tokyo in the northern summer of 2018.
“No longer limited to physical media, digital technology has made it possible for artworks to expand physically. Since digital art can easily expand. It provides us with a greater degree of autonomy within the space. We are now able to manipulate and use much larger spaces, and viewers are able to experience the artwork more directly”.
Secure in its own 10,000 square metre space, MORI Building DIGITAL ART MUSEUM: teamLab Borderless will begin to answer some of the questions about the historical context and future place of digital art and is the most significant step so far in the remarkable evolution of teamLab since the beginning in 2001. What the new museum did is to blur the borders between individual works of art, between the visitor and the art and between all of us as we interact and influence what is created here. In this experience we are immersed and become as art ourselves.
What is reflected in the development of teamLab as a collective of artists, computer programmers and animators, engineers, mathematicians and architects and the digital art that happens here, is a mirror of a transforming world of technology and convergence. What is demonstrated here is that the very process of convergence, the blurring of the boundaries between art, and design, technology and science, the natural world and so much more, can lead to new and unexpected journeys in the world of art and creativity.
On another plain, the convergence of Mori Building, the famous urban development company with its long history of association with contemporary art, and teamLab tells us an immediate story about the increasing importance of contemporary art in defining modern cities and societies.
MORI Building DIGITAL ART MUSEUM: teamLab Borderless was located in the Palette Town complex of Odaiba, which has developed from the small Edo Period fort islands in Tokyo Bay, built to protect the city from attack, particularly in relation to the USA’s attempts at gunboat diplomacy in the late Edo Period. So there is a rich history here.
The art of co-intelligence
A visit to the teamLab office in Tokyo quickly describes a way of working, a multidisciplinary set of skills combined with an interdisciplinary approach that sets out the possibility that there are no boundaries between people and the nature of this world.
“One is in the other and the other is in one”
As we sit and discuss teamLab’s projects with Takashi Kudo it is the way these works, of often great scale and complexity, come together in places often far distant from where we sit today, that reflect new kinds of relationships between creators, curators and audience. There is also a parallel here in the ways in which ideas, or the process itself, become art.
Takashi san speaks of these things:
“From the beginning we do not have a goal. The process is very much an internal one and we are like engineers and philosophers. The idea and inspiration comes from the process so we do not make prototypes. It is very much a team effort that evolves and involves problem solving which sometimes might be to do with software, or sometimes it might be an architectural issue. Solutions come from all directions.
If you look at an iPhone today it is impossible to tell which part was created by the designer or which part by the engineer, twenty years ago it was possible to tell which part was design and what was engineering, it was completely divided, but today you cannot tell which part the designer made or the engineer made.
teamLab’s process is similar, art is something we cannot explain by words, internally we say that we do not use PowerPoint presentations to describe our work within the company, this is because we do not believe that art is something we could explain by PowerPoint. This is because we are going to create something that we have never seen before and art itself is hard to define. We do not know if our output is going to be art or not, this may be decided in a hundred years’ time. So the way we perceive this process is that what we are going to make is something that we believe in but cannot explain by words.
As ultra-technologists we work in teams, we have to work in teams. What we are making with new technologies today at teamLab is more like something from Silicon Valley but we need to understand how to extend these new technologies into the humanities. So we have to create the brush ourselves and the tube of paint and everything else.
Our definition of art is something that can change people’s minds or ways of thinking because the society, especially today, is changing completely. There is a shift, but people are not superhuman, we are not logical creatures. Art itself can be cool, it is beautiful and we cannot explain it in words how art effectsour actions, but these things can change people’s actions and ways of thinking, so we believe art can change the world".
A world without boundaries
The process here is not political, it is the process of creation itself that informs the work. So what we try to create is originals, something we love, something beautiful, we try to bring the people inside our artworks. For us digital technology is just a tool, it is not our canvas, our art does not exist in the sense that it lives in the software and its expression has to come through some kind of light from monitors and projectors. Digital technology is only a tool, it is not the purpose, so we do not care what technology we are going to use.
In the past there were boundaries between art and humans. Physical material, stone or canvas for example has its boundaries and this material defines the difference between humans and art.
What I feel is important with digital technology we can bring the people to the inside of the artworks and people can be part of the artwork. It is in this way that that we can also change the relationship between humans within the artwork because they are immersed in the beauty of the work. We can create a positive feeling in the other audience through this process of interaction with the work and with each other and we create a very positive response from the audience.
In a traditional type of museum we view the artwork as individuals, in essence we see the work by ourselves. One of the motivations to collect art has been to view the work as an individual, the interaction is in just one direction. It can therefore be a very positive step to make people a part of the artwork.
Our aims are therefore to find a new relationship among and between human beings and among and between other worlds including nature. While this concept might be difficult to describe in English but in Japan we feel that we are one part of nature and there are no boundaries between us. Our immersive approach lives in that space of difference between Japanese and western art, In Japanese art there is a spatial freedom in which to organise the image, in contrast much of western art relies on a fixed perspective. The Japanese way of art in its flat plain allows the viewer choice and the opportunity to be ‘inside the art’.
There are many meanings to this term borders, but what we believe in is a borderless and a beautiful world”.
So now it is time to leave our friends at teamLab, time well spent in this world without boundaries, an idea we wholeheartedly share, and we look forward to being immersed in the many new teamLab projects, wherever we are on Planet Earth.
The art of co-intelligence
A visit to the teamLab office in Tokyo quickly describes a way of working, a multidisciplinary set of skills combined with an interdisciplinary approach that sets out the possibility that there are no boundaries between people and the nature of this world.
“One is in the other and the other is in one”
As we sit and discuss teamLab’s projects with Takashi Kudo it is the way these works, of often great scale and complexity, come together in places often far distant from where we sit today, that reflect new kinds of relationships between creators, curators and audience. There is also a parallel here in the ways in which ideas, or the process itself, become art.
Takashi san speaks of these things:
“From the beginning we do not have a goal. The process is very much an internal one and we are like engineers and philosophers. The idea and inspiration comes from the process so we do not make prototypes. It is very much a team effort that evolves and involves problem solving which sometimes might be to do with software, or sometimes it might be an architectural issue. Solutions come from all directions.
If you look at an iPhone today it is impossible to tell which part was created by the designer or which part by the engineer, twenty years ago it was possible to tell which part was design and what was engineering, it was completely divided, but today you cannot tell which part the designer made or the engineer made.
teamLab’s process is similar, art is something we cannot explain by words, internally we say that we do not use PowerPoint presentations to describe our work within the company, this is because we do not believe that art is something we could explain by PowerPoint. This is because we are going to create something that we have never seen before and art itself is hard to define. We do not know if our output is going to be art or not, this may be decided in a hundred years’ time. So the way we perceive this process is that what we are going to make is something that we believe in but cannot explain by words.
As ultra-technologists we work in teams, we have to work in teams. What we are making with new technologies today at teamLab is more like something from Silicon Valley but we need to understand how to extend these new technologies into the humanities. So we have to create the brush ourselves and the tube of paint and everything else.
Our definition of art is something that can change people’s minds or ways of thinking because the society, especially today, is changing completely. There is a shift, but people are not superhuman, we are not logical creatures. Art itself can be cool, it is beautiful and we cannot explain it in words how art effectsour actions, but these things can change people’s actions and ways of thinking, so we believe art can change the world".
A world without boundaries
The process here is not political, it is the process of creation itself that informs the work. So what we try to create is originals, something we love, something beautiful, we try to bring the people inside our artworks. For us digital technology is just a tool, it is not our canvas, our art does not exist in the sense that it lives in the software and its expression has to come through some kind of light from monitors and projectors. Digital technology is only a tool, it is not the purpose, so we do not care what technology we are going to use.
In the past there were boundaries between art and humans. Physical material, stone or canvas for example has its boundaries and this material defines the difference between humans and art.
What I feel is important with digital technology we can bring the people to the inside of the artworks and people can be part of the artwork. It is in this way that that we can also change the relationship between humans within the artwork because they are immersed in the beauty of the work. We can create a positive feeling in the other audience through this process of interaction with the work and with each other and we create a very positive response from the audience.
In a traditional type of museum we view the artwork as individuals, in essence we see the work by ourselves. One of the motivations to collect art has been to view the work as an individual, the interaction is in just one direction. It can therefore be a very positive step to make people a part of the artwork.
Our aims are therefore to find a new relationship among and between human beings and among and between other worlds including nature. While this concept might be difficult to describe in English but in Japan we feel that we are one part of nature and there are no boundaries between us. Our immersive approach lives in that space of difference between Japanese and western art, In Japanese art there is a spatial freedom in which to organise the image, in contrast much of western art relies on a fixed perspective. The Japanese way of art in its flat plain allows the viewer choice and the opportunity to be ‘inside the art’.
There are many meanings to this term borders, but what we believe in is a borderless and a beautiful world”.
So now it is time to leave our friends at teamLab, time well spent in this world without boundaries, an idea we wholeheartedly share, and we look forward to being immersed in the many new teamLab projects, wherever we are on Planet Earth.
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Our warm thanks to Toshiyuki Inoko, Takashi Kudo and everyone else at teamLab.