teamLab is known for their funky light shows and innovative digital displays. While many of these displays are in Tokyo, they also hold various exhibits in other areas of Japan. This time, teamLab Botanical Garden will be held in Nagai, Osaka.
Nagai Botanical Garden reopened on April 1, 2022, after extensive efforts in replanting and other activities to encourage growth. And teamLab’s permanent exhibition, due to open July 27, 2022, will see the space as a botanical garden by day, and an avant-garde art space by night.
Main image: ©チームラボ/©teamLab
The concept
©チームラボ/©teamLab (image for illustration purposes)
Under the theme of “digitized nature,” the exhibit explores how nature can become art, and how technology can transform natural scenes into art without harming it. Just as natural scenes are changed by the organisms that live in it, including animals and humans, so too is the teamLab exhibit. The space is affected by the wind and the rain, and by the animals and people passing through, becoming one with the art.
The aim is to “form a continuity without boundaries,” not only between the art, nature, and people, but also between the past, present, and future.
What’s teamLab Botanical Garden like?
The teamLab Botanical Garden features seven main elements:
・Resonating Microcosms
・Resonating Trees
・Forest of Autonomous Resonating Life
・Concrete and Abstract
・Universe of Fire Particles
・Floating Resonating Lamps
・A mysterious “untitled” exhibit
©チームラボ/©teamLab (image for illustration purposes)
One of the highlights of the art space is the “Resonating Microcosms” and “Resonating Trees” area. During the day, you’ll find silvery, reflective “ovoids” reflecting the world around them, but by night, they start to glow 57 different colors.
The ovoids respond to touch, and rock gently back into place, and the surrounding ovoids respond, too. The space is surrounded by the Resonating Trees, which glow various colors, which are continuously responding and changing with the environment.
If you’ve ever visited teamLab’s exhibit in Odaiba, you’ll notice there is something familiar here at the Forest of Autonomous Resonating Life. Large and light balloon-like ovoids react to the wind and human touch, rocking back into place and changing color. Each time they change color, you’ll also hear a sound unique to that color.
©チームラボ/©teamLab (image for illustration purposes)
Concrete and Abstract feels almost like an optical illusion. Each time someone new enters the space, new lines are created, producing an entirely new image each time. The lines are computer-generated in real time, meaning that each new set of lines is completely unique, and will never b…