There are lots of interesting museums all around the world but teamLab’s Borderless exhibitions are the first of its kind. If you haven’t heard of teamLab yet, you are in for a treat 🙂

Last year I visited one of their first big exhibitions in Singapore’s ArtScience museum named Future World and it was an incredibly unique experience.

Luckily, Future World has now become a permanent exhibition in Singapore with ever-evolving installations “to keep the exhibition fresh and relevant.”

But since my last visit, teamLab’s showings have spread out and you can now find their works all around the world with one of their biggest museums in Odaiba, Tokyo.

This year, I am lucky enough to visit their new exhibition in Tokyo but before that, I wanted to write about my experience at Future World.

 

 

 

Who is teamLab

 

Teamlab is an award-winning Japanese “art collective” consisting of unnamed artists, as well as programmers, architects, engineers, CG animators and mathematicians.

Together they create a seemingly new form of art. Their installations blur the lines between science, technology and artistic creations, hence why their exhibitions are now called “Borderless”.

 

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What is Borderless

 

 

Borderless stands for a vast and immersive experience which doesn’t just stop at looking at an art piece.

In a Borderless exhibition, an artwork in one room can communicate with an installation in another room. Nothing is bound to just one place.

 

“Artworks move out of the rooms freely, form connections and relationships with people, communicate with other works, influence and sometimes intermingle with each other, and have the same concept of time as the human body.” teamLab

 

Visitors are also encouraged to interact with the digital artworks. Lights change when touched and projections turn into different ones depending on how you interact with them.

The exhibitions are created in a way that no two visitors will have the same experience- or at least that’s the goal.

 

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Future World, Singapore: Review

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Chasing Crows

 

 

When I entered the 2017 exhibition Future World I first found myself in an empty room with seven black screens. After a couple of seconds, music started playing and a projection of crows, rendered in light, appeared on the walls. They started chasing each other, leaving behind colourful lines which soon multiplied around us.

This installation is aptly named “Crows are Chased and the Chasing Crows are Destined to be Chased as well“.

 

 

It’s easily one of the prettiest and most immersive experiences of the exhibition but beware as it can make you feel quite dizzy!

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Black Waves

 

 

Black Waves is a pretty art installation that reminds a lot of the contemporary Japanese paintings featuring waves in a series of lines.

After the sensory overload of the Chasing Crows, it offers a welcome visual break. There are cushions laid out in the middle of the room to lie or sit down and watch the waves go by. A perfect place to relax before continuing on.

 

Crystal Universe

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The Crystal Universe is by far the most popular exhibition- at least for anyone with an Instagram account.

According to teamLab, the 170,000 LED lights, emulate the image of a galaxy.

The colours of the LED lights change continuously and can be affected and manipulated by the viewer. A smartphone app, for example, allows you to manipulate certain parts of the installation. Each change and adjustment can cause a domino effect in other pieces of the installation, though.

The Crystal Universe is, for sure, one of the prettiest things you will see and probably my favourite, next to the Chasing Crows.

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