We are connected to the world and to one another.

By Steffi Fink

Photography courtesy of teamLab

Throughout history, we have looked at art not only to try to understand ourselves, our emotions and desires, but also to comprehend and grasp everything around us and our relationship with the planet ,and the interconnectivity that unites everything in the universe.

Through the universal concept of exploring new perceptions of the world through art, teamLab creates dreamlike utopias where our bodies and minds can dance together, seeking to transcend the boundaries in our perception of the world, of the relationship between the self and the world and of the continuity of time. Although teamLab has been creating utopian paradises using digital technology since 2001 with the aim of changing people’s values and contributing to social progress, I believe that there has never been a more important time to lose ourselves in the immensity of our dreams and the grandeur of nature as now. 

Our desire to belong, to feel united, connected, not only with one another but also with nature has never been so great, and today, after a year of this Pandemic, the technology and art of teamLab  brings us closer to this again, making us feel melancholic yet hopeful and optimistic for the future. 

We interviewed the geniuses behind all these amazing exhibitions because “In this era, we think what is more important, at least as an artist, is to seek out and affirm an idealistic part of humanity, and present an idea of the future.”

1. Do you create art to understand what’s happening inside of you, your emotions, inner processes and around you? Or do you use art as a way to change the world and people’s minds?

A: teamLab aims to explore the relationship between the self and the world and new perceptions through art. In order to understand the world around them, people separate it into independent entities with perceived boundaries between them. teamLab seeks to transcend these boundaries in our perception of the world, of the relationship between the self and the world, and of the continuity of time. Everything exists in a long, fragile yet miraculous, borderless continuity of life.

Art is something we can’t represent or explain with words (or anything else, really) and history will decide whether our output qualifies as art. If we can change people’s minds, then it is art. 

2. How is the process of selecting a theme for an exhibition? I know you work as a collective but who originates the first idea and where does the inspiration comes from?

A: teamLab is an international art collective, an interdisciplinary group of various specialists such as artists, programmers, engineers, CG animators, mathematicians and architects whose collaborative practice seeks to navigate the confluence of art, science, technology, and the natural world.  teamLab is truly an art collective in the sense that every member’s knowledge is applied in our artworks and exhibitions. We have a universal concept, which is to explore new perceptions of the world through art, and this concept is what guides our creation at the highest level.

Our artworks are created by a team of hands-on experts through a continuous process of creation and thinking. Although the large concepts are always defined from the start, the project goal tends to remain unclear, so we need the whole team to create and think as we go along. 

Once the large concept of the artwork is set, we gather specialized members related to the work and think more finely. For example, the Forest of Flowers and People: Lost, Immersed and Reborn piece, which is in teamLab Borderless in Tokyo, was created with a specialist who creates 3D CG flower model and animation, a 3D software programmer, an engineer who designs equipment such as projectors, a software programmer who localizes and integrates dozens of projectors within the space, an architect, and so on.

teamLab's organizational structure seems flat at first glance, but it is also extremely multidimensional, with an underlying layer that is unclear and undecided. The big concepts are always defined from the start, and the project goal and technical feasibility also go hand in hand. This is why the goal of the artwork becomes more clearly defined as the team progresses in its work.

3. Science fiction has influenced people to view technology and AI as a separate entity, do you think is your job as an artist and community to break down this stigma?

A: Science raises the resolution of the world. When humans want to know the world, they recognize it by separating things. In order to understand the phenomena of this world, people separate things one after another.  For example, the universe and the earth are continuous, however, humans recognize the earth by separating it from the universe. To understand the forest, humans break it down into trees, separating the tree from the whole. Humans then cut the tree into cells to recognize the tree, cut the cells into molecules to recognize the cells, and cut the molecules into atoms to understand the molecules, and so on. That is science, and that is how science increases the resolution of the world. But in the end, no matter how much humans divide things into pieces, they cannot understand the entirety. Even though what people really want to know is the world, the more they separate, the farther they become from the overall perception.

Humans, if left alone, recognize what is essentially continuous as separate and independent. Everything exists in a long, fragile yet miraculous continuity over an extremely long period of time, but human beings cannot recognize it without separating it into parts. People try to grasp the entirety by making each thing separate and independent. Even though we are nothing but a part of the world, we feel as if there is a boundary between the world and ourselves, as if we are living independently. 

The continuity of life and death has been repeated for more than 4 billion years. However, for humans, even 100 years ago is a fictional world. We are interested in why humans have this perception. How can we go beyond the boundaries of recognition? Through art, we want to transcend the boundaries of our own recognition. We want to transcend human characteristics or tendencies in order to recognize the continuity.

Art is a search for what the world is for humans. Art expands and enhances “beauty.” Art has changed the way people perceive the world.

Groups move by logic, but individuals decide their actions by beauty. Individuals’ behaviors are determined not by rationality but by aesthetics. In other words, “beauty” is the fundamental root of human behavior. Art expands the notion of “beauty”. Art is what expands people's aesthetics, that is, changes people's behavior.

It may be the whole world or only a part of the entirety, but it is art that captures and expresses it without dividing it. Art is a process to approach the whole. And by sharing it with others, the way people perceive the world changes. Through the enjoyment of art, the notion of “beautiful” expands and spreads, which in turn changes people’s perceptions of the world. 

Everything exists in a long, fragile yet miraculous continuity over an extremely long period of time. teamLab aims to create experiences through which people recognize this continuity itself as beautiful, hence changing or increasing the ways in which humans perceive the world.

4. Do you think of technology as an “other” that you have to compete against or as a tool that challenges you to do more and become better?

A: Technology is just a tool, like paint. 

Although it’s a tool, it does greatly affect the creation, just like how the Western landscape painting developed because it became possible to bring paints outdoors. We have been creating art using digital technology since the year 2001 with the aim of changing people’s values and contributing to societal progress. Although we initially had no idea where we could exhibit our art or how we could support the team financially, we also strongly believed in and were genuinely interested in the power of digital technology and creativity. We wanted to keep creating new things regardless of genre limitations, and we did. 

Digital technology allows artistic expression to be released from the material world, gaining the ability to change form freely. The environments where viewers and artworks are placed together allow us to decide how to express those changes.

In art installations with the viewers on one side and interactive artworks on the other, the artworks themselves undergo changes caused by the presence and behavior of the viewers. This has the effect of blurring the boundary lines between the two sides. The viewers actually become part of the artworks themselves. The relationship between the artwork and the individual then becomes a relationship between the artwork and the group. Whether or not another viewer was present within that space five minutes before, or the particular behavior exhibited by the person next to you, suddenly becomes an element of great importance. At the very least, compared to traditional art viewing, people will become more aware of those around them. Art now has the ability to influence the relationship between the people standing in front of the artworks.

5. What does utopia mean to you? Does it play a role in your work?

A: teamLab aims to explore a new relationship between humans and the world through art created using digital technology. 

When we look at the world through an intellectual lens, problems are overflowing. And when you see the problems that we cannot solve, you just feel hopeless. In this era, we think what’s more important, at least as an artist, is to seek out and affirm an idealistic part of humanity, and present an idea of the future. We’re not talking about a simple fiction of manga or video games, but instead, it’s an ideal fictitious world that may be realized somewhat. There are problems that cannot be solved at this very moment. But what we can do is to suggest that we may be able to create an ideal world once more by connecting the hints that can be found in the long history of humanity. We just find it more important to create the world than to criticize the world.

6. Other than the world and the human relationship with it, what are some of your influences (art, music, design)?

A: We are influenced by the world, which includes other humans, art, music, and nature.

We are interested in places formed by the accumulation of the interaction and activities between people and nature: places that transcend our own existence, whether in China or elsewhere. For example, the Honghe Hani Rice Terraces are a place formed by the accumulation of the interaction and activities between people and nature over the course of a time indefinitely longer than our own existence, much like the forest and stones of Mifuneyama Rakuen. The shapes of the terraces themselves embody the continuity and borderlessness of the relationship between humans and nature. Perhaps if we spend hundreds of years in these places, we can comprehend this continuity of time and life. But that is impossible for most people.  So we create exhibitions like teamLab Borderless or teamLab: A Forest Where Gods Live in the nature of Mifuneyama Rakuen, where we can try to condense hundreds of years of existence, so by being in the museum for an hour, one can begin to grasp the continuity of life.

7. As viewers seeing art made by a machine I think gets us a look into a metaphoric future. What do you think is the future of art, contemplating that after every huge world crisis there’s been a renaissance in art and design?

A: We cannot speak to the future of art in general - only what we hope to do ourselves. And what we hope to do is create more and more artworks that remind people that we are connected to the world and to one another. We cannot just sit and wait for somebody to solve the problem and make the future. Instead, we want to keep on creating something we believe in and explore a long, fragile yet miraculous, borderless continuity.

Right now, we may be isolated due to our fear of the virus. But in order to overcome that, whether you are in lockdown or not, we hope to encourage you to realize that there never are and never were boundaries, that we are connected to the world just by existing in it, and that we don't have to try to connect with others by rejecting them. The fact that we can connect with each other, regardless of where we live or anything else, is a message that affirms human existence from the ground up. We would be happy if humans could accidentally connect with others and derive positive value from that.

Humanity has faced many problems over its history, but we do not believe that these problems have ever been solved by division. The birth of civilized nations and the spread of infectious diseases were both the result of globalization and the loss of world boundaries, but humanity has solved this problem not by dividing people, but by working together to develop drugs and vaccines, advance medical technology, and improve sanitation.

We believe that people need to remember the benefits of history and science, because if we only look superficially at the immediate events of the current coronavirus pandemic, we promote emotional division.

Art and culture have expanded humanity's "standards of beauty." Art presents a new standard of beauty that has changed the way people see the world and, to put it plainly, has allowed them to see flowers as beautiful. teamLab’s artworks are also designed to help people experience the beauty of a world without boundaries and the beauty of anti-division. Humans are driven by beauty. Corporate organizations seem to be driven by logic and language, but when we look at individuals, they often determine their actions based on their sense of beauty. For example, a person's choice of a profession is heavily influenced by aesthetics, not rationality. The way in which "standards of beauty" are applied changes a person.

Everything in the world is built on a borderless, interconnected continuity. We believe that human beings should be celebrated for being connected to others and to the world, and that experiencing a “world without boundaries" can change our values and behaviors and help us to move humanity in a positive direction.

This is a fundamental affirmation of human life.

We have created an artwork that allows people to experience being connected to others and the world, even in the comfort of their homes. Flowers Bombing Home is an artwork that transforms the television in your home into an artwork. The novel coronavirus has forced the world to become more isolated, causing people to become confined to their homes. This project was created to help us realize that our existence is connected to the world and to celebrate the fact that the world is connected.

8. Our lives are mediated by platforms that explote our emotional and cognitive abilities in an ever-escalating bid for our attention. How did you come up with this amazing and peaceful immerse experience in a world where our attention span doesn’t last longer than 15 seconds? 

A: In contrast to the social media technology, which we believe serves to expand the self and the individual, teamLab’s art aims to expand physical space and the relationships of viewers within that space. In other words, the two forms of technology serve entirely different purposes, in our minds. Our interest is not the technology itself, but instead, we’re trying to explore the concept of “digital" and how it can enhance art. Most of today's mainstream technology is an extension of someone’s mind. Facebook, Twitter, these digital domains see the “self” as the principle. These are meant to be used personally.

What teamLab wants to do is to enhance the physical space itself using art. It doesn’t necessarily have to be yourself that intervenes with it. It can be other people, or a group of people that vaguely includes you. And instead of a personal use, we want to make it usable by multiple people. By digitizing the space, we can indirectly change the relationships between people inside. If the presence of others can trigger the space to change, they’d become a part of artwork. And if that change is beautiful, the presence of others can be something beautiful as well. By connecting digital technology and art, we think the presence of others can be made more positive.

9. People often believe that boundaries and rules are essential to the idea of independence. But the truth is we are all interconnected with not only each other but the world. How and when was the first time you felt this interconnection that made you want to share it with the rest of the world so we all understand it in an interactive beautiful way?

A: It is hard to say “when” we came to this realization. It may seem obvious that there are no clear boundaries in the world naturally. However, when you’re in a city, the world seems full of boundaries, giving the illusion that boundaries have always existed. For instance, the earth and the heavens are completely different phenomena, but there is no actual boundary between them. Independence and boundaries may seem to be unrelated at first glance; however, people believe that boundaries are essential to the idea of independence.

If you go to a rich and abundant forest, you will see diverse individual lives and species surviving in interconnected relationships. Seeing that, people will understand the ambiguity of boundaries in the natural world. And even us humans can only exist as a part of this massive interconnected continuity. However, as this continuity becomes more and more complicated, it becomes harder for us to physically perceive and understand our own bodies’ part in it.

 We wanted to create experiences where various concepts and artworks existed in continuity with no boundaries. Through that experience, by physically exploring the space, visitors can perceive the continuity of the world and change their perceptions. teamLab has always been interested in exploring such ideas through art even before it was founded in 2001, and one of the early artworks, among others, that further accelerated our exploration was Ever Blossoming Life Waterfall - Deep in the Mountains of Shikoku. Deep in the mountains in Shikoku, there is a massive waterfall and rocks shaped by that waterfall. And on those rocks, we projected a work where flowers are born and die, born and die, repeating the cycle of birth and death.

It was a work where we used the shapes of the rocks that were formed by the waterfall.

As we kept looking at what we made, we felt something that transcended our own existence. We felt it was something amazingly miraculous to exist in this long, long continuity of life. We think in everyday life you can hardly feel that you exist today because of that continuity of life.

By looking at the shapes of the rocks that were carved by the waterfall over tens of millions of years, we felt like those shapes themselves express this extremely long period of time.

10. There are artists who make art and artists who create worlds, and teamLab definitely creates the most amazing dreamlike worlds. What constitutes for you a perfect world and how do you think we can achieve it?

A: Thank you very much for saying that. We are happy to hear that.

We do not know what a perfect world looks like. What we want to do is have people be involved in the world as much as possible. We want people to be involved with the world. As much as possible, we want to re-think the boundary between the world and oneself. Living in the city, you feel as if there is a border between yourself and the world, but the world is something we should be involved in. In other words, we want to create an experience that turns the existence of unrelated others into something positive. We want to create an experience where the relationship between the world and the self is borderless and continuous. There is no perfect boundary between people, but rather, it is ambiguous and connected, even if the person is unrelated to you.

teamLab believes digital technology can expand art and that art made in this way can create new relationships between people. Digital technology enables complex detail and freedom for change. Before people started accepting digital technology, information and artistic expression had to be presented in some physical form. Creative expression has existed through static media for most of human history, often using physical objects such as canvas and paint. The advent of digital technology allows human expression to become free from these physical constraints, enabling it to exist independently and evolve freely.

No longer limited to physical media, digital technology has made it possible for artworks to expand physically. Since art created using digital technology 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.

In interactive artworks that teamLab creates, because viewers’ movement or even their presence transforms the artwork, the boundaries between the work and viewers become ambiguous. Viewers become a part of the work. This changes the relationship between an artwork and an individual into a relationship between an artwork and a group of individuals. A viewer who was present 5 minutes ago, or how the person next to you is behaving now, suddenly becomes important. Unlike a viewer who stands in front of a conventional painting, a viewer immersed in an interactive artwork becomes more aware of other people’s presence.

11. Art reflects the times we’re living but it also projects, do you think teamLab exhibitions bring an element of hope to our lives? Specially in these unprecedented times.

A: The coronavirus has forced the world to become more isolated, causing people to become confined to their homes. We created a new artwork in response to these times: Flowers Bombing Home. This project was created to help us realize that our existence is connected to the world and to celebrate the fact that the world is connected.

The television in your home becomes art. Watch at home, participate at home, and connect with the world. People from around the world draw flowers, creating a single artwork that blooms in homes around the world. Draw a flower on a piece of paper, your smartphone, or computer, and upload it. The flowers you draw and the flowers drawn by others bloom and scatter in real time on the YouTube Live Stream. If you connect your home television to YouTube, your television turns into art. As the petals scatter, the various flowers form a single new artwork together.

When a new flower is born, the name of the town where the flower was drawn is shown.

You can also download Your Flower Art, which combines the flowers you draw with those drawn by people around the world. The flowers that people draw around the world will bloom until the end of the coronavirus. When the coronavirus ends, they will bloom and scatter all at once in various places all over the world. And, in the future, perhaps the flowers will continue to bloom forever as an artwork for people to remember this era.

We certainly hope that our art has helped to bring people hope and made them feel connected to others despite the isolation brought about by the virus.

12. How can we go beyond the boundaries of perception?

A: This is what most teamLab exhibitions aim to help people do, though they each have their own way of helping people transcend boundaries in their perceptions. Today, so many people use smartphones and other two-dimensional screens to view the world and get information, which may limit our perception of the world to just what we see with our eyes or hear with our ears. But we believe that people understand and recognize the world through their bodies, moving freely and forming connections and relationships with others. As a consequence, the body has its own sense of time. In the mind, the boundaries between different thoughts are ambiguous, causing them to influence and sometimes intermingle with each other.

teamLab Borderless is a group of artworks that form one continuous, borderless world. 

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. Artworks even transcend the physical space of the museum’s location, moving between other teamLab Borderless museums around the world, expanding and connecting the time and space of teamLab Borderless.

People wander through the world, exploring with intention, creating and discovering a new world with others. The borderless world transforms according to our presence, and as we immerse and meld ourselves into this unified world, we explore a continuity among people, as well as a new relationship that transcends the boundaries between people and the world.

These and other teamLab exhibitions use art created using digital technology to immerse visitors and help them transcend the boundaries in their perceptions of the world and its continuous nature.

13. Could you tell us a bit about what teamLab has in store for us this coming year?

A: You can find the latest news and updates for teamLab’s exhibitions on our website.

It is hard to confirm anything with certainty, but teamLab does have a few exciting projects on the horizon. First, teamLab SuperNature is scheduled to hold a Grand Opening in 2021, unveiling new artworks that further enhance the body immersive experience in Macao. The date of the Grand Open and more details regarding the new artworks will be announced.

teamLab has also opened a new permanent exhibition in Mifuneyama Rakuen, teamLab Ruins and Heritage: Rinkan Sauna & Tea Ceremony, in which visitors can expand their minds in world-class saunas, then immerse themselves in the artworks that inhabit the ruins that dot the historic forest and garden.

Finally, teamLab is a part of Superblue Miami’s inaugural exhibition Every Wall is a Door alongside Es Devlin and James Turrell. The group exhibition is scheduled to open in Miami Florida in early spring of 2021.