teamLab / Japan

Japan est. 2001

Founded by Toshiyuki Inoko, teamLab is an art collective and interdisciplinary creative group based in Tokyo whose members refer to themselves as ‘ultratechnologists’. For the NGV Triennial, teamLab has created a fully immersive digital installation inspired by human, digital and spatial relationships. When a person moves within this environment, their movement is tracked by sensors that communicate via computer with the projectors – thus movement creates a visual vortex – expressing the movement of each person in the space as a continuum of digital particles. The faster each person moves, the stronger the vortex becomes. If a person is not moving or there are no people present, no visual flow occurs. As such, this work of art is born of and continues to transform under the influence of people.

Vortices are the hallmark of nature – defining global weather, oceans and the microclimates of cities. In the sea, vortices caused by weather and thermal change flow eternally, pushing the carcasses of organisms that have sunk to the sea floor upwards, producing areas of nutriment and diversity. Moving creates vortices and vortices create movement, 2017, melds digital design with contemporary art practices to extend teamLab’s ongoing explorations into the digitisation of natural phenomenon.

BIO

teamLab collaborates with leaders in various fields of digital practice, including artists, programmers, engineers, CG animators, mathematicians, architects, web and print graphic designers and editors. The group has presented more than 150 digital projections, works of art and immersive installations since its inception in 2001. They co-curated the permanent exhibition FUTURE WORLD: WHERE ART MEETS SCIENCE at Singapore’s ArtScience Museum in 2016, and in the same year delivered a 1860 square-metre installation, Living Digital Space and Future Parks, in California in collaboration with Pace Art + Technology.