28-01-20
When the light is out, darkness returns. Colours are the power which influences a soul. Music gives wings to colours. Shimmering colours in the dark fly in different ways and they make you feel like walking in a surreal space and escaping from an artistic carousel. In many dark halls, you leave your footprints after daring adventures to ocean waves, lily ponds, flower mountains and the universe. Darkness cannot drive out darkness—but art, in alliance with cheer and surprise, can.
Blessed with the name of a Japanese art brand, teamLab has mastered the above stratagems in their ‘teamLab Borderless’ interactive art museum (Koto City, Aomi Station, Tokyo) so well that it now becomes the number one priority for all in media art exhibitions. The exhibits are plentiful. TeamLab is now extremely popular and has exhibition branches all over the world. TeamLab, founded in 2001, is an interdisciplinary creative group that brings together professionals from various fields of practice such as artists, programmers, engineers, graphic designers and curators to present an unprecedented digital world of boundless imaginations to people especially youngsters of the third millennium.
One can check the internet for videos on teamLab shows https://borderless.teamlab.art/. From an artistic point of view, they may be commercial shows. It uses art to create an ‘instagrammable spot’ for visitors. Shows such as ‘Forest of Resonating Lamps’, ‘Aerial Climbing through a Flock of Colored Birds’, ‘The Way of the Sea, Floating Nest’ and ‘Sliding through the Fruit Field’ sound exceedingly attractive. Their high technology plays with 7 essentials: light projection, colours, interactiveness, music, props including lamps and ropes etc., mirrors and finally children games. Sometimes, the element of sports is integrated.
The production quality of teamLab is surely astonishing, if not perfect. TeamLab may make an art critic frown, and for an instant he thinks of not finishing the walk. The group simply repeats many concepts in order to live up to their noble popularity. For the general public, they however derive fun, lots of fun. The electric and intense experience transcends the limits of their joy. These being nothing to demand teamLab to do better, the advice for a man interested in media art is in fact to set about improving himself for other tastes and standards.
What is media art or sometimes called ‘new media art’? Media art is an umbrella term for artworks produced using new media inclusive of computer graphics, digital programming, animation and robotics etc. The art form can be conceptual art, virtual reality, space installations or even stage performances. Media art would not have become possible without the advent of modern technology. It is unique because the art is often interactive.
The kind of media art halls created by teamLab can also be described as ‘an immersive art space’. An immersive art space is about creating a holistic experience, an art journey for the audience. Traditional museums place focus on visual arts especially paintings and sculptures. The immersive art space seeks to activate other human senses and acts such as touching, hearing, talking, smelling and sometimes playing. TeamLab Borderless is a very good example.
Some regard teamLab artworks also as an ‘experiential art’. It is another style of art. The focus is on the innovative experience and the details of such an experience by the audience. Experiential art usually utilizes technology, both analogue and digital, to expose audiences to the new experience. This art is often time-based and frequently facilitated through a purpose-designed environment. I wonder whether the beautiful maze in Crystal Palace Park near London can be considered the oldest form of experiential art in the 1870s.
Commercialism in the art world is looked down upon. It is time for teamLab to start, in addition to their commercial success, searching for greater art contents that may verify the truths of media art.
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