new immersive digital art exhibition opens in Tokyo

The permanent digital art exhibition, made up of around fifty installations, is supposed to appeal to all of the visitor’s senses.

Cascades of light, showers of stars and a flood of flowers in a museum: the Japanese artistic collective teamLab will open its new permanent exhibition of immersive digital art on Friday February 9 in Tokyo, after attracting several million visitors in a previous version. Along a veritable labyrinth nestled under the tallest skyscraper in Japan (330 meters), more than fifty installations interact, with each other and with the public, with digital streams opening up under visitors’ feet. to petals scattering as they approach.

“Our goal is to touch people and get them to think about life and the world in a more positive way“, explains to AFP Toshiyuki Inokothe director of teamLab, saying he wanted to offer “unprecedented experiences, showing a new and hitherto unknown beauty”. For this new project, entitled teamLab Borderless and housed within the Tokyo real estate complex Azabudai Hills, “our work is a continuation of our past research, while offering a new experience”details Toshiyuki Inoko.

A concept that has already attracted more than two million visitors

Beyond the images and sounds, the installations appeal to smell and taste. Tea and ice cream consumed in the museum also become works of art which are covered with flowers and leaves. The human “perceives the world with his body, but today our perception of the world is often achieved via television or the internet. So we wanted to create an experience.” appealing to all the senses, indicates Toshiyuki Inoko.

TeamLab, an artist group he co-founded in 2001, has presented its installations around the world, from New York to Paris to Singapore. It also has permanent exhibition spaces in Shanghai, Macao and Beijing, as well as another museum in Tokyo.

The previous teamLab Borderless welcomed visitors to the seaside Odaiba district from 2018 to 2022, attracting crowds of visitors, including VIPs like Kim Kardashian, Katy Perry and Elon Musk, who shared images of their experience on social networks, fueling the buzz. This exhibition won the Guinness World Records for the most visited museum in the world in 2019, after receiving nearly 2.2 million visitors that year.