The China List: TeamLab, Digital Design

Inside a room filled with lights forming light beams and two people standing with their hands to the side.

The Sculpture of Time Distortion in a Mirror, Shanghai, China, 2019. © teamLab

(Image credit: TBC)

‘Ever since we were founded, we’ve decided to create through the process of collaborative creation,’ says Japan’s aptly named collective teamLab. Founded in 2001 by Toshiyuki Inoko, the studio specialises in technologically ambitious and highly personal digital art installations that focus on what it means to be human, and above this, the creation of new relationships between humans and nature.

A sense of place plays an important role too: ‘We are most interested in places formed by the accumulation of the interaction and activities between people and nature: places that transcend our own existence, regardless of where they might be,’ they say. ‘For example, the Honghe Hani Rice Terraces in China 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.’

A room with blue streaks of light projected onto wall dividers — Reversible Rotation, Flying Beyond Borders — One Stroke, Cold Light. Shanghai, China, 2019. © teamLab

Lights pointing in a circular shape — Tunnel into the Void, Shanghai, China, 2019. © teamLab

TeamLab’s work is now on permanent display in Shanghai’s Borderless Museum and Tokyo’s MORI Digital Art Museum. ‘It’s almost like you’re inside them, swimming under water,’ Pace London director Tamara Corm says of teamLab’s mesmeric installations. Her gallery welcomed the critically acclaimed ‘Transcending Boundaries’ exhibition in 2017, which plunged visitors into unexpected darkness and then into a large room filled with disorientating light and music, neon butterflies, and flowers that bloomed on demand.

China by Design - Explore the full list here.

A photo of TeamLab stood on a balcony — teamLab.

INFORMATION

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Elly Parsons is the Digital Editor of Wallpaper*, where she oversees Wallpaper.com and its social platforms. She has been with the brand since 2015 in various roles, spending time as digital writer – specialising in art, technology and contemporary culture – and as deputy digital editor. She was shortlisted for a PPA Award in 2017, has written extensively for many publications, and has contributed to three books. She is a guest lecturer in digital journalism at Goldsmiths University, London, where she also holds a masters degree in creative writing. Now, her main areas of expertise include content strategy, audience engagement, and social media.