Journeys for Knowledge

Art takes on new forms with each generation. What began long ago as an appreciation of the world around us has transformed into a view into places our imagination takes us beyond this world. My week in Tokyo encapsulated this in a way, beginning with the natural wonder of Chiyoda,  the nostalgic facade of Odaiba, leading into the newly opened exhibit of teamLab: Borderless. This exhibit claimed to present a new take of art, especially in the digital age, so naturally I had to see for myself.

At first I was a bit reductionist in my thinking, taking the exhibit to just be a bunch of fancy surfaces to project arbitrary imagery. The imagery was quite beautiful, and several of the isolated rooms were truly wonderful to walk through. However after walking through the dark corridors, I stopped thinking of the place as an exhibit, and began thinking of it as one continuous space. I noticed that patterns I had seen in one corridor were drifting into the central chamber, and characters that were confined to a hall were marching down the hallway. I had spent so much time figuring out how I would interact with the art, that I did not stop to think how the art might interact with itself. This made the experience much more exciting, as old places became new, and the combinations were the feature, not any one set piece.

The pinnacle of this was the LED room, filled with strings of LEDs from the ceiling, displaying all sorts of wondrous colors. However these colorful patterns were not random nor predetermined, but generated from input based on visitors using an app on their phone. Now not only was art interacting, but visitors were interacting through the art as well, resulting in some truly wonderful sequences.

That LED room was truly my favorite part of the whole exhibit, more so than bouncing giant balloons or coloring a sea turtle with crayons, only to see it come to life on the digital walls. It was an example of how art can move from beyond just being observed, but also participated in. It kept the visitor engaged in the moment, as so few attractions can do these days with distractions all around us. It was as fixating as a rainbow shining through the fog on a rainy day, to reveal the beauty that is all around us.