Interviews, Issue 3

teamLab

A World Without Boundaries

Words PLUS MAGAZINE

In the exhibition spaces of teamLab’s Borderless Museum in Tokyo, boulder-sized flower petals twirl and flit in infinite space, encapsulating visitors as they lay on a mirrored floor. Bushels of animated cherry blossoms sprout as patrons press their palms on the gallery walls, creating an entire self-contained ecosystem with the help of other visitors. In these rooms, with floors and walls shrouded in light projections and mirrors, space becomes boundless, and time feels limitless.

As an art collective, teamLab’s ambitions feel similarly boundless. The group is composed of hundreds of architects, programmers, engineers, designers, CG animators, and mathematicians who operate their own permanent art spaces. They aim to explore the very nature of human existence through their large-scale light and sound installations.

And this ambitiousness is warranted. Over the past several years, their work has become invariably praised by the audience. Since their self-run museum’s opening in 2018, it has become one of the most popular single-artist museums in the world, and their interactive, larger-than-life spectacles are universal.

At its core, teamLab seeks to create social change and reconfigure the traditional capitalist structures that define the art industry. In their interactive environments, teamLab aims to create opportunities for visitors to interact with each other and enjoy each other’s presence. They aim to break down borders: borders between individuals, borders between the natural world and humanity, and borders between artworks and visitors. This new ‘borderless’ world that teamLab proposes is built on collaboration and equity, but above all, on love for one another.

PLUS MAGAZINE: When teamLab was formed in 2001, there were very few, if any, art collectives that engaged with advanced, interactive digital technology. What propelled you to start teamLab, and what were those early days like? Did people understand your vision?

TEAMLAB: Since 2001, our aim has always been to change people’s standards of value and contribute to societal progress. In fact, that hasn’t changed since the very start. However, at the beginning of our journey, we didn’t have the opportunity to present them, nor could we imagine how to economically sustain our teams producing art. But, we believed in the power of digital technology and creativity, and we fell in love with it. We just wanted to keep creating something new, no matter which genre it would turn out to be.

As time went on, while we gained passionate followers among young people, we were still ignored by the Japanese art world. Our debut finally came in 2011 at the Kaikai Kiki Gallery in Taipei, thanks to the artist Takashi Murakami. Since then, we have gained opportunities in cosmopolitan cities such as Singapore, where we joined the Singapore Biennale in 2013. Also, in 2014, PACE Gallery in New York started to help promote our artworks. These fortunate factors allowed us to expand rapidly.

P: It’s incredible to see how teamLab has evolved over the years externally and internally. You have grown from a small team to a collective with several hundred employees, and it has maintained a non-hierarchical, interdependent structure from the very beginning—no one has a job title. How do you manage to collaborate on such a large scale?

TEAMLAB: We like to say teamLab is a laboratory, a place for experimental creations. Our organizational structure seems flat at first glance, but it might be more accurately characterized as “multidimensional.” Our creative process is defined by its “multidimensionality,” meaning that members with different skill sets create work together by crossing boundaries between their fields of interest, sharing what we call, “transferable knowledge.” This process of sharing is where our strength as an entire group lays. We want to be with people who want to take a step into a new world. People who are creative, who want to change the world.

What makes teamLab unique is not the technological advancement, but the fact that we’re able to do massive art projects simultaneously worldwide in-house at a high speed – to the extent that no one has been able to do before.

With several hundred strong specialists, the team has become bigger than ever as we increased the size of our own team, our own funds, as well as the number of people who are willing to support what we want to do, because of our more widespread recognition. What is really interesting (and often chaotic) with teamLab is that while we combine relatively new technologies, we turn our ideas into visuals and scales that no one has ever imagined and execute everything with an in-house team.

P: Can you briefly walk us through your creative process (from the initial idea to production to installation)?

TEAMLAB: Creating artwork is always difficult and our works are created by a team of hands-on experts through a continuous process of creation and thinking. Although the large concepts are always defined from the start, the project goal tends to remain unclear, so we need the whole team to create and think as we go along. Once the concept of the project is set, we gather specialized members related to the work and think more finely. For example, the Forest of Flowers and People (2018): Lost, Immersed and Reborn, which is in teamLab Borderless in Tokyo, was created with a specialist who creates 3D CG flower model and animation, a 3D software programmer, an engineer who designs equipment such as projectors, a software programmer who localizes and integrates dozens of projectors within the space, an architect, and so on.

After we gather the project goal and technical feasibility also goes hand in hand. This is why the goal of the artwork becomes more clearly defined as the team progresses in its work.

P: Do you see any sort of relationship between the kind of digital media you use in your work and “everyday” sorts of digital technology like video games and smartphones?

TEAMLAB: Video games, smartphones, and the internet are all interactive in the sense that you have to intentionally involve yourself by logging in. What we are focused on is connecting this sense of interactivity with art. But unlike smartphones and other sorts of technology that are meant for personal use, we want to make digital technology that is usable by multiple people at once. In traditional art exhibitions, the presence of other viewers is an obstruction; you feel lucky if you happen to be alone at an exhibition. But by digitizing a space, we can indirectly change the relationships between the people inside.

Our work is interactive, meaning that it responds directly to your physical presence—to your touch, to your movements—and thus, you alter and become a part of the artwork itself. When there are other visitors in the space with you, the artwork changes based on their presence as well. And if that change is beautiful, the presence of others can be something beautiful as well. By connecting digital technology and art, we think the presence of others can be made more positive.