A new digital art museum in Tokyo

Cascades of light, star showers, and a deluge of flowers in the museum: Japanese art collective teamLab will open its new permanent exhibition of digital art in Tokyo after the previous version attracted several million visitors, reported AFP.

In a veritable labyrinth located under Japan's tallest skyscraper (330 m), more than fifty installations interact with each other and with the audience, from digital waves that open up under visitors' feet to spreading petals as they approach.

"Our goal is to touch people and make them think about life and the world more positively," said teamLab director Toshiyuki Inoko, saying it wants to offer "new experiences, showing new and previously unknown beauty."

For this new project, titled teamLab Borderless and located in the Azabudai Hills residential complex in Tokyo, "our work is a continuation of our previous research while offering a new experience," Inoko explained.

In addition to images and sounds, the installations also affect the sense of smell and taste. The tea and ice cream consumed in the museum are also transformed into works of art covered with flowers and leaves.

People "perceive the world with their bodies, but today we often perceive the world through television or the Internet. So we wanted to create an experience that affects all the senses," Inoko said.

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

The previous team Borderless welcomed visitors to the seaside district of Odaiba from 2018 to 2022, attracting crowds of visitors, including VIPs such as Kim Kardashian, Katy Perry, and Elon Musk, who shared photos of their experience on social media.

In 2019, the exhibition won the Guinness World Record for the most visited museum in the world, receiving almost 2.2 million visitors in the same year. /BGNES