Mori-TeamLab Digital Art Museum Opens In Tokyo
By Tianhui Huang
Mori Building Digital Art Museum: teamLab Borderless has opened in Tokyo. All images courtesy
On June 21, the much-anticipated Mori Building Digital Art Museum: teamLab Borderless opened in Tokyo’s Odaiba district, a man-made islet in Tokyo Bay. A collaboration between Japanese property developer Mori Building Company and interdisciplinary tech-art collective teamLab, the new museum is the world’s first purpose-built large-scale institution dedicated to digital art, and teamLab’s sole permanent exhibition space to date.
Housing approximately 50 interactive digital artworks, the museum has 520 computers and 470 projectors installed across its 10,000-square-meter space. The interactive artworks, some of which are making their debut, embody the museum’s titular concept of “borderless” by breaking the boundaries between installations—they spill out from rooms, move down corridors, and sometimes blend into other works.
“The borderless artworks transform according to the presence of people, and as we immerse and meld ourselves into this unified world, we explore a new relationship that transcends the boundaries between people, and between people and the world,” says teamLab founder Toshiyuki Inoku.
With its five zones—Borderless World, teamLab Athletics Forest, Future Park, Forest of Lamps, and EN TEA HOUSE—the museum explores a variety of topics, including technology, education, human biology, relationships in modern society, among others.
On the museum’s specialism, Mori Building president and CEO Shingo Tsuji commented: “We believe modern art is important because it reflects the modern era we live in. Now we have digital art, today’s cutting-edge modern art, which has been made possible by the rapid evolution of technologies.”
Mori Building and teamLab concluded their joint press release by stating that through this unique partnership, they hope to enhance Tokyo’s attractiveness to visitors in the run-up to the city’s 2020 Summer Olympics, and beyond.
Tianhui Huang is an editorial intern of ArtAsiaPacific.
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