Art collective teamLab has announced the opening of teamLab Reconnect: Art with Rinkan Sauna Roppongi which will run for half a year starting this March in Roppngi, Tokyo.

Since 2019, teamLab has been combining saunas with digital art to create wholly new and unique sauna experiences never before seen.

teamLab Reconnect’s aim is not to offer a luxury and high-end venue for seeing artwork, but to put visitors into a luxurious state to experience the art. Through contrast bath therapy, where visitors are placed in a hot sauna followed by cold water and then relaxation, they can open their minds and senses to a variety of artworks and in essence become part of the art itself. teamLab hopes this will enable visitors to realise their own existence―their mind, body, and environment―and in turn ‘reconnect’ with the world and time.

Levitation
teamLab, 2021, Digital Installation, Sound: Hideaki Takahashi

teamLab Reconnect will welcome a variety of new artworks based on teamLab’s new art project ‘Supernature Phenomenon’ which captures different natural phenomena in nature.

Proliferating Immense Life – A Whole Year per Year
teamLab, 2020, Interactive Digital Installation, Sound: Hideaki Takahashi

This artwork captures the life cycle of flowers. It is not a pre-recorded image that is played back; it is created by a computer program that continuously renders the work in real time. The interaction between people and the installation causes continuous change in the artwork, meaning previous visual states can never be replicated, and will never reoccur.

Since opening their sauna in Mifuneyama Rakuen in Kyushu back in 2019, which won the SAUNACHELIN two years in a row in 2019 and 2020, teamLab has gone on to create new works of sauna art such as teamLab: A Forest Where Gods Live and teamLab Ruins and Heritage: Rinkan Spa & Tea Ceremony.

Art collective teamLab opened a shop at their Shanghai-based art museum teamLab Borderless Shanghai on Saturday (December 5). teamLab Borderless Shanghai opened its doors in Huangpu, Shanghai, in November 2019, displaying around 50 pieces of artwork by teamLab. The company’s Borderless project is a ‘world of artworks without boundaries, a museum without a map.’

The museum’s new shop sellings a variety of items, from stickers to postcards to the official teamLab Folding Rice Bag. More items are scheduled to be added to the stock in the future.

teamLab Folding Rice Bag

The eco bag can be folded up and stored when not in use. It’s a 30kg rice bag that was acquired directly from the farmer, originally used for storing rice before milling and would normally be discarded after use. It’s traditionally used to store and sell rice. Still present in the Japanese countryside today, these bags are made of strong, durable materials that protect the rice inside from moisture and damage. The bag is made of paper, and it can be folded up and stored in your pocket for use at any time.

23 facilities including shopping centres, hotels, parks, and more in Odaiba are participating in Illumination Island Odaiba 2020, a large-scale illumination event that opened on Friday and is set to run up to Christmas Day.

This year’s event is bigger than the last, with only 10 facilities having taken part in 2019. The main park in Odaiba will also be lit up for the first time this year. The event is taking place to express gratitude towards those facing hardship during the pandemic – to connect everyone via gorgeous lights for a brighter tomorrow.

*Please note that illumination dates and times differ for each facility

Participating Facilities (Excerpt)

DECKS Tokyo Beach

The third-floor seaside deck faces Odaiba Marine Park and offers a gorgeous view of Tokyo Bay. Winter illuminations will serve cosy vibes around the rest area and plants, and serves as the perfect site to gaze at the lit-up Rainbow Bridge against the backdrop of Tokyo’s nightscape.

Running: November 14, 2020 – February 14, 2021

DiverCity Tokyo Plaza

The Festival Hiroba’s staircase will be colourfully lit up from 16:00 every day until January 31, 2021. After that, it will be lit up from 17:00.

VenusFort

teamLab – “The Tree of Resonating Colors of Life”　©チームラボ

teamLab’s towering digital art installation The Tree of Resonating Colors of Life is running at Odaiba until February 7, 2021. The 8-meter tall three-dimensional tree is created from an accumulation of light spheres.

Palette Town Daikanransha

The Daikanransha Ferris wheel is a symbol of Odaiba and offers a panoramic view of famous sights around Tokyo up 115-meters in the sky.

Winter Illuminations: December 1, 2020 – December 25, 2020

Statue of Liberty

Odaiba’s Statue of Liberty will be lit up with rainbow colours, changing the atmosphere in the area completely.

Running: December 11, 2020 – December 25, 2020

ARTBAY HOUSE

Japanese artist Takahiro Matsuo is also getting in the the action with the prism art at his PRISM/GLOW exhibition.

Running: November 27, 2020 – December 25, 2020

Tokyo International Cruise Terminal Station

A 5-meter tall Christmas tree is decorating Tokyo International Cruise Terminal Station.

Running: November 27, 2020 – December 25, 2020 (Not running select days)

Japanese art collective teamLab opened its teamLab: Rinkan Spa & Tea Ceremony, Ruins and Remains series of artworks at Mifuneyama Rakuen in Kyushu as permanent exhibitions on November 10. The artworks can be enjoyed as part of a set which includes enjoying the exhibits as well as a soak in Mifuneyama Rakuen Hotel’s sauna and a complimentary cup of Japanese tea.

Rakan no Yu, a sauna located at Mifuneyama Rakuen Hotel, won the Saunachelin Grand Prix two years in a row in 2019 and 2020. The sauna and open-air baths enjoy natural water from Mt. Mifune and are surrounded by the vast nature of the local area.

A sauna and new art experience fusion

Sitting on the borderline of Mifuneyama Rakuen Park is the 3,000-year-old sacred Okusu tree of Takeo Shrine, which is Japan’s 7th largest. Also in the heart of the garden is another 300-year-old sacred tree. Knowing the significance of this, Japan’s forebears turned a portion of this forest into a garden, utilizing the trees of the natural forest. The border between the garden and the wild forest is ambiguous, and when wandering through the garden, before they know it, people will find themselves entering the woods and animal trails.

Visitors can get their hands on a combo ticket which includes access to teamLab’s exhibition as well as daytime entry to the sauna. These are limited to 40 people per day.

Below are some of the artworks that visitors can experience.

Megaliths in the Bath House Ruins
teamLab, 2019, Interactive Digital Installation

Graffiti Nature – Living in the Ruins of a Bathhouse, Red List
teamLab, 2017-, Interactive Digital Installation, Sound: Hideaki Takahashi

Butterflies Dancing in the Depths of the Underground Ruins, Transcending Space
teamLab, 2019, Digital Installation, Sound: Hideaki Takahashi

Forest and Spiral of Resonating Lamps in the Forest – One Stroke, Autumn Mountain
teamLab, 2018, Interactive Installation, Murano Glass, LED, Endless, Sound: Hideaki Takahashi

MORI Building DIGITAL ART MUSEUM: EPSON teamLab Borderless in Odaiba, Tokyo, is set to welcome a world of wonderful winter artworks this year.

teamLab Borderless is a group of artworks that form one borderless world. Artworks move out of rooms, communicate with other works, influence, and sometimes intermingle with each other with no boundaries.

Sketch Christmas

This December, teamLab invites children to create a Christmas world from their own pictures. When they draw a picture of Santa Claus on a piece of paper, he will appear in a town right in front of their eyes as if by magic.

Forest of Resonating Lamps

Throughout December and into January, the lamps at the art museum’s Forest of Resonating Lamps area will be changed to blue, inspired by the Blue Grotto sea cave in Italy. Going into January, they will turn red to be inspired by flames.

Proliferating Immense Life

The museum’s immense flower art piece Proliferating Immense Life – A Whole Year per Year will welcome numerous winter flowers over the next few months including Jack-in-the-pulpits in December, Chinese aster in January, and Asian bleeding-heart in February. When people touch the flowers they scatter, wither, and die, before being reborn. 100,000 flowers will scatter at once, creating a breathtaking display.

Memory of Topography

This artwork installation depicts a rural mountain landscape of varying elevations. For winter, it will depict wintertime scenery starting from December, from powdery snow to snow storms, kantsubaki midwinter camellias, plum blossoms, and more.

EN TEA HOUSE GENKA-TEI

Enter teamLab Borderless’s cafe where flowers bloom inside your cup. The tea house will make tea with a variety of winter flowers like chrysanthemums and cyclamens until December before switching to daffodils and plum blossoms from January to March.

Experience winter like never before at MORI Building DIGITAL ART MUSEUM: EPSON teamLab Borderless.

Japanese art collective teamLab began displaying their permanent public artwork Continuous Life and Death at the Now of Eternity II, Grand Central Terminal at the One Vanderbilt skyscraper in New York on September 14, 2020. The world of the artwork becomes brighter with the sunrise of Manhattan, and becomes darker as the sun sets. The flowers that bloom change throughout the period of one year.

Who is teamLab?

teamLab is an interdisciplinary art collective founded in 2001 in Tokyo, whose team includes several hundred specialists from artists to programmers, engineers, CG animators, mathmeticians, architects, and more.

teamLab aims to explore the relationship between the self and the world and new perceptions through art, and that’s exactly what this piece does. In the flow of time of reality flowers are born, bloom, then in the course of time they wither and die. The flowers are eternally repeating the process of life and death. This process is captured in real time in the digital art piece.

Continuous Life and Death at the Now of Eternity II, Grand Central Terminal can be seen at the newly-opened 67-floor One Vanderbilt.

One Vanderbilt

Continuous Life and Death at the Now of Eternity II, Grand Central Terminal teamLab, 2020, Digital Work, Endless

The interdisciplinary art collective teamLab has added new elements to its Floating in the Falling Universe of Flowers and The Infinite Crystal Universe exhibits at teamLab Planets Tokyo in Toyosu, Tokyo.

Floating in the Falling Universe of Flowers
teamLab, 2016-2018, Interactive Digital Installation, Endless, Sound: Hideaki Takahashi

Floating in the Falling Universe of Flowers showcases a seasonal year of flowers blooming and changing with time and how life spreads out into the universe. Enter a vast, immersive world where over 10 million flowers bloom.

The Infinite Crystal Universe
teamLab, 2018, Interactive Installation of Light Sculpture, LED, Endless, Sound: teamLab

The light sculpture of The Infinite Crystal Universe extends infinitely in all directions. People use their smartphones to select elements to throw The Infinite Crystal Universe. These elements are reborn in three dimensions, creating the artwork. 26 light sculptures have been made for the exhibit.

A survey was carried out with 522 guests who visited teamLab Planets Tokyo between August 31, 2020 and September 13, 2020 in relation to the safety measures put in place at the site against COVID-19. The results showed that 94% of people answered that they felt safe during their time there.

Interdisciplinary art collective teamLab is joining Light and Space artist James Turrell and British artist and stage designer Es Devlin and the opening exhibition of Superblue Miami, a new art centre in Miami, Florida, beginning on December 22, 2020.

Superblue Miami is set to open as the first experimental art centre by Superblue, a new company that looks into experimental art. Superblue will kick off its launch with Every Wall is a Door where large-scale installation art created by teamLab, James Turrell, and Es Devlin will be showcased through to 2022.

teamLab: Between Life and Non-Life

teamLab will showcase a selection of installations themed on the concept of “Between Life and Non-Life” which looks at human and nature and the ambiguity between life and non-life.

Transcending Boundaries / Universe of Water Particles, Transcending Boundaries
teamLab, 2017, Interactive Digital Installation, Sound: Hideaki Takahashi

Transcending Boundaries, A Whole Year per Hour / Flowers and People, Cannot be Controlled but Live Together – Transcending Boundaries, A Whole Year per Hour
teamLab, 2017, Interactive Digital Installation, Sound: Hideaki Takahashi

“teamLab is an interdisciplinary art collective founded in 2001 in Tokyo, whose team includes several hundred specialists. At the heart of their practice lies the belief that digital art can bring people together through shared experiences. Their immersive, colourful installations fuse art and science to encourage meaningful interactions with both the work and other people. As we move around the space, our very actions—along with those of other participants—provoke flowers to bloom, waterfalls to change the course of their flow, and butterflies to twirl in the air. We are reminded that there is strength in the collective and are invited to reconnect with nature and marvel at its beauty.”
ーSuperblue

teamLab Borderless is a world of artwork without boundaries, a museum without a map created by art collective teamLab. Over at their museum in Tokyo, MORI Building DIGITAL ART MUSEUM: EPSON teamLab Borderless, they are exhibiting a range of autumn themed digital art in time for the changing seasons. Let’s take a closer look at what’s on show.

September Flowers

October Flowers

Proliferating Immense Life – A Whole Year per Year | teamLab, 2020, Interactive Digital Installation, Sound: Hideaki Takahashi

Proliferating Immense Life – A Whole Year per Year looks at the life cycle of flowers. Throughout the year, with the passing of time, flowers bloom and change. They bud, grow, and blossom before their petals begin to wither and eventually fade away. The cycle of growth and decay repeats itself in perpetuity as the flowers propagate. When too many flowers grow, they scatter and fade all at once. When people touch them, the flower petals scatter and fall away

A variety of autumn flowers will be recreated in digital art, such as Blackberry Lily (September) and Red Spider Lily (October). Visitors who touch these digital flowers will see them wither and decay, and subsequently bloom new flowers in their place.

Rice Fields

Autumn Colours
Memory of Topography | teamLab, 2018, Interactive Digital Installation, Sound: Hideaki Takahashi

This artwork installation depicts a rural mountain landscape of varying elevations. The scenery instills in the viewer a feeling of eternal permanence, however with the flow of real time the scenery is continuously changing. In the spring, the rice fields are still small and lush. In summer, they begin to mature, and in fall, they turn a golden color.

The colours of autumn will be depicted in its glorious combination of golds and reds for the exhibit.

Forest of Resonating Lamps – One Stroke, Autumn Mountain | teamLab, 2016, Interactive Installation, Murano Glass, LED, Endless, Sound: Hideaki Takahashi

When a person stands still close to a lamp at Forest of Resonating Lamps – One Stroke, Autumn Mountain, it shines brightly and emits a colour that resonates out. The light becomes the starting point, and it spreads to the two nearest lamps. The light from the two nearest lamps transmits the same colour to other lamps, spreading out continuously. The light transmitted always resonates out as a bright light once, passing to close lamps, until all lamps have shone brightly once, and then returns to the first lamp.

For October, this exhibit will turn into Forest of Resonating Lamps – One Stroke, Autumn Mountain.

Flowers Bloom in an Infinite Universe inside a Teacup | teamLab, 2016, Interactive Digital Installation, Endless, Sound: Hideaki Takahashi

Make tea, and flowers bloom inside the teacup. If you pick up the teacup, the flowers scatter and spread outside of the cup. Flowers bloom infinitely as long as there is tea. The tea in the teacup becomes an infinite world in which the flowers continue to bloom. Drink in the infinitely expanding world.

The exhibition hall’s tea house “EN TEA HOUSE” will see a variety of autumnal flowers used including safflower, dianthus, and Chinese aster for September and cosmos, osmanthus, and chrysanthemum for October.

teamLab’s annual A Forest Where Gods Live exhibition is currently taking place at Mifuneyama Rakuen Park in Saga Prefecture until November 8, 2020. For autumn this year, the digital art team has introduced a seasonal piece entitled Forest and Spiral of Resonating Lamps in the Forest – One Stroke, Autumn Mountain.

Forest and Spiral of Resonating Lamps in the Forest – One Stroke, Autumn Mountain
teamLab, 2018, Interactive Installation, Murano Glass, LED, Endless, Sound: Hideaki Takahashi

Available to see for this autumn season only, ​Forest and Spiral of Resonating Lamps in the Forest – One Stroke, Autumn Mountain showcases Kasane no Irome, which are nuances of layered colours that were seasonal colours created in silk before Japan’s modern era, in the form of lit lamps.

The lamps in the exhibition shine brightly and then fade. In the light, one can see the eight autumn Kasane no Irome colours: Budding Leaves, Green Leaves, Fallen Green Leaves, Yellow Leaves, Fallen Yellow Leaves, Fallen Leaves, Fallen Red Leaves, and Autumn Leaves.

Flowers Bloom in an Infinite Universe inside a Teacup
teamLab, 2016, Interactive Digital Installation, Endless, Sound: Hideaki Takahashi

Make tea in the tea house at the exhibition. Flowers will bloom inside the teacup, which if you pick up, sends the flowers scattering and spreading to the outside of the cup. Flowers will bloom infinitely as long as there is tea. For September, there are safflowers, dianthus, and Chinese asters, while next month will introduce cosmos, osmanthus, and chrysanthemums.

Ever Blossoming Life Rock
teamLab, 2017, Digitized Nature, Sound: Hideaki Takahashi

Megaliths in the Bath House Ruins
teamLab, 2019, Interactive Digital Installation

You can also see autumn flowers in the Ever Blossoming Life Rock and Megaliths in the Bath House Ruins exhibits too.

Visitors can also get set tickers which includes entry to the exhibition as well as a dip in the Rakan no Yu hot springs of Mifuneyama Rakuen Hotel. These tickets are limited to 40 people per day.

Art collective teamLab is set to open a permanent exhibition at Nowhere, the new immersive digital art centre which will open in Utrecht, Netherlands in 2024.

Nowhere is a 3,000 m² digital art space which teamLab will transform into a breathtaking, ever-changing, immersive, and interactive art world.

Nowhere’s exhibition will be dedicated to teamLab and their immersive digital art installations which we have covered extensively. Their exhibitions are a collaboration of art, technology, and nature, and encourage audience participation which results in the art pieces changing form, colour, shape, and so on.

Numerous exhibits from teamLab will be on display including, but not limited to Future Park and Athletics Forest. The former is based on collaborative creativity and co-creation, encouraging participants to be creative with others, while the latter is a “physical creative space” that “promotes growth of the hippocampus of the brain and trains spatial awareness.”

Wonderwoods, where Nowhere is being built, is a green development set to open in 2023, boasting 9,649 trees of over 360 species.

Photos: Vero Digital

teamLab’s annual digital art exhibition teamLab: A Forest Where Gods Live, which is held every year from summer to autumn at Mifuneyama Rakuen’s Takeo Hot Springs, is collaborating with Rakan no Yu, a new sauna facility which opened at the Kyushu-based hot spring facility and won first place in Sauna Chelan 2019.

The exhibition will open in the 500,000 square meter Mifuneyama Rakuen Park on July 22, 2020 to both guests and non-guests of Mifuneyama Rakuen Hotel, Onyado Chikurintei, and other surrounding accommodations. Set tickets to enjoy both Rakan no Yu and the teamLab exhibition went on sale on July 20 and are limited to 40 people per day.

Drawing on the Water Surface Created by the Dance of Koi and Boats – Mifuneyama Rakuen Pond​
teamLab, 2015, Interactive Digitized Nature, 13min 24sec, Sound: Hideaki Takahashi

The water of Rakan no Yu is pure, low-alkali hot spring water with no colour, smell, or taste. It’s known for its superior moisturising effect, leaving the skin nice and smooth. Rakan no Yu won first place in Sauna Chelan 2019. Sauna Chelan is considered the “Michelin” ranker of the sauna world.

In June 2020, a dry sauna and new baths were added to Rakan no Yu’s women’s open air baths. Guests can enjoy the meditation sauna, indoor and outdoor baths, hot springs, and more in both the men’s and women’s sections.

Ever Blossoming Life Rock
teamLab, 2017, Digitized Nature, Sound: Hideaki Takahashi

Universe of Water Particles on a Sacred Rock
teamLab, 2017, Digitized Nature

This year marks teamLab’s sixth collaboration with Mifuneyama Rakuen. Their teamLab: A Forest Where Gods Live is held every year at the site, and this year they have 22 art pieces to showcase. Takeo Hot Springs opened in 1845 and is registered as a national monument.

Life is Continuous Light – Azalea Valley

teamLab, 2017, Interactive Digitized Nature, Sound: Hideaki Takahashi

Floating Resonating Lamps – One Stroke, Fire
teamLab, 2019, Interactive Installation, Murano Glass, LED, Endless, Sound: Hideaki Takahashi

teamLab’s incredible interactive digital art will react to people’s presence and movement throughout the 500,000 square meter space.