Ephimeral worlds: a multisensory, unrepeatable andunique experience
The two installations designed by the group teamLab, which may be visited at Room 4 of the CaixaForum in Barcelona until the 9th of January, 2022, recreate a cosmos full of a specific nature that changes with visitors’ actions and behaviour.
Art, technology and nature. It is the conjunction that teamLab wants to bring together. teamLab is a group that was founded in Japan in 2001 and is formed by over 400 professionals with different specialisations: engineers, mathematicians, designers, digital animators, artists, programmers and architects, amongst others. The group has an ambitious project with a common aim: examining and understanding the world through art. One of its latest works (the first to be exhibited in Barcelona) can be found in Room 4 of the CaixaForum in Barcelona until the 9th of January, 2022. It is made up of two large-scale installations: Born From the Darkness a Loving and Beautiful World and Graffiti Nature: Lost, Immersed and Reborn. Pieces that generate universes in which a specific nature lives that transmutes with the visitors’ actions.
The interactive installations are projected on all the walls of the room and even on the floor on one side. In this sense, one of the great challenges of the exhibition has been to have all the technological infrastructure necessary in the venue without perforating the modernist ceiling of the CaixaForum, the previous head offices of the Casaramona factory. To do this, a substructure was constructed from which 60 projectors and 50 loudspeakers have been hung.
Immersion and participation
In the first proposal’s projections, elements of nature mixed with Chinese script can be seen. In this way, when visitors interact with the scripts, elements of nature develop, turning into the meaning given by the scripts: water, wind, bird, flower, etc. The second installation becomes an ecosystem that is inhabited by several creatures drawn by the visitors themselves. If we remain still, flowers appear around us; if we walk, the flower petals disperse; if we approach the animals, they feel our presence and start to move…
The initiative by teamLab is a complete revolution in the way in which visitors can perceive art. Up to now, the presence of other visitors could cause an obstacle when admiring the works, in these shows something very different occurs, as the link to the other spectators generates new enriching dialogues. The actions of all the visitors modify and determine the different components that make up the work and allow visitors to deliberate on the relations that we establish with nature and to what point our acts affect our world’s ecosystems. This becomes a key element for each visitor’s experience to be original, particular and exclusive and unrepeatable.
