Tokyo | Travel Magazine

“MORI Building DIGITAL ART MUSEUM: teamLab Borderless,” an unprecedented digital art museum — jointly created and operated by Mori Building Co., Ltd, a leading urban landscape developer, and teamLab, a world-leading digital art collective — opened today, the two organizers announced.

The digital art museum features approximately 50 interactive artworks, some completely new, in a huge 10,000m² area with five zones. The interactive artworks have no borders separating them from the other works. Some extend beyond their installation rooms and into the corridors, some overlap with other works and some even fuse with other works. Since there are no boundaries, the immersive works keep the boundaries between people in a state of continuous flux. Visitors physically enter and explore the works as well as experience interactions with other visitors. The result is a totally new kind of interactive digital art experience the likes of which cannot be found anywhere else in the world.

Ultimately, Mori Building and teamLab wish for their unique digital art museum to expand cultural interactions in Tokyo and enhance the city’s magnetism as the metropolis approaches 2020 and beyond.

Digital Media Markets

MORI Building DIGITAL ART MUSEUM: teamLab Borderless (10,000m², 5 zones)

1: Borderless World
People understand and recognize the world through their bodies, moving freely and forming connections and relationships with others. As a consequence the body has its own sense of time. In the mind, the boundaries between different thoughts are ambiguous, causing them to influence and sometimes intermingle with each other.

teamLab Borderless is a group of artworks that form one borderless world. Artworks move out of the rooms freely, form connections and relationships with people, communicate with other works, influence and sometimes intermingle with each other, and have the same concept of time as the human body.

People lose themselves in the artwork world. The borderless works transform according to the presence of people, and as we immerse and meld ourselves into this unified world, we experience continuity among people, as well as a new relationship that transcends the boundaries between people and the world.

2: teamLab Athletics Forest
teamLab Athletics Forest is a new “creative physical space” that trains spatial recognition ability by promoting the growth of the hippocampus of the brain. It is based on the concept of understanding the world through the body and thinking of the world three-dimensionally. In a complex, physically challenging, three-dimensional space, immerse your body in an interactive world.

3: Future Park
Learn and Play! Future Park is an educational project and an experimental field for co-creation (collaborative creation).

4: Forest of Lamps
When a person stands still close to a lamp, it shines brightly and emits a color that resonates out. The light of this lamp becomes the starting point, and it spreads to the two nearest lamps. The light from the two nearest lamps transmits the same color to other lamps, one after another, spreading out continuously. The light transmitted from the lamp always resonates out as a bright light once, passing to close lamps, till all lamps have shone brightly once, and then returns to the first lamp. The light of the lamp in response to human interaction, divides in two, becomes one optical line through all lamps respectively, finally, meeting at the first lamp that became the starting point.

5: EN TEA HOUSE
Make tea and a flower blooms inside the teacup. Flowers bloom infinitely as long as there is tea. The tea in the bowl becomes an infinite world in which the flowers continue to bloom. Drink in the infinitely expanding world.

Messages from the Operators

Shingo Tsuji, President and CEO of Mori Building Co., Ltd.

Tokyo must continually enhance its magnetic power to attract people, goods, capital and information from around the world. According to the most recent Global Power City Index, an annual report issued by Mori Building’s think tank Mori Memorial Foundation, Tokyo ranks very highly in areas such as economy, environment and livability, but is lacking in terms of art and cultural interaction.

Mori Building’s urban development initiatives incorporate diverse urban functions. Our first major urban cultural development, Suntory Hall in ARK Hills, has staged a vast array of cultural events since opening in 1986. Our support for the growth and evolution of contemporary art also includes Mori Art Museum. 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 actively incorporates educational opportunities in its urban development initiatives. Mori Building provides some 20,000 children with art and learning opportunities such as the Kids’ Workshop, mainly at Roppongi Hills, every year. Children require proactive, high-dimensional learning in the real world, but instead they receive passive, two-dimensional education in classrooms. We would be pleased if children could learn how to grasp things more high-dimensionally and expand their powers of imagination by exploring our world of digital art.

During Tokyo’s exciting run-up to 2020, we hope everyone will enjoy this first and only museum of its kind, an unprecedented world of digital art created in collaboration between teamLab and Mori Building.

Toshiyuki Inoko, Founder of teamLab

Digital art has been liberated from the constraints of material substance. The feelings and thoughts that were incorporated into an artwork through a physical medium, can now be directly transferred to people (visitors) through experience.

Unlike physical materials, people move freely with their bodies, form connections and relationships with others, and recognize the world through their bodies. The body has a concept of time, and in the mind, the boundaries between different thoughts are ambiguous, making them influence and sometimes intermingle with each other.

If an artist can put thoughts and feelings directly into people’s experiences, artworks too can move freely, form connections and relationships with people, and have the same concept of time as the human body. Artworks can transcend boundaries, influence and sometimes intermingle with each other. In this way, all the boundaries between artist, people and artworks, dissolve and the world teamLab Borderless is created.

As people walk freely around teamLab Borderless they lose themselves in the artwork world. 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.

MORI Building DIGITAL ART MUSEUM: teamLab Borderless

Location: palette town, Odaiba
Address: 1-3-8 Aomi, Koto-ku, Tokyo
Floor space: About 10,000 square meters
Launch: June 21 (Thu), 2018
Hours: 11 am to 7 pm (9 pm during Commemorative Opening*) from Mondays to Thursdays
11 am to 9 pm (10 pm*) on Fridays and days before national holidays
10 am to 9 pm (10 pm*) on Saturdays
10 am to 7 pm (8 pm*) on Sundays and national holidays
*Commemorative Opening period from June 21 (Thu) to August 31 (Fri), 2018
–Admission until one hour before closing.
–Operating hours may change by season. Please check the website for more information.
Closed: Second and fourth Tuesdays of every month
Admission: Adults and high school/university students: 3,200 yen (tax included)
Children (age 4 to middle school students): 1,000 yen (tax included)
*Commemorative Opening Tickets will be offered for the discounted price of 2,400 yen from June 21 (Thu) to July 31 (Tue), 2018
–Advance tickets are sold for the normal price and the date of visit is fixed.
–Daily admission is limited and the gate will close if tickets sell out. Please see the website for more information.
–Admission to EN TEA HOUSE (cafe) is charged separately.
–Junior high school students or younger children must enter with a guardian.
Ticket sales: From June 7 (Thu), 2018
Sales outlets:
Museum official website (https://www.teamlab.art/e/borderless/), Lawson ticket and Seven ticket

Organizers: Mori Building and teamLab Limited Liability Partnership (established to operate the museum)
Official
website:https://www.teamlab.art/e/borderless/

Teaser video: