Under the Sea with teamLab

If you like interactive, multi-sensory, environmental art installations then take a look at the work of teamLab, a creative collective out of Japan made up of a variety of talents like artists, programmers, mathematicians, CG animators, graphic designers, and engineers. The studio brings together the skills of these diverse pros to create work that celebrates and riffs on the relationship between creativity, technology, art, and science.

Teamlab already has completed a number of stunning and thoughtful projects like the transformation of the Fukuoka castle into a immersive light work or an installation that visualized in vivid color the life cycle of plants in a forest. Their most recent project is ocean-inspired and presents an immersive and meditative world under the sea. The exhibit entitled Moving Creates Vortices and Vortices Create Movement took place at the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne on Christmas Day.

The installation simulates an experience akin to what it’s like to move through ocean flows and terrain. The installation responds to users’ motion at different rates of speed and reacts with high attunement to their individual movement and the relationship of their movement to others within the installation. The visual effect resembles bio-luminescent plankton found in bays off of Japan and Malta or an interactive star field.

The installation aims to present the experience of underwater flow and swirls and the cyclical quality of the seas self-regenerating life-cycle.