Forest and Spiral of Resonating Lamps: One Stroke - Autumn Mountain

teamLab, 2018, from the series Forest of Resonating Lamps: One Stroke, 2016-, Interactive Installation, Endless, Sound: Hideaki Takahashi, Production Support: Hirohito Saito (OryZa Design), Shinya Yoshida (SYD INC.)

Forest and Spiral of Resonating Lamps: One Stroke - Autumn Mountain

Before the modern era in Japan, complex colors born from the characteristics of silk were given descriptive names evocative of the four seasons. Such colors were called Kasane no Irome (nuances of layered colors), and were created by the combination of the lining and exterior fabric (silk was thin at the time so the color of the lining showed through the exterior fabric), gradations from overlapping colors, and blending of warp and weft.

This artwork, in which lamps are seemingly scattered in a random manner, is composed of resonating light that changes based on the relationship between the people in the artwork space. It is a work that expresses the beauty of continuity.

When a person stands close to a lamp, it shines brightly and emits a sound. The light spreads to the closest lamps, propagating their light to the lamps nearest to them. The light continues to flow to the closest lamp, passing through each lamp once, creating a single light trajectory that passes through all the lamps. The light created by your presence and the light created by the presence of others, will always intersect.

The seemingly random arrangement of the lamps is an arrangement in which the light produced by the presence of people is always continuous, and is an arrangement created for the beauty of the continuity itself.

Specifically, the lamps are mathematically arranged in space so that when a line is drawn from each lamp to the closest lamp in three dimensions, it forms a single connected line (unicursal) with the same start and end points, that line becomes the trajectory of light that is beautiful.

As a result, the lamp light triggered by a person’s presence will, regardless of the fact that it is only spreading to the closest lamps, always pass through each lamp only once, as if it were a single stroke. It then intersects with the light created by other people in the same space at the same time, and ultimately returns to the original lamp that was the starting point. This artwork represents the l continuity of light as people freely interact with the lamps.