Relationships Among People
2001
Changing the Relationships Among People: Making the Presence of Others a Positive Experience
Traditional media, such as paintings, do not change in relation to the presence of viewers or their behavior. The artwork remains in a fixed relationship vis-a-vis an individual viewer. For the majority of art up until now, the presence of other viewers tended to constitute a hindrance. If you happen to find yourself alone at an exhibition, you would consider yourself to be very lucky.
When an artwork changes based on the presence or behavior of a person, the boundaries between the artwork and the viewer become blurred, making the viewer a part of the work itself. Similarly, when the artwork changes due to the presence of other people, they also become part of the work. This causes the relationship between an artwork and an individual to expand into a relationship between an artwork and a group of individuals. Whether a viewer was present five minutes ago, or the behavior of the person next to you at that moment, suddenly becomes important.
Digital art has the ability to change the relationships among people who are present in the same space. Regardless of the intentions of others to interact with an artwork, if that interaction creates change that we feel is beautiful, then the presence of others can in itself become a positive element.
This applies not only to art. In modern cities, the presence of others might be considered uncomfortable. We often cannot understand or control others, so their existence around us is something that is simply tolerated. This is because the city does not change based on your existence or that of others. However, if cities were to become digital art, the presence of other people could become a positive element. In this way, the search for new relationships among people through digital art may go beyond art, potentially influencing society’s views on how cities should evolve.
FEATURED WORKS
Flowers and People, Cannot be Controlled but Live Together – Kunisaki Peninsula
teamLab, 2014, Interactive Digital Installation, Endless, Sound: Hideaki Takahashi
This is an art installation consisting of a walkway and a large open space that appears to go on for infinity.The flowers bud, grow, and blossom before their petals begin to wither, and eventually fade away. The cycle of growth and decay repeats itself in perpetuity. The flowers are interactive, depending on the proximity of the viewer to the work, or if the viewer touches the flowers, the flowers simultaneously come to life, or shed their petals wither and die all at once.The artwork 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: previous visual states can never be replicated, and will never reoccur. The picture at this moment can never be seen again.In spring in the Kunisaki Peninsula, there are many cherry blossoms in the mountains and canola blossoms at their base. This experience of nature caused teamLab to wonder how many of these flowers were planted by people and how many were native to the environment. It is a place of great serenity and contentment, but the expansive body of flowers is an ecosystem influenced by human intervention, and the boundary between the work of nature and the work of humans is unclear. Rather than nature and humans being in conflict, a healthy ecosystem is one that includes people. In the past, people understood that they could not grasp nature in its entirety, and that it is not possible to control nature. People lived more closely aligned to the rules of nature that created a comfortable natural environment. We believe that these valleys hold faint traces of this premodern relationship with nature that once existed, and we hope to explore a form of human intervention based on the premise that nature cannot be controlled.
Ver MásWhat a Loving, and Beautiful World
Sisyu + teamLab, 2011-, Interactive Digital Installation, Endless, Calligraphy: Sisyu, Sound: Hideaki Takahashi
Each character has its own world. When people touch the letters, the worlds of the characters appear, and they influence each other, creating one single world. Rain, snow, and flowers are affected by the wind, birds perch on trees, and butterflies are attracted to flowers.When other artworks touch the letters, the worlds they contain appear as well. The worlds created by people interact with the worlds created by other people and other works, creating new imagery.The artwork seen at this moment in time can never be seen again.At times, the artwork spreads far and wide.
Ver MásteamLab, 2018, Interactive Digital Installation, Sound: Hideaki Takahashi
In the background, cherry blossoms bloom and scatter, the cycle of life and death repeats itself.As people come in contact with the space, a circle is born and grows to radiate at a certain rhythm and a specific interval. The circle born transforms only the light and darkness of the background world.
Ver MásteamLab, 2014, Interactive Digital Installation + Light Sculpture, LED, Endless, H: 14700mm W: 17200mm D: 3840mm, Concept design, production and execution supervisor: DEM inc.
A gigantic interactive digital LED sculpture installation.Rain falls from the sky; the rain creates waterfalls; the waterfalls turn into rivers, helping the flowers grow and blossom on the land. Birds gather near flowers and trees, flying into the sky where the clouds form and float away. Everything is connected in a cycle, but no events are ever repeated in exactly the same way.Neither a prerecorded animation nor on loop, the work is rendered in real time by a computer program. It continuously changes its appearance in line with the influence of external data such as viewer behavior, the time of day, seasons, temperature, weather, and various other parameters within the CTBC Financial Park, Taipei.Just as no natural landscape ever looks the same twice, this artwork never replicates the same state, thus creating new scenery forever.
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