Environmental Phenomena

2020

The artwork cannot exist on its own; its existence is a phenomenon created by its environment.

Objects like stones and man-made creations maintain a stable structure on their own. A stone will continue to exist even if placed in a sealed box, isolated from the external world.

On the other hand, a vortex created in the ocean disappears instantly when transferred into an enclosed box. In other words, a vortex does not maintain a stable structure independently. A vortex exists within the flow created by its environment, formed by water continuously flowing from the outside to the inside and from the inside to the outside, and changes along with that flow. Its boundaries are ambiguous; both the vortex and its surroundings are made of water, and there is no material distinction between them.

Rather than a solid object, a unique environment is created, and the phenomena produced by that environment create the existence of the artwork. Let us call these Environmental Phenomena. The artwork is inseparable from the environment and changes along with it.

The artwork is released from the material substances that have been responsible for maintaining its existence. Elements like air, water, and light that permeate our daily lives are transformed by the unique environment into phenomena, evolving into new existences.

Transcending the conventional notions of physical objects, the artwork maintains its existence even when people immerse themselves physically into it, and naturally restores itself even if it is broken. The boundaries of its existence are ambiguous and continuous with its surroundings. However, if the environment is lost, the artwork will disappear. In time, people’s consciousness will expand from existence itself to the environment.

Objects continue to exist even if placed in a box isolated from the outside world, but life cannot maintain its existence in such a closed box. Life is also an existence maintained by its environment.

Life may be a miraculous phenomenon that emerges from a continuous flow in an open world.

Living Crystallized Light

teamLab, 2022-, Interactive Installation, Sound: teamLab

Like an organic entity created from crystallized light, the work shines iridescently from its center as it moves around, merging and dividing continuously.People can walk into the artwork, and even if they do so, the artwork will continue to be maintained, its existence unharmed. If a person touches the artwork, they realize that what they are looking at is ordinary water. The artwork’s existence is not independent, but is actually a unique phenomenon created by its environment.The places where the work appears will change as the viewer moves. The work’s appearance is unique to the viewer, so someone viewing the artwork from another angle will see a different colored work appearing in a different place. In other words, the existence of the artwork being seen is created by its environment, and exists only in the viewer.

Massless Amorphous Sculpture

teamLab, 2020-, Installation, Sound: Hideaki Takahashi

This floating, immense sculpture emerges from a sea of bubbles, transcending the very concept of mass. It neither sinks to the ground nor rises completely to the ceiling, but instead drifts in the middle of the space. The contours of its existence are ambiguous—it fragments into smaller pieces, but merges into a larger mass. Even when people fully immerse themselves in this sculpture, its existence remains intact. If broken by people, it naturally restores itself. However, when the sculpture is destroyed beyond what it can repair, it collapses, unable to recover. Even if people try to move or push this floating sculpture, they cannot do so, and if they stir up wind, the sculpture disperses entirely. Physical human actions cannot move the sculpture.Objects such as stones and man-made creations maintain a stable structure on their own. A stone will continue to exist even if placed in a sealed box, isolated from the external world.On the other hand, a vortex created in the ocean disappears instantly when transferred into an enclosed box. In other words, a vortex does not maintain a stable structure independently. A vortex exists within the flow created by its environment formed by water continuously flowing from the outside to the inside and from the inside to the outside, maintained by the vortex’s ordered structure. This flow allows the vortex to shift as the surrounding currents change. Its boundaries are ambiguous. There is no material distinction between the vortex and its surroundings as they are made of water.Rather than a solid object, this sculpture is created by the order of energy generated by the phenomena of a unique environment. Let us call this existence created by the order of energy, a Higher-Order Sculpture. The artwork is inseparable from the environment and changes along with the environment. It transcends the conventional notions of physical objects—it sustains its existence mid-air, having ambiguous boundaries, and it is able to maintain its shape even when people immerse themselves physically into the sculpture, naturally restoring itself even if the sculpture breaks.A sculpture based on the premise of an open system.The only material substances present in this space are water, air, and ordinary soap.By filling the space with bubbles, a distinct environment is created in which an order of energy is born. By doing so, a massive form emerges from this sea of bubbles that floats steadily in mid-air.In modern biology, the definition of life cannot be strictly defined, but everything that is structured upon cells, capable of metabolism, and self-reproduction are labeled living things for convenience. In other words, all living things are composed of cells. All cells are enclosed by a cell membrane constructed of a lipid bilayer, with the hydrophilic part facing outward and the hydrophobic part covered within the layers. Both the inside and outside of the enveloping membrane are liquid. Soap bubbles are similarly enveloped by lipid bilayer membranes, and these membranes are structurally identical to cell membranes. However, contrary to cells, the bilayer of the bubble membrane floats in and encloses air, so the hydrophobic part faces outward, while the hydrophilic part is covered within the layers. In other words, if we consider cells to be pouch-shaped membranes in liquid, then bubbles are pouch-shaped membranes in air. This sculpture is created from substances composed in the same ways as cells, the structuring units of life-forms, and the order of energy created from this environment.The same is true of life. It consumes external matter and energy as food and discharges it, sustaining its ordered structure as the energy dissipates. Life exists within the flow of matter and energy, and its contour, like a vortex, is ambiguous.Perhaps, life is a miraculous phenomenon that emerges in the flow of matter and energy, and its structure is the order of energy created by that flow.

Massless Suns and Dark Suns

teamLab, 2022-, Interactive Installation, Endless, Sound: Hideaki Takahashi

We do not perceive the world we see, we see the world we perceive.A group of countless spheres of light. When people approach the spheres, they shine brightly and the surrounding spheres respond one after the other.When you widen your field of vision, spheres made of darkness also begin to appear, as though darkness has been solidified. However, these spheres of light and spheres of darkness do not exist. The spheres of darkness cannot even be captured on camera.There is no material, such as glass, on the surface of the spheres; the spheres are made only of light. There is no material surface boundary, and the perception of the boundary with your body is ambiguous. In reality, light cannot solidify into a spherical mass in the universe. Therefore, the spheres do not physically exist.This is a Cognitive Sculpture that appears only in the human world of perception. The materials are light and the environment. And the subject of its creation is the viewer's own body and perception.The spheres cannot exist on their own - its existence is a phenomenon created in relation to its environment. The phenomenon created by the environment is shaped for the first time by the dynamic body and perception of the viewer, becoming a sculpture in their cognitive world.The artwork explores the possibility of a new form of existence distinct from material existence, and questions the very nature of existence.

Levitation - Flattening Red and Blue & Blurred Violet

teamLab, 2021, Digital Installation, Sound: Hideaki Takahashi

Life is an order of energy.In the artwork space, an order of energy is created, just like life.The sphere is not supported by anything. Nevertheless, through the order of energy, the sphere transcends the concept of mass: it levitates in the space between the floor and ceiling, floating up and down. When a person taps the sphere, it floats away, falls to the ground, and rolls away. But if there is no external interference, it will slowly rise into the air again, as though restoring itself to its original state.The sphere also appears to shift between two and three dimensions.What is life? Viruses, for example, are considered to exist somewhere between living and inanimate, because they do not have cells, the smallest unit of biological life, and they do not reproduce. What separates the living from the inanimate cannot be defined biologically to this day.That you continue to be tomorrow who you are today is against the law of increasing entropy, wherein tangible things collapse. In other words, in a universe where entropy (a measurement of the lack of order in a system) is supposedly being maximized, life is an entity that resists this trend. Life can be thought of as a “supernature” phenomenon: an occurrence that defies the laws of classical physics.Physicist and 1977 winner of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, Ilya Prigogine, observed that in the natural world, when energy is absorbed from an external source, internal entropy is generated, then released. Prigogine discovered that there exists a non-equilibrium state that is only realized when this entropy is released. Through the dissipation of energy (or matter) and the removal of entropy, internal entropy is reduced and order is created. It can be said that living organisms take in energy from the outside in the form of food, disposing of entropy in the form of excrement, thereby preserving entropy.Life can be thought of as an order of energy that is continuous with the external environment.The existence of life can be thought of as a Supernature Phenomenon that defies the laws of physics. When an order of energy is created within the artwork space, the sphere transcends universal gravitation, violating physics as life does. The sphere slowly levitates, becomes suspended in the middle of the space, and floats up and down in the air.When a person views the Supernature Phenomenon before them, it causes their perception to change, thus leading to a new cognitive experience that differs from that of everyday life.This artwork aims to explore changes in cognition.

Environmental Phenomena

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