We all like to be part of something, be it a game, an action, or a show, but as we get older we learn to control that eagerness to participate and to conform. When we visit museums, we feel like touching the texture of the marble of that sculpture or the thickness of the oil layers of that painting with our fingers, but we are aware of how much damage we would do to the works and we put our hands behind our backs while we wait for our turn to stand at the ideal angle from which to better view the piece.
What would happen then if the work were conditioned by our actions or movements? What would it be like to be able to go inside? What if there were no edges and borders separating us from the work of art? Based on this premise, the international art collective TeamLAB creates its artistic installations, so that we can actively participate in what is happening in real time, changing the paradigm of the passive spectator.
The Japanese collective, which was born in 2001 from a group of students led by Toshiyuki Inoko, is much more than a group of digital artists; it is an ambitious interdisciplinary project that brings together more than 400 professionals with a common goal: to explore and understand the world through art. In addition to being responsible for founding the world's first digital art museum, the Mori Building Digital Art Museum, in Japan, they have works in permanent collections around the globe.
TeamLAB is an interdisciplinary collective that brings together more than 400 professionals with a common goal: to explore and understand the world through artFor CaixaForum Barcelona they have createdArt, technology, nature, an interactive and immersive artistic proposal with infinite possibilities, divided into two large installations located in Room 4 of the old Casa Ramona.These pieces are a song to nature and the sustainability of the planet, and seek, through the use of digital technologies, to make the viewer aware of its impact in a playful way, creating different and new interactions each time.
The first installation is Born From the Darkness a Loving, and Beautiful World and functions as a kind of canvas projected onto all the walls of the room. In them, elements of nature mixed with Chinese characters can be seen. When we interact by approaching a few centimeters from this writing ---without touching the walls for sanitary reasons--- the natural elements they refer to unfold. Thus, wind, water, lightning, birds, trees, or butterflies appear under our hand as if we ourselves were the painters of that immediate environment that happens and does not return.
The most interesting thing is that the rest of the visitors are not a nuisance or an annoyance around us, as sometimes happens in a regular exhibition, but rather the possibility of creating together, of playing together, makes us not want to be alone painting in the light and that we enjoy each new intervention, as it is unique and unrepeatable.
In the next room, we will find Graffiti Nature: Lost, Immersed and Reborn, where projections also flood the floor. The space becomes an ecosystem where various creatures created by visitors live. And as in any ecosystem, the balance between species is given by the number of living beings of each kind. Even our interaction with the space has its consequences. If we approach the animals, they feel our presence and begin to move. If we don't pay attention to where we step, we can be the cause of the disappearance of some living being. But if we stay still, flowers appear around us.
Elements of nature appear under our hand as if we ourselves were the paintersHere we also have the possibility of to be creators and enrichers of that ecosystem. They offer us a template of a plant or an animal that we color and it is scanned in the Drawing Room. And upon leaving it, we can see how they come to life on the walls of the exhibition and evolve much further, interacting with the environment.
The TeamLAB collective, with their creations, investigate the confluence between art, technology, design, and the natural world. They propose that we get rid of the rigid idea of an observer to break the boundaries that separate us from the work. So that we are, at the same time, work and creator. So that we become aware of how our actions influence our immediate environment and those around us, both for good and for bad.
And also to put beauty at the center. Let it invade us, let it embrace us, let it overwhelm us. So that we can be, again, participants in it.