Founded in 2001, the Japan-based international art collective TeamLab created the template for destination-class digital art installations, using computer-generated imagery, bright high-resolution video projectors, lights, water, and ambient audio to create memorably immersive experiences. TeamLab’s two primary exhibitions in Tokyo – TeamLab Borderless in Azabudai Hills and TeamLab Planets in Toyosu – are now among Japan’s most popular attractions, enabling guests to walk through rooms filled with colorful, constantly moving art that wraps around boxy and curved surfaces, occasionally even displaying on clouds of mist or streams of water.
Borderless is so-named because almost all of its walls are canvases, and some of the art shifts unpredictably from room to room, changing a given space’s themes as you wander around. For an additional fee, you can go to a tea shop where bowls of tea and ice cream are augmented by overhead digital projectors to sprout blooms and butterflies. At Planets, you walk barefoot through sometimes rushing water and floors that change textures while enjoying light shows, immersing yourself in hanging gardens full of plants, and examining glowing, alien-like eggs in a semi-outdoor garden. The presentations are mesmerizing and consistently beautiful, though in our experience, each TeamLab destination is only worth visiting once.
