Would you like to have your body be immersed in and part of an art installation?
If yes, then teamLab Planets Tokyo is for you! Unlike teamLab Borderless, teamLab Planets Tokyo collection of installations are body immersive, in that your body dissolves into artworks of light, sound, and water – blurring the lines between viewer and works. Sounds cool, non?
But before you get to all that fun, a couple of things you need to be aware of:
- All visitors must remove their socks and shoes. This is because you’ll be walking in water. There are free lockers to store your stuff in.
- Since there are mirrored floors, it’s advisable for women not to wear skirts as your underwear would be visible. If you do have a skirt on, there are free rental shorts at the front desk so that you can wear it underneath the skirt.
The first installation was to experience was the Waterfall of Light Particles at the Top of an Incline. The artwork is based on a natural waterfall in the mountains of Shikoku. Visitors walk up this sloped waterfall in semi-darkness. It feels like the water is cleansing you (or rather your feet) to prepare for further immersive works. At the top of the waterfall, staff hand you towels to dry off your feet.
Walking into the Soft Black Hole room, your foot sinks trying to walk on the velvet-y fabric that feels like it’s covering a ton of squishy beanbag chairs.The space itself is affected and changed by the weight of other visitors, so there are no two mounds that are the same. You can try to walk to the exit at the other end of the room (a bit of a struggle) or you can choose to sink and flop down on a surface that envelops you.
Next up is the Infinite Crystal Universe space, which is very reminiscent of the Crystal World space at teamLab Borderless.
Visitors have to hike up their pants above their knees before heading into the Drawing on the Water Surface Created by the Dance of Koi and People – Infinity room. It is here that visitors can walk into the water, while digital koi swim on the surface.
The movement and trajectory of the koi is influenced and determined by the number of visitors in the water. When the koi “collides” with visitors, they transform into flowers and scatter into beams of coloured lights.
A really cool thing about this teamLab Planets Tokyo installation is that the work is rendered in real time by a computer program and it’s not pre-recorded or on a loop. The interactions continuously change and are never replicated.
The Expanding Three-Dimensional Existence in Transforming Space – Free Floating, Flatting 3 Colours and 9 Blurred Colours (now that’s a mouthful!) space reminded me of the teamLab Borderless’ Weightless Forest of Resonating Light exhibit.
The space is filled with floating spheres and as visitors move through the space and comes into contact with the spheres, it changes colours – as do the visitors. Which explains why we look like Oompa Loompas, Tobias Funke blue-ing himself or The Hulk. No filter needed!
Pro-tip: if you’re sensitive to motion sickness, vertigo or the spins, skip the final installation, Floating in the Falling Universe of Flowers. Sitting up or lying down, neither Sean nor I could stomach it as we found the flowers moved about too fast. I had to squint my eyes just to walk across the dizzying room to the exit without staggering out like a drunk.
I kinda wish that there were more installations at teamLab Planets Tokyo. It’s smaller than Borderless, but more fun as it’s truly body-immersive. However, Borderless definitely had more to see (but more visitors). If you have the time, I would definitely recommend both!
I know that next time I visit Tokyo, I would definitely want to go back.
View more photos of teamLab Planets Tokyo, Tokyo and Japan on my Flickr albums.
Hours:
9am-midnight every day (last admission 11pm)
Address:
Tokyo-to, Koto-ku, Toyosu 6-1-16
GPS coordinates: 35.649291, 139.790081
1 Comment
A very cool experience…