teamlab Borderless sheds new light on digital art

Perhaps the two most immersive experiences in teamlab Borderless, the Forest of Resonating Lamps and the Crystal World both offer an inspired use of the reflection of light in a room of mirrors to create a new sensation. This is especially true in the latter where the LED lights use a three-dimensional pointillism technique to simulate elements of nature such as rivers and rainbows. You’ll be coaxed into a perceived state of weightlessness, feeling as if you’re suspended in an infinite space where there’s no beginning or ending.

In the Forest of Flowers and People: Lost, Immersed and Reborn, projections of lights in various colours and floral patterns bring a sprawling, maze-like space to life, creating an otherworldly landscape of beauty and fantasy. The mirrors and a scattering of dark rooms (each housing a different work of digital art) add to the surreal feeling that you’re travelling through dimensions.

A black box with walls lined with high-energy strobe lights, the Light Sculpture Space features beams of light which shoot across the void in time to a rousing score. The shafts of light often criss-cross to create grids that are so solid-looking you feel like you could reach out and touch them. And in some artworks, when you do ‘touch’ the points where the lights intersect, you affect the ‘sculpture’ the lights make.