There are swirling butterflies, crows flying and flowers you can really smell - all computer-generated in real time.
It’s all part of a new exhibition opening at San Francisco’s Asian Art Museum, called "teamLab: Continuity."
The art is entirely digital and immersive, and changes around the people moving through the 12,000 square meter pavilion.
"Visitors to the exhibition are encouraged to roam freely through digitally projected environments of vibrant color and sound that dissolve into one another," the museum said in a release. "The movement-sensitive artworks fill entire galleries and are hyper-responsive to human activity, transforming visitors into participants: rather than a series of preprogrammed movies, the digital animation is derived from dynamic algorithms that react to visitors’ locations and movements within the interconnecting gallery spaces."
Toshiyuki Inoko, co-founder of the Japanese art collaborative "teamLab", which is behind the exhibition, told KCBS Radio that art is usually viewed as independent but the world around us is continuous and interconnected.
“Humans have a tendency to forget this in our daily lives. It’s hard to feel that - especially with our lives in the city,” Inoko said. “So we want to remind people and also remind ourselves of that continuity that world exists on and how we are just part of that continuity.”
The pandemic demonstrated just how connected we are all. Museum CEO Jay Xu told KCBS Radio that after that experience, along with the rise in anti-Asian hate that followed, it is even more important to lift up Asian stories.
"Our particular expertise is art," Xu added. "So we want to activate artists’ voices and these stories of art in our common effort."
A teamLab exhibition was also featured in the documentary "James May: Our Man in Japan," hosted by British television host James May.
Tickets are available at the museum's website.
TeamLab Continuity opens to the public next Friday.
Related
