teamlab brings 20 new works to planets tokyo digital museum
teamLab Planets TOKYO in Toyosu will introduce its new expansion on January 22, increasing its total space by 1.5 times and featuring over 20 new interactive installations that bridge art, physical interaction, and education with a focus on nature. Among these additions are the Catching and Collecting Forest, the Orchid Glass House, and the large-scale Athletics Forest, spaces that challenge visitors to engage their senses and bodies in entirely novel ways. ‘For humanity, the acts of catching and gathering are fun, educational, and part of life,’ notes Toshiyuki Inoko, teamLab’s founder.
This immersive concept taps into deep-seated human instincts while fostering a sense of wonder about the natural world explored and activated by the visitors themselves. ‘The main concept of teamLab’s Planets is body immersive,’ Inoko shared with designboom during our previous interview. This is amplified by teamLab’s experimentations with technology that gives virtual life to handmade animations in real time, allows light to mimic intangible elements as well as the movement of participants, and echo the rituals of daily life. Works that manifest this include a field of bouncing, rotating spheres, a luminous suspended jungle gym, and a glass house where visitors can enjoy tea surrounded by orchids fallen from a previous artworks, among other experiences.
all images © teamLab
athletics forest invites bodily interaction with digital art
teamLab’s Athletics Forest transforms movement into an art form within a multi-dimensional space that emphasizes spatial awareness and creativity. This area combines physical challenges with artistic expression, encouraging visitors to perceive the world through their bodies, as Toshiyuki Inoko notes. The two new art installations here include Autonomous Abstraction and Existence in the Flow Creates Vortices. In the former, dotted lights blink and change color in unique cycles, affecting each other and eventually synchronizing. In the latter, as people climb against a flow, they leave a trail of vortices that seems to remain steady, yet gradually swells with power.
At Rapidly Rotating Bouncing Spheres in the Caterpillar House, visitors can navigate a field of spinning spheres that stop moving when approached, while at Multi Jumping Universe, a flexible surface sinks with each jump, propelling participants into warps in space and time. This distortion attracts stardust from the universe and births new stars around in projections. Likewise inviting navigation through space, though this time through mid-air, Aerial Climbing through a Flock of Colored Birds suspends a sequence of colored horizontal bars as platforms to balance on. The slides of Sliding through the Fruit Field mimics rays of sunlight, transferring energy to create growth in a digital fruit field. Other artworks in the Athletics Forest include Graffiti Nature, Waterfall Droplets, Flowing Down a Slope, Flutter of Butterflies from the Caterpillar House, each using motifs of nature to encourage collaboration through movement, light, and technology.
Catching and Collecting Extinct Forest
catching and collecting forest immerses visitors in nature
Catching and Collecting Forest invites visitors into an interactive Extinct Forest, populated by digital representations of extinct animals. One can physically explore the space while using a smartphone to capture animals with Research Arrows or Research Nets, and store them in a digital collection book. This act of discovery merges education with adventure, allowing participants to gather knowledge while engaging in a shared experience of curiosity and exploration, as their interactivity with one another and the space drives the installation. ‘Physically exploring with others, discovering and catching something, then taking the chance to broaden interests based on what was caught. This is what we have been doing naturally over the long course of human history. For humanity, the acts of catching and gathering are fun, educational, and part of life,’ says Toshiyuki Inoko.
Elsewhere, visitors are provided with the opportunity to take a piece of the experience home through the Living Art Store, offering orchids nurtured within the museum, or the Sketch Factory, which turns personal artwork into bespoke items such as tote bags or T-shirts. These additions emphasize co-creation and the integration of art into everyday life.
Balance Stepping Stones in the Invisible World
In the Future Park, a virtual amusement park, creativity is bridged with education as visitors work together to bring their imaginations to life. At Sketch Umwelt World, drawings transform into digital creatures, airplanes, or butterflies that interact with their creators in real time, projected onto a vast screen. Three interactive spaces in the Where Little People Live series provide a table, a musical wall, and a window where hand-drawn illustrations appear as animated characters, jump or climb over objects placed on the surface, sliding across the wall, or light up in different colors. Visitors can also use stamps to create elements that generate playful sound and movement.
The museum’s outdoor spaces have also undergone significant renovation. The Black Emptiness Table, where visitors can enjoy Vegan Ramen UZU, now features Reversible Rotation in the Black Emptiness, an artwork exploring the duality of perspective through spatial calligraphy that is drawn in front of them. Additionally, the Orchid Glass House provides a serene environment for enjoying tea or sake amidst regrown orchids from the iconic Floating Flower Garden. The gentle rhythms of glowing lamps and synchronized tones at Nursery Lamps in Spontaneous Order create a meditative atmosphere, blending art with the rituals of daily life.
