Flowers Bloom under the Waterfall in the Gorge - Ōboke Koboke

teamLab, 2016, Digitized Nature, Sound: Hideaki Takahashi

Flowers Bloom under the Waterfall in the Gorge - Ōboke Koboke

teamLab, 2016, Digitized Nature, Sound: Hideaki Takahashi

This artwork consists of a waterfall projected onto a sheer cliff, and flowers projected onto the river of Koboke gorge that flows beneath it.

The world we know has been created by the powerful cycle of life, repeating endlessly on an overwhelming scale over billions of years on earth.

Water is the source of life. Flowers bloom and scatter for eternity on the surface of the water as the forcefully flowing river collides with the sides of the gorge. The flowers are born, they grow, bud, bloom, and eventually scatter, wither, and fade away. In other words, the flowers go through the cycle of birth and death eternally.

The waterfall falls over a cliff that has been formed over a long period of time by the strong flowing river that runs through the steep rock face of the gorge. The fall of the waterfall is physically calculated in relation to the actual cliff form onto which it is projected. The water is represented as a continuous body of hundreds of thousands of water particles. A computer calculates the movement and interaction of the particles to produce a simulation of water that flows in accordance with the laws of physics. Lines are drawn in relation to a selection of the particles, this collection of lines depicts a waterfall on the steep cliff of the gorge.

This artwork is in continuous change; over a period of one hour a seasonal year of flowers blossoms and scatters. Neither a prerecorded animation nor on loop, the work is rendered in real time by a computer program. Previous visual states can never be replicated, and will never reoccur.