Flowers and People in the Tokyo Sky – A Whole Year per Hour

teamLab, 2019, Interactive Digital Installation, Sound: Hideaki Takahashi

Flowers and People in the Tokyo Sky – A Whole Year per Hour

teamLab, 2019, Interactive Digital Installation, Sound: Hideaki Takahashi

In this artwork, flowers are drawn as through floating in the air with the nighttime skyline of Tokyo in the background. A year’s worth of seasonal flowers bloom over the course of an hour, continuously scattering and changing.

The flowers bud, grow, and blossom before their petals begin to wither and eventually fade away. The cycle of growth and decay repeats itself in perpetuity. If a person holds their hand out, the flowers shed their petals, wither, and die all at once, but if the person keeps their hand out and waits, flowers will bloom and grow more abundantly.

The artwork is not a pre-recorded image that is played back: it is created by a computer program that continuously renders the work in real time. The interaction between people and the installation causes continuous change in the artwork: previous visual states can never be replicated, and will never reoccur. The picture at this moment can never be seen again.