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The TOKYO SKYTREE mural

teamLab, 2012/2021 , Digital Work + High-performance Inkjet on Wall, H: 2900 mm W: 29500 mm

The TOKYO SKYTREE mural

teamLab, 2012/2021 , Digital Work + High-performance Inkjet on Wall, H: 2900 mm W: 29500 mm

The Tokyo Skytree mural is located on the Fourth floor of Tokyo Skytree®. Ten monitors are embedded in the wall, forming a seamless picture; the images shown on the monitors are digital animation.


In traditional Japanese art, there is no center of focus, there is no fixed time frame, and a vast amount of information is often depicted. This artwork presents Tokyo as a mix of reality and fiction, past and future. The overwhelming amount of visual information contained in this large mural was completely hand-drawn with the support of digital technology.


The city is made up of the stories of each and every person living there. That is what makes Tokyo such an exciting and interesting place. Traditional Japanese screen paintings such as Rakuchu rakugai zu (Scenes in and around the Capital) and Edo-zu byobu (Folding screen picture of Edo) have no central point of focus and are "flat"—everything is depicted with the same degree of importance. The paintings contain detailed visual information, even down to the stories of each person.


We have created this picture of Tokyo as a continuation of the traditional form of artistic expression, incorporating the techniques of Ukiyo-e and reproducing the methods of Edo printing by using the latest digital technology.


Based on our conviction that technological evolution brings about human evolution, this mural exceeds the hand-drawn limitations of picture-making and links the Tokyo of the Edo period to the Tokyo of the future.