Bubble Universe: Physical Light, Bubbles of Light, Wobbling Light, and Environmental Light - One Stroke

teamLab, 2023 (work in progress), Interactive Installation, LED, Endless, Sound: Hideaki Takahashi

Bubble Universe: Physical Light, Bubbles of Light, Wobbling Light, and Environmental Light - One Stroke

teamLab, 2023 (work in progress), Interactive Installation, LED, Endless, Sound: Hideaki Takahashi

Inside the spheres, countless lights converge; material lights that exist in the physical space, large and strong light like a soap bubble, huge, weak light that wobbles like a mass of jelly, and light that emerges from the surrounding environment. There are lights that move continuously inside the spheres, and lights that do not move at all.

The light in each sphere cannot produce all the light by itself; other spheres act as an environment that creates countless lights within each sphere. Each sphere becomes part of the environment that generates the light of the other spheres, and the phenomenon created by the environment is the existence of the work.

The light that is not physical light, such as the soap bubble lights and the lights that appear like masses of jelly more clearly higher up, do not exist materially inside of the spheres; they exist only in our perception. And once the lights exist in our perception, it comes into existence.

When a person stops and stands still near a sphere, the nearest sphere shines brightly and resonates a tone, and the light spreads from that sphere to its nearest sphere. The light from that sphere continues to spread only to the nearest sphere, passing through each sphere only once and becoming a single trajectory of light. The light born from an individual person and the light born from others intersect.

The seemingly random arrangement of the spheres is an arrangement in which the light created by the presence of people is continuous, and it is an arrangement for the beauty of continuity itself. More specifically, the arrangement of the spheres is mathematically determined. When drawing a line between spheres that are closest to each other, the three-dimensional line should be unicursal, with the same start point and end point, and the trajectory of light should be beautiful. As a result, the light of the sphere that responds to a person’s presence will always pass through every sphere only once, like a single brush stroke, even though it is only spreading to the closest lamp. At the same time it intersects with the light produced by others. The artwork expresses the beauty of the continuity of light, created by people interacting with the lamps from a free position.