The Way of the Sea, Cosmic Void

teamLab, 2018, Digital Installation, Endless, Sound: Hideaki Takahashi

The Way of the Sea, Cosmic Void

teamLab, 2018, Digital Installation, Endless, Sound: Hideaki Takahashi

This is an interactive digital installation in which viewers can walk around freely in a space that completely surrounds them with projections on all sides.


The shoal of fish rendered in light moves freely through the space, leaving trails of light. They sense people’s presence and try to avoid colliding with them. People who enter this space are assigned a certain color, and when a fish passes by a person, it takes on the same color.


The movement of thousands of fish is beautiful and mysterious, appearing like a single giant life form. The shoal has neither a leader nor mutual consensus, but it is said that the fish move on the simple basis of; if my neighbor moves, then I move too. However, the biological mechanism that causes hundreds of fish to move at the same time remains a mystery. It seems there is a universal principle that humans have yet to understand. Likewise, the arrangement of color of the shoal is not predetermined. Influenced by people, the fish move, based on a primitive rule unknown to humankind, which in turn creates a complex and beautiful coloration in the space.


When you stand near a certain space designated within the artwork, the boundary between the wall and the floor disappears and the real space dissolves. Eventually you become immersed in the artwork world and the lines drawn by the trails of the fish appear three dimensional in the space.