Peace can be Realized Even without Order

teamLab, 2018, Interactive Digital Installation, Endless, Sound: Hideaki Takahashi, Voices: Yutaka Fukuoka, Yumiko Tanaka

Peace can be Realized Even without Order

teamLab, 2018, Interactive Digital Installation, Endless, Sound: Hideaki Takahashi, Voices: Yutaka Fukuoka, Yumiko Tanaka

An interactive digital installation consisting of numerous transparent figures


This work starts when the figures from Walk, Walk, Walk: Search, Deviate, Reunite  enter the numerous transparent image space. The work ends when the figures leave the space.


The figures in the space are all autonomous. They play instruments and dance, and each individual is influenced by the sounds from the figures close to them. There is no lead figure that oversees or influences all the other dancers, and there is no center or order enforced on the crowd. External events can cause disorder, but in time, peace will gradually be restored.


When a person enters the installation and a figure senses the viewer, that figure sometimes responds to the person and stops playing music. After a short period of time, the figure will start playing music and dance again, but this disturbance will have disrupted the harmony. If, however, the viewer stays still or goes away, the dancers will begin to form back into one harmonious group and the feeling of peace will return.


The figures in the space will sometimes leave and walk outside. When they return the will start playing their instruments and dancing once again. 


In Japan, there is an ancient dance festival called Awa Odori. Groups of individual dancers play music and proceed around the town arbitrarily. Groups play their own music as they like and dance as they like. Interestingly, for some reason, the music forms into a peaceful order across the whole town. Dancers who randomly meet other groups of dancers gradually and subconsciously match the tempo of their music with that of the other group. This is not due to any set of rules; it just feels right and happens without conscious choice. It seems that when people are set free from their inhibitions, an extraordinary peaceful feeling prevails despite the lack of any order to the dances. Perhaps this is how people of ancient times maintained a feeling of peacefulness.


Through the Internet, people are arbitrarily connected with people they like. As a result, people throughout the world have become increasingly connected, and these connections have become more important. What we experience in these unordered connections is similar to the dance festival, perhaps it will provide a new methodology, to find peace.


The anonymous figures in the work represent no one but express someone.

The work is rendered in real time by a computer program, it is neither a prerecorded animation nor imagery on loop.The work as a whole is in constant change; previous states will never be repeated and can never be seen again.