NEWS

Featured on CLAPWAY, Mar 28, 2015

Unforgettable Video Of The Floating Flower Garden

If you were to travel to Tokyo’s National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation, you would have the privilege of seeing a very unique garden display. This garden itself is literally hanging from the ceiling and through the wonder of technology, it is lowered and raised so that it seems to float and surround you with its enchanting beauty.The flowers used in this hanging garden are orchids. The reason for this is that orchids have a unique root structure. They are able to absorb water and nutrients without having to be in soil through what’s known as aerial roots. All that is needed is for them to be watered and cared for normally as they absorb all nutrients from the air itself. When found in its native habitat, this particular type of orchid will usually attach itself to trees to help provide stability as it is growing. As the plants are all thriving and growing well under the conditions of the hanging garden, it could be said that this project has most definitely been a success.The idea for this amazing garden came from a group of artists from teamLab. They dubbed the project the “Floating Flower Garden: Flowers and I are of the same root, the Garden and I are one,” and used this to help show the modern entwinement of art with computers and technology. The hanging garden operates through a fully computer-controlled system, which automatically brings the flowers up and down as people walk through it. There are over 2,200 flowers and plants that make up the garden.The scent and visual of this fantastical hanging garden is one to be truly experienced and relished in person. There is still time for visitors to take advantage of this current exhibit as it will only be available through May 1st of this year. For the rest of us, who will not be able to travel and be there in person, the visual alone is enough to give us a sense of relaxation, harmony and wonder. For the fortunate people who will have the privilege of visiting this phenomenal garden in person, the wonderful smells actually change throughout the day based on the different stages of pollination of the flowers.Orchids as a flower group actually have so many different species that it’s increasingly difficult to keep track of them all, with over 22,000 flowers being accepted into their ranks. The particular type of orchid that is being used for this exhibit is known as the Phalaenopsis Orchid. These particular orchids are one of the few that has the capability of aerial roots. They are also quite common and many people use them as houseplants. While they do not require soil, they can still be placed in a flowerpot and enjoyed from your windowsill.

EXHIBITION

teamLab Dance! Art Exhibition and Learn and Play! teamLab Future Park

Featured on GIZMODO, Mar 27, 2015

A Hanging Garden That Floats Through Space to Meet Your Nose

Gardens are beautiful and all but they’re almost always inconveniently located on the ground. Instead of stooping to smell the roses, this garden comes to you: A suspended, living arrangement of 2,300 flowers which rises and fall around viewers as they move through the space.Floating Flower Garden: Flowers and I are of the same root, the Garden and I are one is a project by Japanese artists at teamLab, where a computer-controlled system shifts the 2,300 plants up and down depending on the presence of a person walking below. Imagine the flowers parting like a curtain and forming a bubble around each person. The technology is similar to Random International’s Rain Room, which keeps viewers dry they walk through a simulated downpour.The plants are orchids, which are able to take in water and nutrients through their airborne roots (technically rhizomes) and don’t necessarily need soil. So the garden is actually growing, even as it’s installed upside-down.In addition to the visual experience, the smell must be absolutely amazing: According to the artists, the scent of each flower is intensified when it’s pollinated by its corresponding partner insects, and the room’s fragrance changes throughout the day.Floating Flower Garden: Flowers and I are of the same root, the Garden and I are one is installed at Tokyo’s National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation in Tokyo through May 10. [teamLab via Laughing Squid]

EXHIBITION

teamLab Dance! Art Exhibition and Learn and Play! teamLab Future Park

Featured on designboom, 2015/03/27

teamlab projects universe of water particles on the grand palais

for the art paris art fair 2015, teamlab have transformed paris’ historic grand palais into an immersive, ever-evolving waterfall. the projection-mapped simulation has been calculated by tracking the movement of water falling on a 3D model of the structure in a virtual computer environment. ‘universe of water particles on the grand palais’ is expressed as continuum of hundreds of thousand of droplets that flow in accordance with how the computer calculates the interaction of the particles.(Excerpt from text)

EXHIBITION

Art Paris Art Fair 2015

Featured on beautiful lands, Mar 26, 2015

Floating Flower Garden

teamLab in Japan creates a floating flower garden with an infinite number of floating living flowers that fill up the entire garden space. Over 2,300 floating flowers bloom in the space. These flowers are alive and growing with each passing day. When a viewer gets close to this flower-filled space, the flowers close to the viewer rise upwards all at once, creating a hemispherical space with the viewer at its center. In other words, although the whole space is filled with flowers, a hemispherical space is constantly being created with the viewer at its center and the viewer is free to move around wherever they want. If many viewers get close to one another, the dome spaces link up to form one single space. In this interactive floating flower garden viewers are immersed in flowers, and become completely one with the garden itself. For more information about this project, please visit the website of teamLab.

EXHIBITION

teamLab Dance! Art Exhibition and Learn and Play! teamLab Future Park

Featured on beautiful lands, Mar 26, 2015

Installations and Designs of teamLab

teamLab is a Japanese Ultra-technologists group made up of specialists in the information society such as; Programmers (User Interface Engineers, Database Engineers, Network Engineers, Hardware engineers, Computer Vision Engineers, Software Architects), Mathematicians, Architects, CG Animators, Web Designers, Graphic Designers, Artists, Editors and more. We create works through “experimentation and innovation” making the borders between Art, Science, and Technology, more Ambiguous.teamLab has invented many innovative installations and designs, including Floating Flower Garden. Here are some of them.To see all the projects of teamLab, please visit its website.Espace teamLab -World Unleashed and then Connecting (Maison & Objet Paris 20th Anniversary, Jan. 23 – 27, 2015):

WORK

Flowers and People, Cannot be Controlled but Live Together, for Eternity – Tokyo

Featured on El Comercio, Mar 25, 2015

Acércate más a la naturaleza al lado de estas flores colgantes

Para permitir que los ocupados transeúntes de la ciudad se acerquen más a la naturaleza y la disfruten, el equipo de diseño de Teamlab creó una peculiar exhibición en el Museo Nacional Miraikan de Ciencia e Innovación Emergente en Tokio.（本文抜粋）

EXHIBITION

teamLab Dance! Art Exhibition and Learn and Play! teamLab Future Park

Featured on COLOSSAL, Mar 25, 2015

An Immersive Digitally-Controlled Installation of 2,300 Suspended Flowers by Japanese Art Collective teamLab

Currently on display in Tokyo is “Floating Flower Garden,” an immersive, interactive installation of blossoming vegetation. Visitors enter a room filled with floating flowers. But as you approach them the flowers rise into the air, creating an air bubble within the dense forest. Multiple visitors can move through the installation at once as the flowers move away from them and surround them. “In this interactive floating flower garden viewers are immersed in flowers, and become completely one with the garden itself.” Think of it as Rain Room but with flowers.Floating Flower Garden is the latest installation by TeamLab, a Japanese art collective of “ultra-technologists” lead by Toshiyuki Inoko. They’re currently staging a large-scale retrospective of work at Miraikan in Tokyo. The show has been so popular that it got extended for 2 months and this piece was installed as an encore. It’s currently on view, along with the rest of the show, through May 1, 2015.(Excerpt from the text)

WORK

Floating Flower Garden: Flowers and I are of the Same Root, the Garden and I are One

Featured on CityLab, Mar 25, 2015

Tokyo's New 'Floating Flower Garden' Is a Beautiful Thing—Which Is Exactly the Problem

The public loves ethereal immersive installations, even if art critics don’t.Did you enjoy the art installation “Rain Room” a few years back at MoMA PS1, but think that it had too much rain and not enough flowers? Tokyo has you covered.An art collective called teamLab has designed an immersive interactive experience called “Floating Flower Garden” that works exactly like “Rain Room,” but with flowers. Visit Tokyo and you, too, can feel like you’re walking through the magical set of a Björk video.Much as Random International’s “Rain Room” allowed visitors to walk through the rain without getting wet, “Floating Flower Garden” is designed so that viewers can walk through a hanging garden without getting … flowered. Sensors that detect an approaching viewer cause flowers in that viewer’s vicinity to rise. This setup allows for a “hemispherical space with the viewer at its center” that moves with the viewer, according to teamLab’s website.The installation is now on view at Japan’s National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation. Which might be my very favorite museum I’ve never visited. Check out these special exhibitions! I can’t decide between the cutey-pie poos of “Toilet?! Human Waste & Earth’s Future” and the call to action in “Pokémon Lab: You Do It! You Discover!”Installation projects like “Rain Room” and “Floating Flower Garden” look like they’re made from 100 percent pure fun concentrate. But when institutions like the Museum of Modern Art get involved in hosting them, things get ugly. MoMA hosting “Rain Room” struck critics as a cynical ploy to move tickets. After all, “Rain Room” doesn’t present any scholarship or reveal anything about the direction of art or design or technology. It’s just a spectacle. A gimmick.My bet is that “Floating Flower Garden” is cut from the same whimsical cloth—and that it will travel just as widely and do every bit as well as “Rain Room” did.

EXHIBITION

teamLab Dance! Art Exhibition and Learn and Play! teamLab Future Park

Featured on Spoon&Tamago, Mar 24, 2015

An Immersive Interactive Garden of 2300 Floating Flowers Inspired by a Zen Koan

As part of their current large-scale exhibition at Miraikan in Tokyo, TeamLab has created a fully-immersive installation of interactive flowers. 2300 flowers, to be exact, are suspended in a room that responds to the movement of visitors as they enter and walk through the forest of floating flowers. As visitors approach, the flowers float above their head, creating a small dome. It’s like the Rain Room, but with vegetation.“when people of the present day see these blossoms, it is as if they see them in a dream”TeamLab’s exhibition was originally scheduled to close on March 1 but it was extended through May 10, 2015 due to popular demand. The Floating Flower Garden is their newest work – sort of like an encore exhibition – that the designers added to the full lineup.“In this interactive floating flower garden viewers are immersed in flowers, and become completely one with the garden itself,” says TeamLab, describing the installation. According to the designers the piece was inspired by a Zen koan from Nanquan Puyuan (南泉和尚, 748 – 835), the founder of a famous monastery.As legend has it, Nanquan spent 30 years in a mountain retreat without ever leaving. At the governor’s request, Nanquan finally comes down to teach the people on the plain:The governor asked Nanquan the meaning of an early, pre-Chan Buddhist teaching that all things come from the same source and accordingly there can be no difference between right and wrong, which are themselves the same, by virtue of a common origin.Nanquan pointed to a patch of peonies in the garden: “Governor, when people of the present day see these blossoms, it is as if they see them in a dream.”According to the explanation, “Nanquan seems to be pointing out that the unenlightened cannot fully perceive the flower as it really is, cannot experience it directly and purely. Instead it is approached as an object apart from the viewer, the subject. It is not seen as an extension of his or her own reality. The ordinary mind permits this dichotomy of nature, but in the Zen mind, man and flower become one, merged into a seamless fabric of life.”

EXHIBITION

teamLab Dance! Art Exhibition and Learn and Play! teamLab Future Park

Featured on The Creators Project, Mar 24, 2015

A Kinetic Sea of Flowers Blooms in Tokyo

A kinetic flower garden hangs in Tokyo, parting before visitors as sensors detect their movements, and closing behind them as they walk through. Created by the innovative experience designers at teamLab at the Miraikan National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation, where Damon Albarn previously performed an acoustic concert for androids, the suspended sea of 2,300 flowers known as Floating Flower Garden – Flowers and I are of the same root, the Garden and I are one creates a dome of open space to guide museumgoers through its mass of vegetation.（Excerpt from the text）

EXHIBITION

teamLab Dance! Art Exhibition and Learn and Play! teamLab Future Park