Bubble Universe: Physical Light, Bubbles of Light, Wobbling Light, and Environmental Light
teamLab, 2023 (work in progress), Interactive Installation, LED, Endless, Sound: Hideaki Takahashi
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Bubble Universe: Physical Light, Bubbles of Light, Wobbling Light, and Environmental Light
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 in the space, 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.
This artwork, in which spheres are seemingly scattered in a random manner, is composed of resonating light that changes based on the relationship between the people in the artwork space. It is a work that expresses 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 distribution in height, direction of the sphere, and the smoothness of the three-dimensional trajectory create a unicursal line with the same starting and ending point.
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 arrangement of the spheres may appear random, but it is to express the beauty of the continuity of light, created by people interacting with the lamps from any position.