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The Way of Birds - Seated Contemplation

teamLab, 2017, Interactive Digital Installation, Endless, Sound: Hideaki Takahashi

The Way of Birds - Seated Contemplation

teamLab, 2017, Interactive Digital Installation, Endless, Sound: Hideaki Takahashi

The birds illuminated by the light move freely through space, and their trails of light draw lines in the space. The birds sense people in the space and try to avoid colliding with them.

The movement of a flock of thousands or tens of thousands of birds is beautiful and mysterious, like a single giant life form. The flock has neither a leader nor mutual consensus, but just moves on the simple basis of, “If my neighbor moves, then I move too.” However, the biological mechanism that causes flocks of hundreds of birds to move at the same time is still enigmatic. It seems there is a universal principle that human beings do not yet understand. While affected by the presence of people in the space, each bird seems to obey some sort of primitive rule as it moves, drawing lines in the space and unintentionally painting the surfaces with complex and beautiful colors.

If you sit in a designated area in the space, the boundary between the walls and floor disappears, the real space dissolves, you become drawn into the installation, the trails of the birds begin to appear drawn in three dimensional space, and the boundaries between the human body and the work begin to break down.

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