Best Time to Go to Mori Digital Art Museum

Tokyo's newest, hottest museum is defended entirely to digital art, and it's the outset of its kind. Make the most of your visit with our guide to the teamLab Museum.

Standing in forepart of a wall of digital flowers. - image © Florentyna Leow

teamLab Museum Overview

If you've kept pace with the contemporary art scene, yous might have heard of digital fine art collective teamLab. These cocky-styled 'ultra-technologists' aren't just visual artists. This interdisciplinary crew includes architects, engineers, programmers, CG animators, mathematicians, musicians, and more, which enables them to collaborate and create complex, highly interactive and engaging digital installations.

The museum is just afterward the Ferris Bicycle at Palette Town in Odaiba. - image © Florentyna Leow

With hugely successful popular-up exhibitions in major cities like Shanghai, Seoul, and Tokyo under their belt, it was simply a thing of fourth dimension earlier teamLab would take their own permanent space to play with. And at present, nosotros take their flagship space, which opened to the public on 21 June - the MORI Building DIGITAL ART MUSEUM: teamLab Borderless (henceforth 'teamLab Museum').

Graffiti Nature - Loftier Mountains and Deep Valleys is ane of the works in the Athletics Forest, detailed below. - image © Florentyna Leow

The museum is divided into five distinct zones:

• Borderless Earth, where the boundaries between fine art and visitor, person and installation, blur. Digital installation artworks are constantly in flux, rendered in real time, changing and transforming in response to people.
• Athletics Forest, a space encouraging yous to explore your surroundings with your body, promoting creativity and spatial awareness. It'due south also the virtually child-friendly zone, with plenty of works and installations that involve jumping, sliding, bouncing, climbing, and generally expending all that actress energy.
• Time to come Park, an experimental field for collaborative creation - basically, y'all have an active manus in making the art happen.
• Wood of Lamps, an infinity room filled with motility-sensitive lamps.
• EN Tea House, where, in what seems similar an Alice in Wonderland-esque touch of whimsy, you'll watch flowers blooming in your teacup.

Flowers bloom and wither abroad on walls in existent time. - image © Florentyna Leow

Collaborate With The Fine art

Virtually all the artworks here are figurer-generated in existent time. That'due south a huge daily electricity bill, which no dubiety accounts for the ticket prices. Many of the installations respond to viewer interaction and touch on, and in virtually cases, that interaction is the whole point.

Little here is tangible. Many of the installations are a chip like traveling operation pieces. Some might not accept fixed locations, and in that location's no telling where they'll get. You can't 'consume' everything with a single glance (as can exist the instance with tangible art), which in a mode forces yous to slow downward and watch the action unfold. You won't meet detailed explanations of the individual artworks at the museum - you'll notice them on the official website.

An essential but barely-mentioned part of teamLab Museum is the music. Information technology'south a mixed pocketbook, but more often than not feels and sounds similar 'the future' with an added dose of psychotropics and samples of Japanese folk music motifs. Without the music, the smoke and mirrors just wouldn't work.

Taking photographs in Wander through the Crystal Globe, one of the infinity room artworks detailed below. - image © Florentyna Leow

Instagram Friendly

All of this makes a very Instagram-friendly experience. Many people had smartphones in forepart of their faces while walking in the museum. Perhaps documenting this is the whole point - the digital art experience every bit seen through the second layer of a telephone screen. (Or, as Orwell would have called it, a 'telescreen.')

Whether teamLab succeeds in realizing their intentions and goals for a 'borderless globe' is a topic that merits some rumination (and a slew of critical essays). In any example, the teamLab Museum is worth visiting as a fun afternoon with the family, an escape from mundane world, or every bit an exercise in pondering the future of digital art and technology.

Many museum goers on the artwork Universe of Water Particles on a Rock where People Assemble. - epitome © Florentyna Leow

teamLab Museum Tips: Things to Remember Earlier Going

• Buy tickets in advance
  This is the first museum of its kind, with a express number of slots available per solar day, and tickets are existence sold out weeks in advance. Don't count on beingness able to purchase tickets on the 24-hour interval - buy them from the official ticketing website.
• Become after 3pm
  It's a relatively new museum, and now, it's most crowded at opening hours. Just whether information technology'due south because of Odaiba'south location (further out from central Tokyo), people starting to recollect most dinner plans in the urban center by around teatime, or families who need to start heading dwelling with their kids, the museum tends to be much less crowded later on 3pm. (Listen you, this could change in future.)
  I'd wager that there'll be far fewer museum goers during dinner hours.
• Give yourself fourth dimension to explore
  With over 50 artworks to see, there's much to experience at the teamLab Museum. You'll want at to the lowest degree 3-4 hours to wander effectually taking photos, comfortably immerse yourself in the artworks, and queue up for some of the more pop spaces. Information technology'southward especially worth returning to spaces y'all've visited before - similar Infinite Transparency, detailed further below - as new artworks may have entered them in the interim.
  Depending on how much time you have, you might not be able to see every single artwork. But, to try doing then would be to miss the point of the museum anyhow - and information technology means that you take an excuse for a render visit.

A slide where fireworks and watermelons explore when you achieve the bottom in the Athletics Forest zone. - image © Florentyna Leow

Wearing apparel appropriately

• Wear trousers.
  While there's no real clothes code, some of the exhibition rooms, like the Crystal World or Woods of Resonating Lamps, have mirrored floors. A few wrap-around skirts are bachelor exterior the spaces, we recommend trousers for maximum comfort.
• Wear apartment, comfy shoes.
  Museum goers wearing loftier heels, clogs, or other 'unsteady footwear' won't exist allowed to enter the Athletic Forest for safety reasons. Besides the uneven footing, you might exist climbing, jumping, or sliding in these spaces. While you lot can hire sneakers on the day, shoe sizes and quantities are limited, and then save yourself the trouble and come in your most comfortable shoes.
• Wear light-colored wearable.
  This is a proffer that simply applies if you lot desire Instagram-friendly photos of yourself or your friends. Colours and holograms show up way better on lighter clothing. If you lot're wearing black, y'all'll fade into the shadows.

Travel low-cal

• With the jumping and climbing you might exist doing, this is not a place yous want to exist schlepping backpacks in. (Unless y'all have kids - in which example, bring whatsoever yous need to besides your strollers.) Stash your stuff in i of the lockers at the front, and just bring your phone or a small camera.
• Yous'll also want some cash on you - around JPY500 - for a cup of tea at EN Tea House (detailed below), and maybe a piffling more than for vending machine drinks. If y'all want a second cup of tea at the teahouse, it'll be JPY200. This is on the Japanese carte du jour, not the English language ane yet - but ask for it anyway.

Touch everything

• The fundamental dominion at almost all museums, peculiarly those in rule-heavy Japan, is TOUCH NOTHING. Just at this museum, you're encouraged to interact and play with the digital artworks - touching some butterflies may crusade them to scatter, while tapping the samurai on the shoulder will brand them plow around, or autumn comatose.
• It's not a complete free-for-all. Even with the 'borderless' concept, this museum isn't immune to having its own set of rules and regulations, every bit you lot'll see on their website and at the venue. Yet, it's a refreshing change from near straitjacketed museum spaces, and a take a chance for everyone to allow their pilus downwards and their inner child out.

Participants drawing their own animals that become part of the digital artworks in the Hereafter Park zone. - epitome © Florentyna Leow

Museum Highlights

• Information technology'southward near impossible to encounter everything the teamLab Museum has to offer in a unmarried visit. In that location are effectually 40-50 artworks, which is a lot. (You can observe a consummate listing with explanations on the official website.)
• Some of the works move from room to room, and aren't e'er in the same place. You won't know when they'll announced in a room. Many of the artworks are rendered in existent fourth dimension past figurer programs, and they're constantly changing - and then you'll never run into the aforementioned version of the artwork twice. Some are so popular they require queuing to come across or experience, which can take upwardly to l minutes.
• It'due south non fun to visit teamLab Museum with the limited aim of ticking every single piece off the listing, and it's why the museum merits multiple visits.
• Instead, I've put together a listing of highlights during a visit to the museum. It's far from exhaustive, but retrieve of information technology as a taster before the real thing. Ultimately, it's no substitute for an bodily feel.

Changing colours in the space Wander through the Crystal Globe. - image © Florentyna Leow

Wander through the Crystal Earth

This infinity room filled with strands of shimmering LED lights was a hit in 2016 when information technology made its debut at eastward-commerce corporation DMM.com's edifice in Roppongi. Now, you lot can take ethereal selfies any fourth dimension you visit the teamLab Museum. Plus, yous tin download the museum app that lets you control the color scheme in this room - just scan the QR code displayed at the museum entrance. There'south free unsecured WiFi throughout the museum, besides.

Musicians in a parade collide with fish equally they enter this infinite. - image © Florentyna Leow

Cave Universe

You'll know you lot've found the Cave Universe when you encounter a infinite with slightly curved walls, starting from the floor up. This space tin give you mild vertigo - the artworks that pass through move across the floor you're standing on and all around, equally though y'all're suspended in a cave-shaped universe. What an appropriate name.

Several artworks pass through this space, like Walk, Walk, Walk: Complimentary Infinity and The Manner of the Sea, Transcending Space - Colors of Life. The former sees Edo-period figures traipsing through a starry night sky, traditional folk musical motifs layered on top of a xylophone-similar countermelody. The latter sees schools of glowing fish zipping and spinning through the galaxy, with plenty of emotive, soaring, strings-heavy orchestral music to go with it. Both straddle the border between sheer inventiveness and shrooms-induced hallucinations.

The staff will point out the best identify to savor the light shows spinning beyond the walls. Information technology'due south less manifestly photogenic than some of the other works, but it was one of my favourite spaces in the museum.

A animal fabricated of flowers stalking along the wall. - image © Florentyna Leow

Corridor Walls

Go on your eyes on the walls while you're exploring, peculiarly if they wait like ordinary corridors. These are where many of the artworks are 'in transit' from space to space. You lot might see parades of rabbits conveying frogs, rivers of lotuses or scarlet blossoms drifting through, animals fabricated from gilt flowers that besprinkle petals in their wake when touched.

Sheets of glass hang from the ceiling in this room. - image © Florentyna Leow

Infinite Transparency

A room filled with large sheets of glass suspended in rows. A few artworks originate in this space and drift outwards into the corridors. One was Peace can exist Realized Fifty-fifty without Order, with each sail of glass housing a single dancer or musician. Sometimes they'd end or react if someone walked by. As a friend noted, it recalled hundreds of trapped spirits.

At other times, you might run across blossom animals stalking across the drinking glass panes, or a sea of giant, luminous, blooming pink lotuses.

A thousand lamps suspended in a mirrored room. - image © Florentyna Leow

Forest of Resonating Lamps

Quite possibly the most photogenic space in the museum, this mirrored room is filled with m motility-sensitive lanterns suspended at varying heights and spaces throughout, each one glowing gently, shifting from blues to pinks, oranges and greens.

While information technology tin no doubtfulness exist delightfully dreamlike when given plenty time to bask the experience, this is besides one of the most anticlimactic artworks - no cheers to the 45-infinitesimal queue to enter this infinite for just under two minutes. Once you become in, pretty much all anyone is doing is frantically snapping photos. As pretty equally this room is, I enjoyed watching the animals and samurai walk on corridor walls far more. It is, however, one of the nigh Insta-friendly spaces in the museum.

Continuously crashing waves on a wall. - epitome © Florentyna Leow

Black Waves

At some betoken, you'll stumble across a circular room whose walls are filled with ocean waves swelling and crashing continuously. Lie downward on one of the ultra-comfortable edible bean bags and picket them ebb and menstruum. Neat for a little meditation or but losing yourself in the hypnotic waves.

In a 'paddy field' with digitally-rendered maple leaves moving across. - image © Florentyna Leow

Retentivity of Topography

Near the Black Waves infinite is this large room, filled with round disks suspended on bendy stems. Equally you walk through the room, y'all emerge above to gaze on a paddy field of sorts, where you'll see projections of maple leaves, fireflies, insects, flowers, and more, depicting the changing seasons. Occasionally, schools of fish might swim in from the outside. The music here is rather reminiscent of Ryuichi Sakamoto's oeuvre.

Inside the Weightless Forest of Resonating Life. - paradigm © Florentyna Leow

Weightless Wood of Resonating Life

Who doesn't like huge bouncy balloons? These are fun to bop and gently push and bounciness around. The only jarring note here is the staff constantly yelling at you (and the kids) non to kick, throw, or toss the balloons - which is reasonable, but less fun for the museum experience.

Bouncing on a trampoline to create planets. - prototype © Florentyna Leow

Multi Jumping Universe

Kids and adults alike dear this one, though y'all're almost certain to run across more kids at this one. Jumps in one spot on the trampoline to create new planets or bounciness across, leaving a trail of stars in your wake.

Moving the tea bowl scatters petals on the table. - image © Florentyna Leow

EN Tea House

Save this tea house for the terminate of your visit, when y'all've fatigued yourself out with all the exploring. Located simply earlier the entrance to the Athletic Forest on the 2nd floor, you'll pay JPY500 to be presented with a wide bowl of tea. (Try the yuzu.) Watch digital flowers bloom inside your cup. Motility the cup to besprinkle the petals onto the table. Take a sip, repeat. The flowers will flower as long equally you accept tea in your cup - infinitely, as the museum says.

The museum is clearly signposted from both the nearest stations. - prototype © Florentyna Leow

How to become to teamLab Museum:

Whether you're arriving at Tokyo Teleport Station on the JR Rinkai Line or at Aomi Station on the Yurikamome Line, directions to teamLab Museum are very clearly signposted in English. When you lot exit the ticket barriers, go on post-obit the signs and you'll finish upwards at the museum.

English name:
MORI Building DIGITAL Art MUSEUM: teamLab Borderless

Japanese name:
North/A

English accost:
138 Odaiba Palette Town, Aomi, Edogawa-ku, Tokyo-to

Japanese address:
東京都 江東区 青海 138 お台場パレットタウン

Opening hours:
Aug 1 - Sep 2 Mon–Dominicus, Holiday Eve & Holiday ten:00am - 10:00pm

Regular hours:
Mon–Thu 11:00am – 7:00pm
Fri & Holiday Eve eleven:00am – 9:00pm
Saturday ten:00am – 9:00pm
Sun & Holiday 10:00am – seven:00pm

Admission:
JPY3200 (Adults), JPY1000 (Children up to middle schoolhouse historic period)

Nearest Transport:
Train: 5-infinitesimal walk from Aomi Station on the Yurikamome Line or vii-minute walk from Tokyo Teleport Station on the JR Rinkai Line

Nearest Hotels:
:: Bank check availability and pricing for hotels near teamLab Museum on Booking.com or Agoda.com.

Telephone:
+81-3-6406-3949 (10:00am - vi:00pm)

Website:
borderless.teamLab.art

Tokyo District Map

Click a Tokyo District for detailed info on attractions, places to eat and accommodation

• Asakusa
• Ueno
• Imperial Palace Area
• Tokyo Station
• Shimbashi Shiodome Hamamatsucho Shinagawa
• Ginza
• Tsukiji
• Akihabara Kanda
• Odaiba
• Roppongi Akasaka
• Harajuku Aoyama
• Shinjuku
• Ebisu Daikanyama Meguro
• Shibuya

dalgleishmandearer.blogspot.com

Source: https://trulytokyo.com/mori-building-digital-art-museum-teamlab-borderless/

Share :