TOKYO (REUTERS) – A wall of flower petals bursts right into a thousand fragments. An enormous ball levitates within the air, turning from purple to blue to purple. A whole bunch of butterflies dart round a display of tiny water particles.
This isn’t a contemporary artwork museum, however the newest creation of Japan’s teamLab collective of engineers, artists and designers, anchored round a maze of seven saunas lit up in hues of purple, inexperienced and yellow.
The Tokyo-based digital artwork group took over an empty lot within the metropolis’s glitzy Roppongi district and over the past yr erected a huge tent housing the sauna rooms and three immersive artwork installations.
“Artwork is historically exhibited in luxurious locations like palaces or museums – we wished to create an expensive way of thinking for individuals to expertise it,” mentioned Takashi Kudo, a teamLab lab member at an illustration on Saturday (March 13).
“TikTok teamLab Reconnect” runs March 22 till the tip of August. For US$44 (S$59) on weekdays and US$53 on weekends, guests can dip out and in of the new rooms and chilly showers, and stroll contained in the artworks sporting solely swimming fits.
The coronavirus means seating within the greatest saunas was minimize from 24 to 12 and air flow was adjusted to satisfy authorities requirements for air circulation. Mr Kudo stood underneath dozens of huge, hand-blown glass lamps from Italy. The lamps slowly modified colors from burnt orange to magenta, illuminating darkish corridors separating the rooms.
The crew mentioned it wished to have an effect on all senses, together with contact, sound and scent. Aromas akin to roasted inexperienced tea waft by means of one of many saunas, and white birch in one other. “No person goes to an artwork museum on this trend as a result of artwork is artwork and sauna is sauna,” mentioned Kudo, pointing to his swimming trunks.
“What we wished to attempt is to mix and supply a really totally different expertise – and a really totally different expertise of this artwork.”