TOKYO (Reuters) – A wall of flower petals explodes into a thousand fragments. A large ball jumps in the air, turning from red to blue to purple. Hundreds of butterflies leap around a screen of tiny grains.
This is not a modern day art museum, but the latest creation of a Japanese team collection of engineers, artists and architects, anchored around rounds of seven saunas lit up in scenes of red, green and yellow.
The Tokyo-based digital arts group took over an empty space in the city’s shiny Roppongi area and over the past year built a large tent that contained the sauna rooms and three immersive art centers.
“Art is traditionally displayed in luxury venues such as palaces or museums – we wanted to create a luxurious state of mind for people to experience,” said Takashi Kudo, a member of the lababab team at Saturday ‘s exhibition.
“TikTok teamLab Reconnect” runs March 22nd until the end of August. For $ 44 on weekdays and $ 53 on weekends, visitors can get in and out of the hot rooms and cold showers, and walking inside the artworks is just fun. swimming switches.
The coronavirus means that seats in the largest saunas have been cut from 24 to 12 and ventilation has been modified to meet government standards for air circulation.
Kudo stood under dozens of large Italian glass lamps. The lamps gradually changed colors from burnt orange to magenta, illuminating dark corridors separating the rooms.
The team said they wanted to influence all senses, including touch, sound and smell. Aromas like green tea roasted through one of the saunas, and white birch in another.
“No one goes to an art museum this way because art is art and a sauna is a sauna,” Kudo said, pointing to his swimming trunks. “What we wanted to try was to combine and offer a very different experience – and a very different experience of this art.”
Reporting by Antoni Slodkowski, Irene Wang and Kim Kyung-Hoon. Edited by Gerry Doyle