This makes me feel Delighted Empowered Inspired Intrigued at an Individual but Shared scale
Megalights in the Bath House
An installation experience which explored how nature and industry intersect in time and space
teamLab’s Megalights in the Bath House took place on the Japanese island of Kyushu as part of the A Forest Where Gods Live exhibition. Giant towers of light responded to viewers when they entered the space, providing an ever-shifting landscape of natural beauty in a bath house which was recently constructed, and yet already has been abandoned.
The work explored intersections of time and space through the use images, rendered in real time using algorithms that responded to the viewer’s physical presence in the space. Stillness lead to an abundance of flowers while moving away caused the flowers to whither. The work encouraged visitors to stay and be immersed in the imagery before them. After all, each image only appeared in its current form once.
Visitors were surprised and delighted to find kinetic, naturally informed beauty in an abandoned man-made space. The experience offered the opportunity for transformation via altered perspective, as well. It explored man’s impact upon the natural world, technology’s ability both to create beaty and to call out its destruction, and the viewer’s personal experience with nature in this space that was both in and out of time.
Contributor notes
What is surprising, refreshing, most interesting?
The use of technology to restore nature to a ruined architectural space.
Key Insights? What can we learn from this?
This work presented viewers with an opportunity to explore elements which should be completely at odds with each other within a shared time and space. Nature and industry, creation and destruction, and presence and absence were all juxtaposed at once to create a unique individual experience that became shared through the act of being simultaneously present in the space.