teamLab Bordeless (Mori Building Digital Art Museum)
An invitation to dream awake in Tokyo
MORI Building DIGITAL ART MUSEUM is an interactive modern art gallery created by teamLab and located on Odaiba Island. Inaugurated on June 21, 2018, this museum became in a few months one of the major touristic spots of Tokyo Bay area. Visitors are immersed into a digital wonderland and discover with awe the artworks set in a vast 10,000 m² space.
Borderless in Odaiba closed on 2022, August 31. The venue has been relocated in Tokyo's center with a reopening announced on 2024, February 9 in the heart of the new Mori Building complex of Azabudai Hills.
TeamLab Planets remains open until the end of 2027.
At the origin of these digital masterpieces is teamLab, an art collective gathering several hundred members from various artistic and scientific backgrounds. teamLab organized several exhibitions throughout the world since 2011, especially in France in Paris La Villette (May-September 2018), and opened teamLab Borderless, a permanent museum, on Odaiba, one of Tokyo’s island, in June 2018.
As soon as 2019, Borderless entered the Guinness World Records as the most visited museum (single-art group) in the world with 2,2 million visitors, ahead of Van Gogh Museum in The Netherlands and Picasso Museum in Spain.
A beautiful sensorial experience
This exhibition succeeds in bringing art and new technologies together thanks to digital images and interactive, expansive "paintings." More than 500 computers and 470 floodlights create several universes where younger ones as well as adults travel between dream and reality. The artworks, defined as sceneries resulting from the interaction between mankind and nature, may sometimes remind of traditional Japanese landscapes. They are nonetheless astonishingly impressive and immersive, with surreal, grandiose and breathtaking installations.
We have in mind, for example, an installation recalling a large field of flowers: In a sloping room, a smart arrangement of lights and patterns, through mirrors and projectors, seems to give life to fabric flowers. Another space, the Forest of Resonating Lamps, is a dive into a fantasy Asia as imagined by the West, with thousands of lighted lanterns 🏮 floating on a vast pond. The interactivity helps visitors embrace the dream-like feeling of being actors of the artwork instead of being simple outsiders strolling in the usual art museum. There is no limit to the visit duration, so one can explore and try to find all the rooms, some of which being carefully hidden in the darkness of the path.
An interactive museum for children and adults
The whole family can enjoy the digital art museum, and several places are dedicated to children, with a secure and thick flooring for toddlers. Balls, foam objects, and higher projectors allow them to interact with digital creations appearing and disappearing when elements of the room are moved around. For older children, an animated climbing space also deserves to be experienced. teamLab Borderless’s received more than 2,5 million visitors during the first year of activity and its success is maintained by the variety and originality of its sceneries. We strongly recommend booking your ticket beforehand online or in a konbini like Lawson or 7-Eleven. It is better to do so about two weeks in advance and avoiding weekends. However, even crowded, the museum is still enjoyable as the artworks are designed to benefit from the frequentation, using visitors’ shades as another development for the installations. On another note, we recommend taking a rest in the unique En Tea House.
Even though it requires to spend a little bit more time on Odaiba island, the visit to teamLab Borderless is worth the trip. Easily accessible by train 🚅 or taxi, it is also a good opportunity to have a pleasant walk on the seafront and admire Tokyo’s skyscrapers background.