Jenna Kim(Jeeyoon Kim)- Looking Outwards- 1

“for thousands of years, people have looked for meaning in the relationship between humans and nature. both exist in an eternal cycle of life and death, ever-evolving with the trials and tribulations of time. throughout history, humanity has caused immense damage to nature, yet has similarly been devastated by it, too. the connection is complex, multi-faceted and of great magnitude to teamlab’s core thinking.” https://www.designboom.com/art/teamlab-mifuneyama-where-gods-live-shiseido-saga-japan-07-24-2017/

(Drawing on the water surface created by the dance of koi and boats: one of the 14 installations by teamLab)

“A forest where gods live”, by teamLab, is a project in which it transformed a 500,000 square meter garden located in Japan into a grandiose digital art exhibition. It shows 14 artworks, and these designers soften the sharp boundary between nature and manmade. These digital interventions are part of an open air museum where people can interact with nature and also look at the beautiful design. One part of this project that I really liked was the visitor interaction; visitors can color the pictures of the animals or flowers, scan these, and put these colored pictures in the actual installation. This project really inspired me to be interested in media design because I was mesmerized by this design that represented nature in a digital intervention without harming the nature; maybe, I want to be part of this team to continue a project similar to this in the future. The thought that continuity of life and death existing in the nature like the forest, rocks, and animals influenced teamLab to apply digital art to the forest park. teamLab did several similar projects related to nature before “A forest where gods live”. This is a team that collects different professionals in the digital art world. Artists, engineers, mathematicians, graphic designers, and many more people are brought together to create art that is jaw dropping. For this project, it used “project mapping”, which is alike to video mapping and augmented reality, and light and sound technologies. Project mapping, unlike simple projection of a screen, is a display of 3D objects on interactive displays. I have to say that the project is flawless because it accomplished the goal, to create digital art that is not harmful to nature, successfully through just simple projection of digital art, music, and light on to the nature itself.