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Can I define this through research?

Definition process? -

Do all artists/specialists agree on the definition of immersive art? (see peer reviewed papers - recognised academic - leading artists and theorists).

What do viewers see as immersive art?

Where did immersive art start? The ORIGINS.

Kusama came to international attention in 1960s New York for a wide-ranging creative practice that has encompassed installation, painting, sculpture, fashion design and writing.

Was there a particular way things were done and WHAT ARE THE CHANGES THAT HAVE TAKEN PLACE REGARDING IMMERSIVE ART?

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What are the differences between immersive and installation art?

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What are the differences between immersive and installation art?

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Identify the types of audience for opinions given.

Any statistics?

Gather research on the audience: amount of young people\older people etc.

Preferences for art\immersive art?

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Children's screen time?

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What is the differences between an immersive space Vs. your phone or iPad?

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What is the differences between an immersive space Vs. your phone or iPad?

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'Immersive art is made of lots of different mediums:

Painting

Sculpture

Music

Video

All together they tell a story.

When you are in an immersive space "you are living in it".

Mention of 'Meow Wolf'.

Mention of Projection Mapping.

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15/08/2024

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Who Makes It Go?

Meow Wolf is comprised of over 200 full-time employees and hundreds of other collaborators, creating and supporting art across a variety of media, including architecture, sculpture, painting, photography, video production, cross-reality (AR/VR/MR), music, audio engineering, narrative writing, costuming, performance, and more.

Learn more about our jaw-dropping 10-year journey with our documentary.

Artist Directory
What Does It Do?

Meow Wolf creates immersive and interactive experiences that transport audiences of all ages into fantastic realms of story and exploration. This includes art installations, video and music production, and extended reality content.

Our first permanent installation, the THEA Award-winning House of Eternal Return, launched in March 2016 with support from Game of Thrones creator, George R.R. Martin. Inside, guests discover a multidimensional mystery house with secret passages, portals to magical worlds, and an expansive narrative amidst surreal, maximalist, and mesmerizing art exhibits. Located in Santa Fe, HOER features a children's learning center, a cafe and bar, and a highly-rated music venue.

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Who Makes It Go? Meow Wolf is comprised of over 200 full-time employees and hundreds of other collaborators, creating and supporting art across a variety of media, including architecture, sculpture, painting, photography, video production, cross-reality (AR/VR/MR), music, audio engineering, narrative writing, costuming, performance, and more. Learn more about our jaw-dropping 10-year journey with our documentary.

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15/08/2024

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American arts and entertainment company that creates large-scale interactive and immersive art installations.

They started in 2008.

'Distinctive style of immersive, maximalist environments that encourage audience-driven experiences'

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Van Gogh Experience (14/04/2022)

'Beyond the Streets' Saatchi Gallery, Paul Insect (18/02/2023)

'Dopamine Land' (08/03/2023)

David Hockney: 'Bigger & Closer (not smaller and further away)' (06/08/2023)

'Frameless' (25/02/2024)

'Circles, Blobs, Ripples' Zach Liberman (25/02/2024)

When Forms Come Alive (05/04/2024)

'RONG BAO IS ME' (05/04/2024)

‘This & That’ Paul Insect Pop-up installation (11/07/2024)

‘Twist Museum' (19/07/2024)

Bubble Planet

Pulse: Beyond Delight

Paradox Museum

Moco Museum

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This was the first time I entered a space like this.

Intially I have never been interested in Van Gogh's work, after studying at GCSE I never had connected with the artworks before, until I visited this experience.

I fell in love with the art and the atmosphere of the space.

To begin with I was disapointed; I paid around £50 for a V.I.P. package experience so I could get the most out of the experience. On enterance I recieved a VIP Lanyard, made my way around the exhibition which showed history of the artwork and an installation of 'Bedroom in Arles', which to me just seemed like a dated Ikea showroom. In my V.I.P. package I could try the Virtual Reality (V.R.) this was new to me, the Virtual tour began in the 'Bedroom in Arles' and took you down the stairs and along a path to view the other artworks such as 'Starry Night' and 'Wheat Field with Cypresses'. The VR was fun however, every time the headset slightly moved the whole experience would restart, adding on from this a standard ticket was £20 for a student and you were able to pay an extra £5 to try the VR Experience, bringing the total cost to half of what I paid for the "V.I.P." Experience.

The final room is what started my love for immersive art. As seen in this photo above the room was filled with deck chairs in a large space. On all four walls Van Gogh's artwork diffused through the space, with star lights across the ceiling creating a nonchalant atmosphere. I sat in this space for 2 hours, watching the scenes change and people's reaction. Overall, this part of the exhibition really saved it and made it worth while.

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The Saatchi Gallery promoted the Beyond the Streets exhibition showing the neon artworks of Paul Insect which invited me in. When I attended the exhibition was full of lots of different works and brands with stories of the development of Music and the streets of London. Eventually I got to the Paul Insect exhibit, although the event seemed like the neon installation was a huge part of the show, it was not. I entered the space, through a black curtain, it seemed to be a very small, narrow space. I really enjoyed the installation, there were so many elements and object, completely covered in neon paint lit up using UV lights in a dark space. I have been a fan of Paul Insect's work since 2021 and I really enjoyed this however, I do feel the exhibition was poorly advertised by Saatchi Gallery.

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Dopamine Land was different to the immersive experiences I went to before. This was more of an installation which did not consist of any famous artworks. Dopamine Land is a multi-sesnory adventure. When I first walked into the soace there was some multi-coloured archways, which as you walked through made different octives of sounds. One of the first rooms you went into you was greeted with a bag of Dopamine Land Popcorn to sit and eat whilst sat in a room which projected the idea of a popcorn maker. This room used the following senses:

Taste - Popcorn

Smell - of popcorn

Hearing - of the kernels popping

See - the projection of the popcorn filling the 'machine'

Next was the room of 'infinity lights'. In this 'illusion' the room was filled with mirrors with the lights dangeling from the ceiling, reflecting on the mirrors. This room was was small however thew mirrored illusion made it feel spacious. Observing people in the space, specifically smaller children, I found they were running into the mirrors and didn't know where the walls ended.

There was many activities to get involved in such as playing with light and shadows, drawing and writing on walls and adding to a space, engaging in digital art installations and interactive elements.

The experiences ended at the Bubble Bar where you could buy alcholic or non alcholic Bubble Boba Tea.

I attended this experience with friends and family aged 16-45 and I would highly recommend this space to people of all ages, it felt enjoyable for all.

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David Hockney: Bigger & Closer (not smaller and further away)

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David Hockney: Bigger & Closer (not smaller and further away)

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I visited an immersive experience in London, ‘Frameless’. It consisted of 4 rooms showing 29 different artworks from artists such as Cezanne, Kandinsky, Monet, Dalí, Klimt, Van Gogh and Rembrandt and many more.

The 4 rooms:

Beyond Reality - Surreal, dreamlike, the artworks in this room, go beyond the boundaries of reality.

Colour in Motion - had advanced motion tracking technology. As you walked across the space a pathway cleared, aswell as when you stood against the wall the art would start spreading upwards.

The World Around Us -  360-degree cityscapes and seascapes, crashing oceans to busy cities to fiery volcanoes.

The Art of Abstraction - Almost like a digital maze. Shapes and forms projected onto netted fabric panels that created an ever-continuous journey of abstraction.

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Lieberman “explores the unexpected effects of geometries crafted with code. Whether bended, blended or extruded, the circle motif can be found in varying degrees within the works on display; sometimes it is a symmetrical shape, other times it is pushed and pulled as biomorphic blobs or dissipated into ripple-like patterns.”

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I Visited London's Interactive Bubble Planet And It Was Even Bigger And Better Than I'd Imagined

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Here is an article about Bubble Planet, an exhibit I'd like to visit. I have picked out my favourite comments to describe the space.

1.  “a voyage through fantastical, pastel landscapes, designed to appeal to all five senses.”

2. “Children and adults alike had faces filled with glee in this zone.”

3. “A really nice touch were the bubble seats, which not only looked in theme, but as they were suspended from the ceiling, they gave the feeling of being weightless too.”

4. “This room evoked the most childlike magic for me, and I absolutely loved it.”
5. “ It’s recommended as an hour-long experience, but frankly, you could stay for double that, and still not want to leave. People of all ages will love this one“

Article written by Tamsin Salfrais

29.11.2023.

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Bubble Planet is London's newest multi-sensory world, occupying a venue near Wembley Stadium. It bills itself as "a voyage through fantastical, pastel landscapes, designed to appeal to all five senses", and honestly, that is pretty darn accurate. The experience has had big success in the US, Milan, and Brussels. Will it be as loved here in the Big Smoke? Read on for my review of Bubble Planet.

Entering Bubble Planet

Now, first and foremost, I must admit, I did not expect Bubble Planet to be as big as it was - it is HUGE. From the moment you step into the grounds, you'll spy one of those much-loved igloos that seem to pop up all over London during the winter season. There was trippy music as I entered the actual experience through the curved archways and into the technicolour world- a nice nod to the spherical theme.

My favourite zones

There are 11 different immersive zones at Bubble Planet, and while I won't review each one, I did have my favourites.

There are two ball pits within the experience: a smaller one with bigger balls, and a humongous one with smaller balls. Both were great, but we spent more time in the second ball pit, laughing away. At the heart of this pit, there was a machine in which you could add the balls to whoosh up a flute and rain back down on you, plus there were inflatables to imitate a person in a bubble bath. This bath is so full, in fact, that one of our group was able to mimic swimming in it. I loved it. Children and adults alike had faces filled with glee in this zone.

In my time at Secret London, I've frequented many an infinity room, and the one at Bubble Planet was my favourite so far. You know the optical illusion has been executed well when you take those first steps in and don't know where to go. Think 'house of mirrors', but ten times more beautiful, with colour-changing 'bubbles'. Top tip, follow the path laid out at your feet, and it'll see you right - promise. The gaming stations were another nice touch: I loved the bubble gum-blowing game, as well as the target-hitting, ball-throwing station. That one was harder than it looked, especially when stepping further back.

The virtual reality experience was wild. Wildly brilliant, that is. In the 10-minute experience, I became a bubble (lol) and it was trippy AF. At one point, I wasn't sure if I was in a lava lamp, or a bottle of champagne! It's actually crazy how your perception is challenged; at some points, I truly felt that drop in my stomach like I was going down a hill, even though I was sitting stationary in Bubble Planet. A really nice touch were the bubble seats, which not only looked in theme, but as they were suspended from the ceiling, they gave the feeling of being weightless too.

Bubble Planet was filled with infographic boards on the walls, detailing famous bubbles, like The Eden Project in the UK, and Palais Bulles in France. There were also quotes about bubbles from famous stars, for example, Pele and Ghandi.

Should you go with friends, or family?

This is one of the rare experiences where I feel that children, adults, or groups mixed with both, will all genuinely have a great time. There were nods to childlike fun, like the aforementioned ball pits, as well as more adult-loved, Instagrammable aspects, like the infinity room, and the photo zones. Much like all the world's hotspots - Bali and Amsterdam to name just two - there was even a sky swing photo op.

The experience concluded with a room full of traditional bubbles, cascading down from a high-up machine. We also got our own bubbles to blow. This room evoked the most childlike magic for me, and I absolutely loved it.

You may think that this last room smells rather sweet. Well, this is due to the wafting smell from the gift shop... That's right: the gift shop enticed with two on-brand popups of Fully Loaded London bubble waffles and Bubbleology bubble tea. I treated myself to both, and I was not disappointed.

To round off this review, I must say Bubble Planet was well worth the trip to Zone 4. It's recommended as an hour-long experience, but frankly, you could stay for double that, and still not want to leave. People of all ages will love this one, so don't miss out on tickets - grab yours here.

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I Visited London's Interactive Bubble Planet And It Was Even Bigger And Better Than I'd Imagined

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I escaped into a world of bubbles, balls, and brilliant fun on my visit to Bubble Planet; read on for my review.

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26/02/2024

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Bubble Planet is London's newest multi-sensory world, occupying a venue near Wembley Stadium. It bills itself as "a voyage through fantastical, pastel landscapes, designed to appeal to all five senses", and honestly, that is pretty darn accurate. The experience has had big success in the US, Milan, and Brussels. Will it be as loved here in the Big Smoke? Read on for my review of Bubble Planet.

Entering Bubble Planet

Now, first and foremost, I must admit, I did not expect Bubble Planet to be as big as it was - it is HUGE. From the moment you step into the grounds, you'll spy one of those much-loved igloos that seem to pop up all over London during the winter season. There was trippy music as I entered the actual experience through the curved archways and into the technicolour world- a nice nod to the spherical theme.

My favourite zones

There are 11 different immersive zones at Bubble Planet, and while I won't review each one, I did have my favourites.

There are two ball pits within the experience: a smaller one with bigger balls, and a humongous one with smaller balls. Both were great, but we spent more time in the second ball pit, laughing away. At the heart of this pit, there was a machine in which you could add the balls to whoosh up a flute and rain back down on you, plus there were inflatables to imitate a person in a bubble bath. This bath is so full, in fact, that one of our group was able to mimic swimming in it. I loved it. Children and adults alike had faces filled with glee in this zone.

In my time at Secret London, I've frequented many an infinity room, and the one at Bubble Planet was my favourite so far. You know the optical illusion has been executed well when you take those first steps in and don't know where to go. Think 'house of mirrors', but ten times more beautiful, with colour-changing 'bubbles'. Top tip, follow the path laid out at your feet, and it'll see you right - promise. The gaming stations were another nice touch: I loved the bubble gum-blowing game, as well as the target-hitting, ball-throwing station. That one was harder than it looked, especially when stepping further back.

The virtual reality experience was wild. Wildly brilliant, that is. In the 10-minute experience, I became a bubble (lol) and it was trippy AF. At one point, I wasn't sure if I was in a lava lamp, or a bottle of champagne! It's actually crazy how your perception is challenged; at some points, I truly felt that drop in my stomach like I was going down a hill, even though I was sitting stationary in Bubble Planet. A really nice touch were the bubble seats, which not only looked in theme, but as they were suspended from the ceiling, they gave the feeling of being weightless too.

Bubble Planet was filled with infographic boards on the walls, detailing famous bubbles, like The Eden Project in the UK, and Palais Bulles in France. There were also quotes about bubbles from famous stars, for example, Pele and Ghandi.

Should you go with friends, or family?

This is one of the rare experiences where I feel that children, adults, or groups mixed with both, will all genuinely have a great time. There were nods to childlike fun, like the aforementioned ball pits, as well as more adult-loved, Instagrammable aspects, like the infinity room, and the photo zones. Much like all the world's hotspots - Bali and Amsterdam to name just two - there was even a sky swing photo op.

The experience concluded with a room full of traditional bubbles, cascading down from a high-up machine. We also got our own bubbles to blow. This room evoked the most childlike magic for me, and I absolutely loved it.

You may think that this last room smells rather sweet. Well, this is due to the wafting smell from the gift shop... That's right: the gift shop enticed with two on-brand popups of Fully Loaded London bubble waffles and Bubbleology bubble tea. I treated myself to both, and I was not disappointed.

To round off this review, I must say Bubble Planet was well worth the trip to Zone 4. It's recommended as an hour-long experience, but frankly, you could stay for double that, and still not want to leave. People of all ages will love this one, so don't miss out on tickets - grab yours here.

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I Visited London's Interactive Bubble Planet And It Was Even Bigger And Better Than I'd Imagined

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I escaped into a world of bubbles, balls, and brilliant fun on my visit to Bubble Planet; read on for my review.

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While immersive art creates sensory-rich experiences, interactive art emphasizes that the participant must interact with the art to fully experience all aspects of the installation. Interactive installations are created using a wide range of mediums.

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Whether it’s a labyrinth of mirrors, a virtual reality simulation, or an interactive sound and light installation, immersive artworks strive to engage the whole person, captivating both the mind and the body. Immersive installations are a celebration of sensory experiences.

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Immersive Installations: Creating Transformative Art Experiences | Art Moments

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In the realm of contemporary art, immersive installations have emerged as a captivating and transformative medium, offering viewers an opportunity to step

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Immersive installations are transforming the way we experience art. By engaging multiple senses and transporting us to new realms, they create lasting impressions and evoke emotions that stay with us long after we leave the physical space.

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Immersive Installations: Creating Transformative Art Experiences | Art Moments

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In the realm of contemporary art, immersive installations have emerged as a captivating and transformative medium, offering viewers an opportunity to step

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The psychology of space: How interiors shape our behaviour

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Discover how the functionality and design of an interior space can have a huge influence on the way we feel and behave. Read more.

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15/08/2024

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The psychology of space: How interiors shape our behaviour

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Discover how the functionality and design of an interior space can have a huge influence on the way we feel and behave. Read more.

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14/08/2024

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Immersive Installations: Creating Transformative Art Experiences | Art Moments

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In the realm of contemporary art, immersive installations have emerged as a captivating and transformative medium, offering viewers an opportunity to step

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I am interested in the psychology of humans in installations and immersive spaces and how it influences behaviours, emotions, and well-being.

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How do they create these spaces? Methods?

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How do they create these spaces? Methods?

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Research IN PROGRESS -

My understanding:

IMMERSIVE ART: A space which is transformed and heightens the audiences 5 senses - mainly using projection.

INSTALLATION ART: Physical objects/ sculptures in a space which triggers/enhances the senses.

IMMERSIVE INSTALLATION: A space which combines both projection and physical objects/sculpture.

Does project mapping come into this?

What is meant by project mapping?

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Unreliable but some good names mentioned.

Yayoi Kusama

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Did cavemen invent immersive art? When they painted bulls and stags on cave walls, and lit them with flickering firelight, were they presaging Yayoi Kusama and teamLab? Some scholars think so, believing that palaeolithic cave art is a direct ancestor of the modern, technological art wonders that have become so popular. Others think that immersive art is a contemporary con, a clever ruse designed to separate punters from their cash with the promise of the perfect selfie.

Con or caveman, it doesn't really matter, because immersive art is absolutely everywhere, especially in London. We've got immersive Van Gogh and Klimt experiences, with classic art projected across the walls of Docklands warehouses; we've got immersive-specific art galleries like Superblue; we've got Kusama 'Infinity Mirror' rooms at Tate. We're drowning in immersion.

The combination of technological wizardry, participatory high jinks, sensory overload and full-body experience has proved to be totally irresistible to London's art-loving public. But it's nothing new. Immersive art has been drawing the crowds in this city for decades.

There's an argument to be made for theatre as the first truly immersive artistic experience in London - with new technology in the late nineteenth century leading to bigger, bolder, more intense production styles - but when it comes to art, things happened a little later. In 1965, Gustav Metzger created 'Liquid Crystal Environment' by placing heat-sensitive liquid into glass slides and rotating them in the heat of a projector, creating swirling, dizzying light environments. Viewers would stand surrounded by undulating multi-coloured forms, a psychedelic maelstrom for the whole body.

In 1966, Metzger's work was used as the stage set for a gig by Cream and The Who at the Roundhouse, so it would have been seen by thousands of people. Just imagine if they'd had Instagram! 'Liquid Crystal Environment' had a huge impact and influence, and has a strong claim to being the first truly and intentionally immersive work of art, in London at least.

This was art built to constantly change and evolve, to never be the same twice, but also to totally overwhelm the viewer's senses. When the work was recreated last year for the Barbican's 'Postwar British Art' exhibition, it was one of the highlights. In an exhibition filled with paintings and sculptures, it felt shockingly modern, like something made last year, not last century. With 'Liquid Crystal Environment' Metzger, as in so much of his work, was way ahead of his time.

Also in 1965, over in New York, Yayoi Kusama was creating her first 'Infinity Mirror Room' at Castellane Gallery. It combined sculpture, light and mirrored walls to create a dizzying environment that has now become one of the hallmarks of immersive art, and one of the most famous artworks in the world today.

While other artists around the world at the time were dabbling with work that the viewer had to physically inhabit - like Bruce Nauman and his brutally oppressive corridor works - few others were going for full-on, full-body immersion like Kusama and Metzger.

Eventually in London in the 1980s, there were works like Rose Finn-McKey's steam installation at the Chisenhale and Richard Wilson's incredible walk-in room of crude oil at Matt's Gallery, which were stunning sensory works of art, but not actually immersive in the way we think of it today. They were quite hard to take selfies in, essentially.

But then, in 2003, Olafur Eliasson filled the Tate Turbine Hall with weather, and everything changed. A huge gleaming sun hung from the ceiling, fog poured down the walls. For one whole winter, London had a permanent sun. People came and had picnics in the Turbine Hall, spent hours basking in the art's glow. A proper, full body, immersive experience.

And it made something click in the UK art scene: artists and curators realised that viewers wanted, needed, more. Maybe it's because we'd all got used to surroundsound at the cinema, or plays that made you a participant, but art now had to do more to compete, and at the same time, artists realised that they could harness the power of immersiveness. But even then, it was hard to anticipate quite how saturated with immersive art London would become.

In 2007, the Hayward Gallery put on a big, ambitious exhibition of work by English sculptor Antony Gormley. It was full of his human-sized steel sculptures, but one work captured the public imagination like no other. 'Blind Light' (also the name of the exhibition) was a box in the middle of the gallery, seemingly filled with an impenetrable wall of whiteness. But it penetrable: you could enter and immediately lose yourself in a dense cloud of light, like being stuck in the thickest fog imaginable.

Ralph Rugoff is the director of the Hayward Gallery, and curated that show: ' While "Blind Light" offered a disorienting immersive experience not dissimilar from earlier fog environments by artists like Ann Veronica Janssens, it was also designed so that spectators outside the box could watch bodies appearing and disappearing in the mist as people approached and then moved away from the glass walls. That twist - whereby the visitor's immersive experience becomes a spectacle to be witnessed by others - seems kind of prescient looking back at it through the lens of our current social-media landscape.'

It was a viral sensation before viral sensations were even really a thing; there were pictures of it absolutely everywhere, and every other major institution took note: if you could get people to post pictures of themselves in your exhibition on social media, you'd be getting the best marketing money could pay for, and it wouldn't cost you a penny.

It was a viral sensation before viral sensations were even really a thing

At a similar time, commissioning body Artangel unveiled Roger Hiorns's 'Seizure'. It was my first experience of a truly immersive art work - not just an installation or being stuck a couple of feet away from some terrifying nude performance artist - and it was genuinely mindblowing. An abandoned council flat in south London had been pumped full of liquid copper sulphate and sealed shut, allowing every surface in the building to become covered in a thick layer of deep blue crystals. It was a whole world, a full-body art experience replete with smells and sounds that totally overpowered the viewer. I'd never seen, or been in, anything like it. It was amazing.

But immersive art really hit the mainstream in London in 2012, when the Barbican Curve Gallery hosted Random International's 'Rain Room'. Apparently, it's not enough for Londoners that it rains constantly outside, they want to get rained on indoors too. But that was the big trick: using clever technology, Random International created a room of drizzle where you would never get wet. All around you, the rain would fall, but never on you. It was a huge, blockbusting hit.

And it was all over social media, just like the Hayward Gallery's 2014 Martin Creed exhibition with its room of white balloons, or Japanese design group teamLab's installation at Pace in 2017, or 180 The Strand's 'Strange Days' exhibition in 2018. This was art built for the social media era, designed to be posted over and over on Instagram and Facebook: a self-perpetuation art-marketing machine.

'It's tempting, in any case, to speculate that the popularity of immersive art grew in parallel with the increasing amount of time we dedicate to "virtual" experience, staring at screens,' says Rugoff. 'But the selfie factor adds another wrinkle to the situation.'

So our physical reality is being forced to compete with our virtual one - our digital lives are making us have higher expectations of our physical lives, and this is art expressing that idea. Regardless of the wrinkles, immersive art is now very, very big business. 180 The Strand now charges up to £20 a ticket, the Tate's well into its second year of sold-out Kusama Mirror Room installations, and the Royal Academy now plays host to Superblue, an immersive-specific - and expensively ticketed - art gallery.

American critic Brian Droitcour describes modern immersive art in a recent edition of 'Art in America': 'The best immersive work, like any good art, draws on historical traditions and contemporary vernaculars, melding different ways of looking and making. The new art is unlike last century's art. That's what makes it exciting.'

And it is exciting; it's overpowering, memorable, often beautiful, and has led to some of the best art of the contemporary age. But when you apply the immersive approach to artists like Klimt and Van Gogh, artists who never intended for their work to be seen in this way, it becomes a lot less about taking exciting, adventurous artistic leaps and instead becomes way more about ticket sales and selfies. That's when you know, for sure, that the immersive art shark has been well and truly jumped.
Find more great art in London right now.

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The eye popping history of immersive art in London

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Did cavemen invent immersive art? When they painted bulls and stags on cave walls, and lit them with flickering firelight, were they presaging Yayoi Kusama and teamLab? Some scholars think so, believing that palaeolithic cave art is a direct ancestor of the modern, technological art wonders that have become so popular.

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Yayoi Kusama at the Hirshhorn Museum. Photograph by Evy Mages 

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Who?

'Yayoi Kusama is a Japanese artist who is sometimes called ‘the princess of polka dots'. Although she makes lots of different types of art – paintings, sculptures, performances and installations. (TATE KIDS)

What is her work?

Yayoi Kusama is known for her extensive use of polka dots and for her infinity installations. Notable works include Obliteration Room (2002–present) and Infinity Mirror Room—Phalli’s Field (1965/2016), the first of many distinct iterations. (BRITANNICA)

Where? is there a particular place she does this work?

Why? What's her reasons for this work?

I’ve always experimented various expressions in art. Among them I especially put my heart and soul into environmental art. My art is not only with paper and a brush but the world I see is endless space. I create environmental art to prove great spirit of inquiry in the diverse human history. It is environmental art that I could devote all my efforts to as a way to seek for truth with all my heart. (YAYOI KUSAMA THE TATE)

Who/What are her influences?

Artwork influenced by memories of childhood abuse, repression and trauma, mental disorder and sexual anxiety.

Rebellious anti-war performance art, which influenced Yoko Ono.

The avant-garde art scene in New York during the 1960s.

Inspired by artists like Andy Warhol.

How? Methodology, how she creates it?

She confronts, deconstructs, and redefines her sense of self, infinity, and self-obliteration.

When did she start doing this work?

She began art from the age of 10.

Born in 1929 in Matsumoto, Japan, Kusama came to international attention in 1960s New York for a wide-ranging creative practice that has encompassed installation, painting, sculpture, fashion design and writing. Since the 1970s she has lived in Tokyo, where she continues to work prolifically and to international acclaim.

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Who is Maggie West?

Maggie West is a Los Angeles-based artist known for her colourful photo and video art installations. Her video work continues to push the boundaries of traditional time-lapse photography.

What is her work based on?

The artist is known for her distinctive use of colour and light, often exploring themes of sexuality, gender, and nature. Her work frequently features fluorescent lighting and vibrant hues, creating surreal and otherworldly environments. West has published several photography books, including "23," which features nude portraits of individuals across the gender spectrum, and "Kiss," a celebration of sexuality and queer love. Her installations and photographs have been exhibited in galleries and public spaces, and she has collaborated with various brands and musicians, bringing her unique aesthetic to a wider audience. West's artistry extends beyond traditional photography, as she also delves into video and mixed media, continually pushing the boundaries of visual expression.

Where? is there a particular place she does this work?

Los Angeles based.

Why? What's her reasons for this work?

My work is about capturing genuine expressions in artificial environments. I use light and colour as a means of communicating a specific tone and feeling. Through my use of intricate lighting and bold colour choices, I strive to create work that is visually compelling and gives the viewer a new perspective on the subject matter.

Who/What are her influences?

How? Methodology, how she creates it?

"I'd like to experiment more with that. I do time lapse animation of flowers moving and other things. It would be cool to combine something like that with my other video work."

When did she start doing this work?

In 2008, I moved from Asheville, NC to Los Angeles to pursue a career in the arts. Since then, I’ve had almost every type of photography job; photo retoucher, club photographer, product photography, etc. It’s only been in the last 5 years that I have been able to solely focus on my artwork full time.

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How do I book a ticket for Yayoi Kusama's Infinity Mirror Rooms?

Tickets are now booking until 28 April 2024, when the exhibition closes.

How much do tickets cost?

Tickets are £10, and free for Members. £5 tickets are available for Tate Collective and children aged 12-18. Under 12s go free but they will need a ticket.

The National Art Pass discount does not apply for this exhibition.

Do Members or Tate Collective have to book a ticket?

Yes, all visitors will have to book a timed ticket to enter the exhibition due to the small scale and intimate experience inside the installations.

What happens if someone returns their ticket?

If people return their tickets because they can no longer visit, their tickets will automatically become bookable again on our website. People are most likely to cancel their tickets on the day, so check the website for returned tickets on the day of your visit.

When does the exhibition finish?

Yayoi Kusama's Infinity Mirror Rooms has been extended until 28 April 2024.

Is there a waiting list for tickets?

We don't have a waiting list, but you can check back on this exhibition page or ask at our ticket desk for returns.

How much time can I spend in each Infinity Mirror Room?

To ensure that as many people as possible can experience the exhibition you will have 2 minutes inside each installation.

Is the exhibition wheelchair accessible?

Yes. Both the Infinity Mirror Rooms have been adapted to enable wheelchair access and provide sufficient turning spaces.

Will there be any opportunities to book for those who are neurodivergent or need quiet hours?

Yes. Relaxed hours will be taking place monthly from October 2023, find more information here.

Can I take a buggy inside the installations?

Yes, you can.

Do children go free?

Under 12s go free, but they will still need a ticket.

What other art is available to visit?

Planning a visit to Tate Modern? Tickets are available for Philip Guston, Capturing the Moment and A World in Common. Browse more in our what's on listings.

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Yayoi Kusama: Infinity Mirror Rooms | Tate Modern

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How do I book a ticket for Yayoi Kusama's Infinity Mirror Rooms? Tickets are now booking until 28 April 2024, when the exhibition closes. How much do tickets cost? Tickets are £10, and free for Members. £5 tickets are available for Tate Collective and children aged 12-18.

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In mid-April, 91-year-old artist Yayoi Kusama had words for the coronavirus. The pandemic had caused numerous disruptions to her world. The psychiatric hospital where she lives in Tokyo was on lockdown, preventing her from going to work at her nearby studio. Her corporation, KUSAMA YAYOI Co., Ltd., was forced to suspend authentication and registration of artworks. But her statement ignored these inconveniences. Citing her role as "Revolutionist of the world by the Art," Kusama rallied humanity to fight, and commanded the virus "to Disappear from this earth." The bold gesture recalled the artist's open letter to Richard Nixon in 1968, where she proposed an end to the U.S. war in Vietnam in exchange for painting polka dots of Eternal Truth all over the president-elect's "hard, masculine body." That plea was read aloud to nude groupies at a Happening in her New York studio. Kusama's new message of light and love was addressed "TO THE WHOLE WORLD," and thanks to her massive popularity on social media and the publicists for her global network of galleries-the whole world heard it.

Fueled by visions of nets, flowers, and polka dots extending infinitely from her artworks, Kusama's own project has long had viral ambitions. In the catalogue for the show that put her back on the art-world map in 1998 after years of neglect, curator Lynn Zelevansky wrote that Kusama "wanted her work to invade and conquer the world like an epidemic." Twenty-two years and 122 museum shows later, Kusama is well on her way, and even an actual pandemic has barely flattened her curve. Covid-19 prompted postponement of two major exhibitions, at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C., and the New York Botanical Garden-and then came the postponement of her largest retrospective to date in Europe, at the Gropius-Bau in Berlin, which had been scheduled for September before being pushed to next spring, its prime attraction being the debut of a new " Infinity Mirror Room."

These kaleidoscopic cubicle sculptures are a major reason why Kusama has become the most popular artist in our socially mediated world. Visitors queue for hours to spend less than a minute alone in the mirror-lined rooms filled with twinkle lights, pumpkins, and sometimes, stuffed phalluses. Given barely enough time to take a selfie, much less contemplate the universe, most people opt for the selfie. After the pandemic closed museums, The Broad in Los Angeles began livestreaming their installation on Instagram; more than 20,000 viewers joined the first session.

Yayoi Kusama with paintings from her ongoing series "My Eternal Soul." Photo: Tomoaki Makino.

Kusama delivers everything a 21st-century museum could ask for-art, experience crowds, social media likes, and money-in one sleek mirrored box. Since 2011 Kusama museum shows have dotted the globe, with five major exhibitions touring 34 cities. In 2014, the Kusama retrospective "Infinite Obsession" in Central and South America had the highest museum exhibition attendance rate globally, according to The Art Newspaper 's annual survey, with more than 2 million people. "Yayoi Kusama: Infinity Mirrors," which toured six North American institutions between 2017 and 2019, originated at the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington, D.C., and was curated by Mika Yoshitake. It was made up ofsix of the artist's 20 mirror rooms, and drew more than 800,000 visitors, validating the Instagrammable showcases as the institutional acquisition of choice.

Kusama's enormous popularity stems not just from the transformative experience of her photogenic art or its digital reach, but from her compelling personal narrative as well. Her cultural brand as Pop art's eccentric auntie at once understates her art-historical significance and stokes the flames of her art market success. Collectors and museums jockey to buy new, seven-figure pieces from her powerful dealer network, while auction houses have sold more than $550 million worth of Kusama artworks in the last ten years. With an auction record of $7.9 million for one of her historic 1959 "Infinity Net" paintings, Kusama is both the world's top-selling living female artist, and still undervalued relative to her peers. This global activity is the culmination of the artist's own extraordinary ambition, which has driven her practice for 70 years. But it is also the result of a supporting structure that brings together hospital, studio, fabricators, and galleries to surround her like an exoskeleton. Encased within this super-powered mech suit, she produces the artworks, exhibitions, and merch that form the infinitely dazzling Kusama spectacle we see today.

Yayoi Kusama, Infinity Nets Yellow, 1960.Courtesy Ota Fine Arts, Tokyo/Singapore; Victoria Miro, London; David Zwirner, New York.

Kusama has made aspects of her life story inseparable from her art production. One "well-rehearsed feature of Kusama scholarship," as Yoshitake puts it, is that Kusama's art depicts hallucinations that began in her traumatic childhood in rural Japan. New research is rewriting that script, while underscoring Kusama's tenacious embrace of art making as a source of stability in a tumultuous life.

During Kusama's 15-year stay in New York, from 1958 to 1973, though she was as relentless in developing her major series of artworks-"Infinity Net" paintings, stuffed-phallus-covered "Accumulation" objects, "Infinity Mirror Rooms," and performances and polka-dot-painting Happenings-as she was in trying to make a living, she faced hardship and disappointment at nearly every turn.

She began with a cold open, going door-to-door to galleries and frame shops, trying to sell some of the 2,000 watercolors she'd brought with her from Japan. She got a studio and taught herself to paint with oil, developing a style that was entirely her own. Her first show of five "Infinity Net" paintings in 1959 was an immediate revelation to her fellow artists, including her friend the graduate student-slash-critic Donald Judd. Judd's review in this magazine of that show begins, "Yayoi Kusama is an original painter." Judd and Kusama became and remained close. He moved into the loft above hers on East 19th Street. He bought one of her first paintings. He helped haul chairs and a rowboat into her studio, and cover them with thousands of phallic protuberances to create her "Accumulations." They debated theories of contemporary art with his friend Dan Flavin, Eva Hesse, and others into the wee hours.

Left to right: Yayoi Kusama's Accumulation, 1962-64; Red Stripes, 1965; and Arm Chair, 1963.Photo: Cathy Carver. Courtesy Ota Fine Arts, Tokyo/Singapore; Victoria Miro, London; David Zwirner, New York.

It was Kusama who introduced Judd to Dick Bellamy, the Asian-American proprietor of the Green Gallery, during a studio visit. Both Judd and Flavin ended up joining the gallery. Kusama did not.

Kusama grew increasingly desperate to join a major gallery in New York. Her shows at Beatrice Perry's Gres Gallery in Washington, D.C., then at lesser-known galleries in New York, including Richard Castellane's, were immensely important to Kusama, but to the art market, not so much. Perry and Castellane both supported Kusama by acquiring dozens of works apiece, but they had no pull with influential curators or collectors. Art historian Midori Yamamura draws connections between Kusama's deteriorating mental health, her career stress, and the triumphalist political and cultural climate of the New York art world in the 1960s, which, in the era of its most influential dealer, Leo Castelli, was decidedly American, white, and male. In July 1960, two days after an assistant at the Martha Jackson Gallery canceled a long sought-after studio visit with Kusama, the distraught artist threw herself out her second-story window. She spent the next six weeks recovering from her injuries and unable to work.

Another incident that began as a hint of success turned into decades of lingering pain. In June 1962, Kusama showed her soft-sculpture "Accumulation" objects for the first time in a group show at Green Gallery. Dick Bellamy included a phallus-encrusted chair and love seat alongside a Warhol dollar painting and a Claes Oldenburg plaster suit. In a 1999 interview, Kusama said Bellamy offered her a September show of "Accumulation" objects, but that she didn't have the money to pull it off.The September slot went to Oldenburg, who turned the gallery into a summer studio, where his wife, Patty Mucha, sewed an entire show of soft sculptures of numbers, furniture, and food.

In fact, it's likely Bellamy never offered her a show at all. At that moment, Kusama's studio was full of "Accumulation" objects, and she was devastated by Oldenburg's betrayal. Within days of Oldenburg's opening, she took photos documenting herself surrounded by her soft sculptures, including the Judd-assisted rowboat she would show two years later. In the same week, Kusama's calendar notes her first prescription for tranquilizers. She experienced a nervous breakdown and was hospitalized after another possible suicide attempt. Her medication dulled the fine motor skills she relied on to create her paintings. Another side effect, as she explained to a friend in her hometown of Matsumoto, Japan, was hallucinations. This medication for work-related anxiety, and not her childhood traumas, is the first mention of hallucinations in Kusama's archive.

Facing obstacles in New York, Kusama was nevertheless in demand for group shows in Europe, though sales were problematic at best. In late 1965 she spent months in Italy creating Driving Image, a large "Accumulation" installation featuring a phallus-covered table, for an exhibition at Galleria d'Arte il Naviglio in Milan. The unsold work was shipped to London as "furniture," where it got stuck in customs. (A friendly dealer in Amsterdam eventually rescued the lot, but somewhere along the way, and without Kusama's knowledge, the multipart artwork was broken up and sold in parts; half ended up in the collection of Peter Ludwig in Cologne.)

With space and support from artist Lucio Fontana, Kusama prepared for an unofficial exhibition at the 1966 Venice Biennale. For Narcissus Garden she posed in a gold kimono among fifteen hundred mirrored spheres she had scattered across a lawn. Posting a sign reading, "Your Narcissism for Sale," she offered the spheres for two dollars apiece. (Kusama's later embellishments notwithstanding, organizers stopped her not because her critique of art commodification offended their delicate sensibilities, but because she was selling outside the Biennale's approved channels.)

Even though it generated more exposure than actual sales, Kusama adopted photogenic performance art as her business model when she returned to New York. With the counterculture movement in full swing, she staged Happenings in the late '60s at which she painted polka dots on participants' nude bodies. She sold tickets-again, $2 was the price point-to nude Happening film screenings, and offered films for sale via mail order. She designed free love fashion (i.e., ass-less dresses) to sell in department stores, but which never left her studio. She lent her name to a downtown sex tabloid called Kusama Orgy. Of her various enterprises, the only one that seemed to bring in any money was a polka-dot body-painting studio, where customers booked a nude session with a young man or woman and obliterated each other with polka dots for half an hour ($12) or an hour ($20). Riding the unrest of the era, Kusama staged Happenings at politically charged sites, dotting her nude performers at the New York Stock Exchange and other such public places until police arrived. The local press, always invited, grew weary.

Kusama was 40 in 1969 when she visited Japan and attempted to stage nude polka-dot Happenings on a morning TV show and on the street in Tokyo. She was quickly censored and arrested, respectively. When she returned to Japan for good in 1973, she was broke, desperate, and in dire health. Her father died in 1974. In 1977 she moved into the psychiatric hospital where she still lives. The art therapy program there provided a supportive environment for Kusama to rebuild her life and her art practice.

In the telling of Kusama's story in the New York art world, the artist had a moment, then disappeared and was forgotten until 1989, when Alexandra Munroe, a curator then at the Japan Society in New York, staged an exhibition of Kusama's work at the short-lived Center for International Contemporary Arts, also in New York. (In a recent interview, Munroe was quick to point out that artists remembered Kusama, both other Japanese expats and friends like Judd and Frank Stella. Munroe recalled when she went to borrow Stella's yellow-on-black "Infinity Net" painting for the show, it left a ghost on his living room wall; it hadn't moved in 30 years.)

There followed the 1993 Venice Biennale, which brought Kusama international acclaim, and a gallery in New York, Robert Miller, where she showed new "Infinity Nets" and stuffed tentacle sculptures. Another gallery, Paula Cooper, showed Beatrice Perry's stunning collection of early Kusamas in 1996, a moment when a gallery intern could still buy an unrecognized Kusama, a phallus-covered side chair, in a thrift shop with the cash from one visit to an ATM. The Mattress Factory in Pittsburgh staged an elaborate mirror-and-polka-dotted mannequin installation in 1996. And then came the triumphant homecoming show at MoMA, part of an exhibition that traveled to three other U.S. museums in 1998 and 1999.

With that show of Kusama's New York-era work, it seemed like a wrong had been righted, and Kusama's most important contributions-her historical work-had finally been recognized. Discussing the show recently, one of its curators, Laura Hoptman, then at MoMA, recalled a moving scene at the opening, where an aging Leo Castelli congratulated Kusama and shared his regret for not having shown her work when he should have.

But the artist's own ambition would never let her rest on these laurels, and this New York-centric view of her is incomplete. It fails to explain Kusama's achievements of the last two decades, because it ignores the importance of her success in Japan. When she fled the patriarchal strictures of her home country in the 1950s, she had no plan ever to return. When she did in 1973, she had no hope ever to show art again. When she left New York, she was a failed New Yorker. When she returned, she was a national hero poised for world domination.

In November 1975, in conjunction with a small show of dark, emotionally fraught collages called "Message of Death from Hades" at the Nishimura Gallery in Tokyo, Kusama published a manifesto in Art Life magazine. Titled "Odyssey of My Struggling Soul," it is the founding document of her narrative of psychosis-driven art. The collages, the manifesto, and the artist captured the attention of young critic Akira Tatehata.

In the 1980s, Kusama began showing work she made in an ersatz studio in her hospital. The objects were small and repetitive enough to fill a productive day, the kind of singular accomplishment that can fortify a troubled mind, but can also accumulate to greater effect. They included tiny, palm-size pumpkins, roughly molded from clay, plaster, or even papier-mâché, painted yellow and black, and covered with dots. They were joined by painted shoebox-size constructions of stuffed phalluses, and still life paintings of fruits and cocktails, obsessively filled in with nets, lines, or dots. She published experimental novels, which gained a cult following. Her repetitive, lurid tales of gay hustlers from the New York underworld served as much to process her own experience as to titillate her readers.

In 1982 the Fuji Television Gallery, operated by one of the country's top networks, staged an exhibition of Kusama's work and promoted it with a TV show. The show featured both old and new examples of Kusama's iconic works. In her 50s at the time, Kusama was less a scandalous deviant than an eccentric oba-san, Japan's kooky aunt who'd once lived it up in New York, and had stories to tell. The show's catalogue was the first attempt to fact-check those stories. It featured two chronologies: the artist's hyperbolic auto-hagiography, and a more circumspect account by the show's curator, Shigeo Chiba, who saw his incomplete version as "a starting point" of the more credible, "scientific" history the gallery felt Kusama's accomplishments deserved.

Kusama became increasingly popular in the booming Japan of the 1980s, with gallery shows all over the country, performances commissioned for TV, and increasing attention from museums. In preparation for a 1987 museum retrospective, she tried to boost her origin story by adding "Infinity Net"-style loops to old watercolors she had stored at her family's home. Art historian Midori Yamamura uncovered this, as well as the artist's retconning of having experienced hallucinations as a child, a claim that Kusama quietly dropped from her biography only in 2010.

By the time Akira Tatehata, the critic who had taken notice of Kusama in the mid-'70s, was appointed commissioner of the Japanese Pavilion for the 1993 Biennale, Kusama was a national figure. Tatehata, who would go on to co-curate the 1998 U.S. retrospective, proposed an unprecedented solo exhibition, adapting Mirror Room (Pumpkin), which Kusama originally designed in 1991 for an exhibition at the Fuji TV Gallery and the Hara Museum in Tokyo. Tatehata told filmmaker Heather Lenz in 2018 that he averted any official reservations over the artist's mental health and the stigma of her living in a hospital by not mentioning it. Video from Venice shows a shaky Kusama walking around her stunning yellow-and-black polka-dot installation in a matching dress and wizard cap, distributing ¾-inch-wide pumpkins to visitors.

The Biennale was an inflection point for Kusama, where the scale of her artistic vision outstripped the confines of her hospital studio. Though she continued to make work in the hospital until almost 2000, she increasingly needed the production and management capacity of a professional studio, and a gallery.

Art dealer Hidenori Ota had worked with Kusama at Fuji TV Gallery. When he opened his own space, Ota Fine Arts, in Tokyo in 1994, Kusama joined his roster. For more than 35 years, Ota, who declined to speak for this article, has provided stability and guidance for this resurgent phase of Kusama's career. He was a formative influence on her studio, the corporate entities around her, and ultimately, on her work. With his own established outposts in Singapore and Shanghai, Ota currently franchises sales of Kusama's work to Victoria Miro in London, which began working with her in the late '90s, and David Zwirner in New York.

The studio supports the artist's intense production of paintings and hand-size models for giant, whimsical sculptures. These activities are punctuated by signing sessions for large-scale pumpkin sculptures, and meetings with curators around scale models of exhibitions. There are also merchandise, swag, and fashion collaborations. The artist's trademark polka-dot camo outfits and wigs are kept there. She likes to review her press coverage regularly. Printmaking and the fabrication of sculptures, rooms, and installations are outsourced to workshops far from the expensive real estate of Tokyo's Shinjuku district, which the artist visits by car.

The power of Ota's mech suit can be seen in the massive, high-production show Kusama staged in 2000 at Le Consortium in Dijon, France. The carte blanche show included multiple "Infinity Mirror Rooms" and installations of giant, polka-dotted balloons, and set down in seven museums in Europe and Korea in three years.

The related 2004 blockbuster at the Mori Art Museum in Tokyo, titled "Kusamatrix," marks a major transformation of the Kusama Experience. Installed atop Roppongi Hills, the city's most famous new skyscraper, and a destination in itself, "Kusamatrix" was visited by 520,000 people in three months. To a series of mirror rooms and immersive environments, "Kusamatrix" added giant fiberglass sculptures of polka-dotted dogs and children. Filmmaker Takako Matsumoto sees this as the moment Kusama trades obsession and edge for love and cuteness, or kawaii: "The up until now obsessive image of Kusama's works has been transformed into ' kawaii!' To broaden the fan base and capture the hearts of men and women of all ages."

There is another prosaic yet profound reason for the show's impact, as a Getty photo of the Mori exhibition reveals. In it a young woman is seen holding up a cell phone inside the polka-dotted environment. It may be the earliest documentation of someone taking a cell phone picture of Kusama's work. Kusama's ubiquity in the 21st century is often discussed in terms of social media, particularly Instagram, which launched in 2010. But cell phone cameras predated that, especially in Japan, where they were already in wide use by 2004. The Mori exhibition was the first Kusama spectacle that asked to be-and actually could be-shared.

"Kusamatrix" marked the moment when New York's angsty take started to matter less than Tokyo's, Seoul's, or Hong Kong's. Asia would embrace kawaii Kusama, and send her back around the world as an avatar of Asian pop culture. Kusama's career path in the 2000s resonated with another Japanese star of the internationalizing art world: Takashi Murakami. His studio, Kaikai Kiki, treated fine art as one luxurious product line among many, including toys, merchandise, and a handbag collaboration with Louis Vuitton. Both artists developed huge followings among Asian collectors, and both also joined Gagosian Gallery, the world's largest, in 2006. Kusama's collabo with Vuitton came in 2012, along with her retrospective at Tate, the Pompidou, the Reina Sofía, and the Whitney.

Filmmaker Matsumoto was documenting Kusama's studio throughout this period, and she captured the artist's relentless productivity, even past the age of 80. Along with staples like "Infinity Nets" and freeform dots, large series provided structure, a way to focus Kusama's art-making compulsion on salable product. For "Love Forever" (2006-07), Kusama made a series of 50 giant dense drawings, one every two to three days. (She reproduced the works as silkscreens on canvas, then sold the prints and kept the originals for herself, like an avant-garde Thomas Kinkade.) Though in 2011 she first planned to make a series of 100 paintings for her Tate retrospective, when the show came and went, she did not stop. By 2020, "My Eternal Soul," had grown to more than 600 canvases. "I want to paint 1,000 and 2,000 paintings. I want to keep painting even after I died," Kusama said.

When the artist is ill-or on pandemic lockdown-the studio falls silent and waits, sometimes for days, for her return. Meanwhile, the works fabricated on her behalf are not beholden to the limitations of her physical art-making ability. Another series has continued rolling ahead: since the first re-creation at MoMA in 1998, more than 40 installations of Narcissus Garden have been realized around the world, including at least four distinct, permanent versions.

Kusama's prices have seen a strong increase since 2009, the last financial crisis. The total amount grossed at auction for works by Kusama has increased more than tenfold, from $9.3 million in 2009 to $98 million in 2019. The biggest annual jump, more than 59 percent, from $65 million to $102 million, took place in 2017. The number of her works coming to auction has increased by 239 percent, from 208 lots in 2009, to 704 in 2019.

View of the exhibition "Every Day I Pray for Love," 2019, at David Zwirner. Courtesy Ota Fine Arts, Tokyo/Singapore; Victoria Miro, London; David Zwirner, New York.

In 2013 Kusama left Gagosian for David Zwirner, whose rival mega-gallery is perhaps more complementary than competitive to Ota's footprint and ambitions. Between Instagram and Vuitton's boost, Kusama has become a global brand, and Zwirner's shows of "Infinity Mirror Rooms" have ridden that wave, with long lines of visitors.

When Castellane showed Kusama's first "Infinity Mirror Room" in 1965, he priced it at $5,000 ($2,500 for museums), but got no takers. In the last six years, "Infinity Mirror Rooms" have become to museums what pandas are to zoos: surefire crowd-pleasers whose costs are easily justified by their popularity. Between 2014 and 2019, at least 11 international institutions acquired rooms. The Broad, Tate, the Hirshhorn, and the Rubell Museum each acquired two. The Art Gallery of Ontario raised 40 percent of its $1.4 million room purchase through crowdfunding and early-bird ticket presales. At $1.2 million-$2 million on the primary market, and up to twice that cost in private secondary-market sales, the rooms are a relative Kusama bargain, at least compared to the artist's priciest work, her historic "Infinity Net" paintings. With some in editions of three, they're also more numerous, if not immediately available. The current record for a room at auction is $503,536, set in 2012, when Christie's London sold Infinity Mirrored Room-Love Forever, from 1994.

What the other side of the pandemic holds for galleries, museums, or auctions is wildly uncertain. Will "Infinity Mirror Rooms" become viral infection vectors or the ultimate social distancing experience? The only thing we can count on is that whether she's stuck in her hospital or back in her studio, Yayoi Kusama will be making art, right up until the very end. And perhaps even after that.

A version of this article appears in the Summer 2020 issue of ARTnews, under the title "The Kusama Industrial Complex."

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The Kusama Industrial Complex: How Yayoi Kusama Came to Captivate the World, Fueling Museums and the Market

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In mid-April, 91-year-old artist Yayoi Kusama had words for the coronavirus. The pandemic had caused numerous disruptions to her world. The psychiatric hospital where she lives in Tokyo was on lockdown, preventing her from going to work at her nearby studio. Her corporation, KUSAMA YAYOI Co., Ltd., was forced to suspend authentication and registration of artworks.

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Toshiyuki Inoko

"Usually, people buy a painting, sculpture, and then own it in their house or in a museum. But now, people’s interests are shifting from there to become more interested in having experiences." - Art net

teamLab is an interdisciplinary collective that merges art, science, technology, and nature through the combined talents of artists, programmers, engineers, CG animators, mathematicians, and architects. This collective aims to redefine the way we perceive our connection to the world, erasing traditional divides and promoting a vision of life as an unbounded continuum. Through their groundbreaking work, teamLab aims to “transcend these boundaries in our perceptions of the world, of the relationship between the self and the world, and of the continuity of time.” Their contributions to the art world, widely recognised for blurring the lines between different disciplines and their popularity with the public, have secured their art a spot in the permanent collections of renowned global institutions such as the Art Gallery of New South Wales in Sydney, the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco, and the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne. Top Immersive Artists to Look Out For | MyArtBroker | Article

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Top Immersive Artists to Look Out For | MyArtBroker | Article

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Explore the forefront of immersive art with our guide to the top artists transforming perception and space and dive into a world of visual innovation.

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New teamLab Museum Opens in Azabudai Hills

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Media got a full preview of the new teamLab Borderless in Azabudai Hills, opening to the public on February 9, 2024.

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Feb 09, 2024 - Permanent Azabudai Hills, Tokyo

Azabudai Hills, Tokyo

Wander, Explore, and Discover in One Continuous Borderless World

teamLab Borderless is a world of artworks without boundaries, a museum without a map created by art collective teamLab.

Artworks move out of rooms, relate to other works, influence each other, and at times intermingle, without boundaries. Through this group of works, one continuous world without boundaries is created.

Immerse your body in borderless art. Wander, explore with intention, discover, and create a world with others.

People Don't See the World as through a Camera

The words "teamLab Borderless" rise towards the forefront of the entrance space when they are viewed through a camera from a designated position. However, when they are viewed directly with the naked eye from the same position, the letters do not emerge to the front. People do not see the world as through a lens.

teamLab is interested in the fact that although the world is continuous and without boundaries, it is cognitively separated, and especially when viewed through a lens, the world in which one's body is located is separated from the world one is seeing.
Around 2001 when teamLab was founded, we began to think of lenses and perspective as one of the logical methodologies to turn a space into two dimensions, and began to search for a logic for the flattening of space that was different from that of lenses and perspective. We wanted to know how humans perceive the world and the ways in which perception and the body are related.

When the world is seen and captured through a lens:
1. The surface that the world is displayed on becomes a boundary, and the space cut out by the lens appears on the other side of that boundary. Between the world where the physical body is and the world that is being seen, a boundary is formed, and of course, it is cognitively unnatural to touch objects in the image.
2. The viewpoint is fixed, and subconsciously, people lose sense of their body.
3. In actuality, the field of view of humans is wide, and the viewpoint and focus move around a lot, but the world captured by a lens fixes the focus to one point, narrowing the field of view, and leading to a loss of sense of intention.

A logical methodology for the flattening of space that unlike a lens, the screen does not become a cognitive boundary, differs in that:

1. The physical body and the world that is cut out is continuous with each other;
where people can touch any part of the image.
2. People can perceive the world around them physically, and look at the image as they walk around because their focus can move around freely.
3. Each person can come near any part of the image.
4. People do not lose their sense of intention because the focus is infinite and the field of view is wide.

Searching for this kind of logical methodology for the flattening of space was the initial exploration of teamLab. We constructed a logical structure to turn an image into two dimensions, and called that flattened space Ultrasubjective Space.
Flowers are Crimson was one of the first artworks created in 2004-5 through Ultrasubjective Space, and here at teamLab Borderless, it appears as a remade form of that initial work through Walk, Walk, Walk: Search, Deviate, Reunite. Constructing a logical structure is very important to us, and the artwork spaces that are flatted through it hold a time of their own, express dynamic changes, and allow us to draw images that transform through the presence of people.

teamLab wants to create a physical, spatial art that expands infinitely, where people walk around with intention; a physical art that becomes one with the body, changes through the presence of people; where the artwork world is continuous with the body.
That - is the foundation of teamLab Borderless.

APP

teamLab App

Learn
There are no artwork captions in teamLab Borderless, because the artworks move across spaces. Use the app to read the artwork concept of the work closest to you.
Learn in more depth, enjoy more.

Participate
You can participate in Infinite Crystal World through the app.
Create the artwork, enjoy more.

Avoid long lines
Numbered tickets are issued via the app when the artwork space is crowded.
The app will notify you when your time slot is approaching.
Avoid long lines, and enjoy a smooth viewing experience.

TEA HOUSE & SKETCH FACTORY

Make tea and a flower blooms inside the teacup. Flowers bloom infinitely as long as there is tea. The tea in the bowl becomes an infinite world in which the flowers continue to bloom. Drink in the infinitely expanding world.

View More

Turn your own drawing into an item to take home with you.
* Sketch Factory is located outside of teamLab Borderless

View More

VISIT US

Venue Details

Title

teamLab Borderless: MORI Building DIGITAL ART MUSEUM

Term

Feb 09, 2024 - Permanent

Hours

May
10:00 - 21:00
Jun, July
9:00 - 21:00 * Closed at 5:00 p.m. on May 14, May 28, Jun 11, Jun 25
* Last entry is one hour before the museum closing time.
* EN TEA HOUSE opens 30 min after the museum opening time.(June, July : Opens 1 hour after the museum opening time.）

Closed

May 7, May 21, Jun 4, Jun 18, July 2, July 16

ACCESS

Address

Map

Address in local language:

麻布台ヒルズ ガーデンプラザB B1
東京都港区麻布台1-2-4

・Direct connection from Exit 5 of Kamiyacho Station (Tokyo Metro Hibiya Line) ・4 min walk from Exit 2 of Roppongi-Itchome Station (Tokyo Metro Namboku Line)

Please use the Azabudai Hills P6 parking lot. Take the D elevator up to floor B1, and the entrance to teamLab Borderless is immediately on your left. For details, please check the Azabudai Hills official website. If you have already purchased your ticket online and would like to receive a discount, please present your parking ticket at the information counter.

TICKETS

Admission

* Tickets for adults and visitors with disabilities are subject to a dynamic pricing system. Please purchase a ticket for the designated date/time upon checking the ticket price for that day. * +200 yen if purchased on site. * Official Sales Site are only available on the official ticket website and KLOOK

Visitors with disabilities

Tickets for visitors with disabilities are available for holders of a disability certificate and up to one accompanying person. One ticket per person is required for admission.

JPY 1,900

* Dates after June 1 are eligible. * This is a ticket for a specific date of admission. * There are no restrictions on the time of entry. Please come to the venue when you wish no later than the final entry time and line up in the entry line. Last entry is one hour before the museum closing time. * Have a cup of your favorite tea at the EN TEA HOUSE in the venue.

Notes

Regarding ticket purchase
・Tickets are date and time-specific, and may sell out.
・Tickets for adults and visitors with disabilities are subject to a dynamic pricing system.
・Tickets are not available at the venue.
- Sales are only available while supplies last.
- Prices for local sales are different from those online.
・In general, tickets cannot be canceled or changed once purchased. However, the date can be changed for tickets directly purchased from the official ticketing website.
The date of the ticket may be changed up to 3 times. To do so, select 'Modify ticket date' displayed on the QR ticket and follow the procedure. Changes can be made up to 9:00 of the indicated date.
The ticket date cannot be changed in the following cases:
- The date has already been changed 3 times
- Changing to a different type of ticket
- Changing to date that has sold out or has insufficient tickets left
- Changing the date for a portion of tickets within a multiple-ticket purchase
- Changing to multiple dates within a multiple-ticket purchase
- Changing to a date that is not yet available for purchase
・Prices include tax.
・For those aged 13-17, proof of ID is required at the entrance gate.
・Visitors with a disability certificate:
- Discounted tickets are available for holders of a disability certificate, along with one accompanying person.
(Children's tickets cannot be further discounted, however, the accompanying adult is eligible for a discounted ticket if the child holds a disability certificate.)
- The disability certificate will be requested at the entrance gate, so please make sure that the accompanying person enters at the same time.
- The disability certificate can be issued by any country.
- The Mirailo ID app can be accepted in place of a Disability Certificate.
・Children (elementary school and below) must be accompanied by an adult who is 18 years old or above. There must be one accompanying adult for every five children, including children eligible for free entry.
・Children under 3 years old may enter for free.

Notice to Visitors
・The venue cannot be held liable for visitors' injury, loss, or other problems that may occur.
・Reselling tickets is prohibited. A ticket that has been resold will not allow entry to the venue. The venue cannot be held responsible for any problems with resold tickets.
・Certain artworks may not be available due to large crowds or maintenance.
・Artworks or artwork specifications may vary by season.
・The opening time of the venue may change with prior notice on the official website.
・The exhibition may be canceled due to circumstances of the venue.
・Tickets can be refunded only if the venue has an unscheduled closure.
・Transportation costs to this venue will not be reimbursed even if the venue has an unscheduled closure.
・Please come to the entrance at the admission time indicated on the ticket and wait in line.
・Please note that you may have to wait in line to enter the venue during busy times.
・Please refrain from waiting in the vicinity of the museum.
・Please refrain from eating, drinking, or sitting in the aisles and stairways around the museum.
・If you would like to leave the line temporarily, please make sure that someone in your party stays behind.
・There is no limit on the duration of your stay at the venue after admission.
・Re-entry is not permitted.
・Animals are not allowed at the venue excluding assistance dogs.
・Please look after your own personal belongings. The venue will not not be liable for any stolen or lost items.
・The venue is dark, with unstable footholds and low ceilings.
Be aware of your own actions as well as those around you. If you are with young children, please watch over them closely for their safety.
・The artworks may produce flashing lights and loud sounds.
・For visiting EN TEA HOUSE, please order at least one drink per person.
・There are some artworks that have mirror floors, please be aware. For the customers wearing skirts, you can borrow a wrap skirt which is near the artwork.
・For safety reasons pregnant women are not permitted in some areas.
・Wheelchair users may enter the venue but they may not enter or experience some artworks that are impassable to wheelchairs to ensure safety. For more information, please call the main phone number.
・Wheelchair users may be asked to wait, as the number of wheelchair users admitted at one time is limited.

About baggage
・Prohibited Items
- Food & alcoholic beverages
- Items that exceed 50cm
- Strollers must be stored in the luggage room.
- Hazardous items, items with strong smells, fresh flowers, etc.
- Drinks with no caps.
- Any other items deemed to be dangerous by staff.

The following is prohibited
・Please do not touch the projectors, sensors, lights, and other equipment for safety reasons.
・Do not bring food into the venue (including candy and gum). Only drinks are allowed.
・Visitors who are ill or drunk will not be allowed entry.
・You may be asked to provide identification upon entry.
Examples: driver's licence, health insurance card, student card, passport, My Number card, any identification that provides valid proof of your name and age.
・Please follow the staff's instructions. Visitors that do not follow them may be escorted out of the premisis.

Regarding filming
・Taking photos and videos are allowed but please be careful not to cause inconvenience to other visitors.
・Please refrain from using flash.
・Use of monopods, tripods, selfie sticks, etc is prohibited.
・Media filming may take place without prior notice. If you do not wish to be featured in the coverage, please inform our staff.
・Filming or photography for commercial purposes is not permitted without prior consent.

teamLab (f. 2001) is an international art collective. Their collaborative practice seeks to navigate the confluence of art, science, technology, and the natural world. Through art, the interdisciplinary group of specialists, including artists, programmers, engineers, CG animators, mathematicians, and architects, aims to explore the relationship between the self and the world, and new forms of perception. In order to understand the world around them, people separate it into independent entities with perceived boundaries between them. teamLab seeks to transcend these boundaries in our perceptions of the world, of the relationship between the self and the world, and of the continuity of time. Everything exists in a long, fragile yet miraculous, borderless continuity. teamLab exhibitions have been held in cities worldwide, including New York, London, Paris, Singapore, Silicon Valley, Beijing, and Melbourne among others. teamLab museums and large-scale permanent exhibitions include teamLab Borderless and teamLab Planets in Tokyo, teamLab Borderless Shanghai, and teamLab SuperNature Macao, with more to open in cities including Abu Dhabi, Beijing, Hamburg, Jeddah, and Utrecht. teamLab's works are in the permanent collection of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney; Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide; Asian Art Museum, San Francisco; Asia Society Museum, New York; Borusan Contemporary Art Collection, Istanbul; National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne; and Amos Rex, Helsinki. teamlab.art Biographical Documents teamLab is represented by Pace Gallery, Martin Browne Contemporary and Ikkan Art.

Mori Building is an innovative urban developer based in Tokyo. The company is committed to maximizing the magnetic power of cities by creating and nurturing safe, sustainable and cosmopolitan urban centers based on its unique Vertical Garden City concept of high-rise centers for business, education, leisure and residence. The concept is applied in the company's many leading-edge projects, including ARK Hills, Roppongi Hills and Toranomon Hills in Tokyo and the Shanghai World Financial Center. Mori Building is also engaged in real estate leasing, project management and consultation.

www.mori.co.jp/en

Organizers

Mori Building Co., Ltd, teamLab

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[Official] teamLab Borderless TOKYO, Azabudai Hills

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teamLab Borderless is a world of artworks without boundaries, a museum without a map created by art collective teamLab.Artworks move out of rooms, relate to other works, influence each other, and at times intermingle, without boundaries. Through this group of works, one continuous world without boun...

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The Art Newspaper - International art news and events

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A giant walk-in space for immersive digital art in London's West End has become Britain's most popular visitor attraction, outpacing the city's most visited art institution, the British Museum. Outernet in December announced that it recorded 6.25 million visitors in its first year of operation, while the British Museum attracted 5.83 million visitors in 2023. The world's most visited art museum, Musée du Louvre in Paris, received 8.86 million visitors last year.

Outernet is just one among 100-plus such spaces-which this writer calls immersive institutions-to have emerged in the past five years, forming a series of consciously global networks and signalling a tipping point in the way the world consumes visual culture while posing a challenge for museums and galleries in their present form. Whether they turn out to be partners or competitors for museums and galleries, the immersive institutions-backed by the world's leading investors and showing a new wave of global digital artists-are a powerful emerging force. For many museums, it is a question of when, not if, they engage.

The most spectacular recent demonstration of the phenomenon has been Las Vegas's Sphere-a vast $2.3bn, 365ft tall, 20,000-capacity domed performance venue that features work from artists including Refik Anadol, Marco Brambilla and Es Devlin for its opening in September 2023, where the rock band U2 is at present in residency.

To András Szántó, the author of The Future of the Museum: 28 Dialogues, this is "a classic case of external, potentially disruptive innovation. What it says about the challenges of the art museum in the 21st century is that it will have to compete for the public's interest (and leisure spend) when it comes to visual experience-and it may not always win."

Access all areas: with three sides opening onto London's Charing Cross Road, Outernet encourages passers-by to watch a screening of Marco Brambilla's Heaven's Gate Louis Jebb

These venues are participants in the wider visitor and tourist economy. They may not be designed to compete with traditional institutions but, by acting in the same markets, they have the effect of doing so, with the accompanying challenge, and opportunity, for museums and the bodies that fund them. "How could funders help?" Szántó says of the challenge. "Well, by funding."

A spokesperson for Outernet tells The Art Newspaper that the technology it uses to count visitors-on a site open on three sides to passers-by on one of London's busiest streets and featuring three digital screening spaces and a 2,000-seater concert venue-includes tech provided by the video analysis company BriefCam "to provide audience engagement and demographics data".

Outernet's visitor figures are a striking statistical example of a trend that has been growing over the past five years. There are now more than 100 immersive institutions around the world, with new spaces due to open this year in Abu Dhabi, Hamburg and Shanghai.

Origins of the immersive institution

The first of this new wave of big-scale institutions opened in 2018 in Paris's XIth arrondissement. In Atelier des Lumières, Culturespaces defined an approach for how immersive institutions have gone on to evolve: in their content, in their use of buildings, in how they are financed and in their global ambitions. It also pioneered the primary digital storytelling format for these venues: a non-linear documentary format blending animated visuals with soundtrack and voiceover, and using digital projection or video walls combined with surround or spatial audio to spread the story over walls, floors and ceilings. The impact was immediate; in Atelier des Lumières's first nine months it attracted more than 1.2 million visitors.

Chagall at L'Atelier des Lumières, Paris © Culturespaces / Eric Spiller

This non-linearity reached a peak with Lightroom's 2023 David Hockney show in London. Split into nine chapters, Bigger & Closer (not smaller & further away) was a journey through Hockney's work that you could enter or leave at any point.

In the summer of 2018, meanwhile, the Tokyo digital arts collective TeamLab launched Borderless as a dedicated museum space showing its own work only. In its first year, 2.3 million people visited-more than went to the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam in the same period, making a collective with marginal mainstream recognition the most popular single-artist museum in the world. The Lume, Grande Experiences' permanent venue in Melbourne, had more than 700,000 visitors in its first year (2021-22), while in the same city the National Gallery of Victoria, Australia's most popular museum, recorded 1.6 million visitors in 2022.

The spectacular digital art found in immersive institutions is different and sometimes overlooked by the art establishment, though it has its critics. The Art Newspaper's Ben Luke has described it as "a kind of hybrid format between installation and son et lumières, emphasising spectacle over more resonant content". The sector has a different business model to traditional institutions, a different investor base and has created new global opportunities for digital artists-with practitioners such as Anadol and Gabriel Massan emerging, and established artists such as Brambilla and Barbara Kruger joining the space-and has encouraged a radical new style of "media architecture".

David Hockney's Bigger & Closer (not smaller & further away) at Lightroom, London, 2023
Photo: Justin Sutcliffe

Immersive institutions also offer a fresh range of experiences for audiences of art and culture. There is demand, according to Alexandra Payne, the head of creative at Outernet, because they are "creating experiences worth sharing, and communal experience" that they see "audiences craving". To Brambilla, an established film-maker and digital artist who has worked with both Outernet and Sphere, the communal, on-location point about the scale and the need to be present was brought home at the latter in particular. "They have really created something completely new," he says. "You can't really Instagram it [or capture it in one phone image]. These are experiences that you cannot have at home."

Emerging business models

Beneath the surface there are business models, and new approaches to financing, designed to help venues last beyond the life of a single show. Lightroom emerged in London last year from a partnership between London Theatre Company-led by Nicholas Hytner, the former artistic director of the National Theatre-and 59 Productions, one of the city's most successful exhibition and experience design companies.

The two successful, but still small, creative enterprises are building a global business with investment led by the billionaire Len Blavatnik's Access Entertainment and Michael Sherwood, the former co-chief executive of Goldman Sachs. Blavatnik is an important figure in traditional art and culture; he was the donor whose gift enabled the creation of the Blavatnik Building, the extension to London's Tate Modern in 2016. At this early stage, the longer term impact of immersive institutions is unclear, but it is just possible that Blavatnik may have funded both the Tate and one of its biggest 21st-century competitors.

Institutional investors in the art sector: Outernet, London, is backed by Stephen Schwarzman's Blackstone Group Maria Zhytnikova/Red Flame Creations

The emergence of investment in these digital-age galleries from private equity and other large-scale institutional investors is one of their defining features, creating new connections with art and culture. Outernet is backed by Stephen Schwarzman's Blackstone Group-the same Stephen Schwarzman who gave £175m to Oxford University to create its new Centre for the Future of the Humanities, complete with a 500-seat concert hall. TeamLab's new site in Abu Dhabi is on Saadiyat Island, home to the Louvre Abu Dhabi and to the much delayed Zayed National Museum and Guggenheim. A collaboration with the Department of Culture and Tourism and the Miral Group, TeamLab's project, announced in June 2022, is due to open this year and is already more than 70% complete. (TeamLab also has four permanent venues in Japan and China, with Saudi Arabia to follow.)

Hybridity may be the word that best describes the immersive institution's business model. London's Outernet displays digital art, but is exploring business models that align art with advertising and different forms of entertainment. Outernet's Room to Breathe project, which ran from November 2022 to February 2023, was a digital arts-based meditation and wellness themed installation supported by the paracetamol brand Panadol.

Brambilla saysthat at both Outernet and Sphere, technically ambitious digital art "is attached to an experience to make it [financially] feasible": through advertising at Outernet and tickets to live performances at Sphere, where U2 is performing surrounded by pieces by Brambilla and Devlin.

Global scale through global networks

A feature of immersive institutions, and one that ties them most to the digital world, is their intent to multiply and form global networks, resulting in international creative cultural institutional brands that will compete to establish themselves over the coming decade.

Culturespaces explicitly describes its digital art centres as a network able to circulate content across a group of eight venues in France, New York, Seoul and Jeju in Korea, Amsterdam and Dortmund, with a ninth to come this year in Hamburg. London's Lightroom has already opened its second venue, in Seoul, where Hockney's show opened last November. Sphere has pulled out of a London scheme after failed planning and political negotiations, but will likely find a base elsewhere.

A competitor using a smaller dome, Cosm, is looking for sites in the US. Outernet Global has announced new projects in New York and Los Angeles. Australia's Grande Experiences has venues in Melbourne and Indianapolis. Frameless opened in London in 2022 with aspirations to globality. The digital art group D'Strict has multiple sites across Korea, with temporary interventions worldwide connecting back to its home in Seoul. And the US's Artechouse has spaces in New York, Miami and Washington, DC.

According to Peter Tullin, the co-founder of Remix Summits and a board member of both Grande Experiences and Museums Victoria, "TeamLab changed the rules. They have built a global brand not only through the development of leading-edge immersive technology combined with 21st-century digital art to develop captivating experiences but through the integration of spectacular imagery that visitors eagerly share through social media. This model has allowed them to bypass the traditional gatekeepers such as museums and galleries."

Refik Anadol's work Machine Hallucinations: Sphere covers video screens on the exterior of Populous-designed Sphere in Las Vegas ByDroneVideos

The growth of "media architecture"

One of the most radical effects of the immersive institution may be in expanding the niche "media architecture"-the use of audio-visual technology as part of the design surface of buildings-to become an entirely new category of urban building. Culturespaces pioneered interventions in existing heritage or disused industrial spaces, a model much copied that offers the kind of large-volume spaces museum curators crave, but at a fraction of the cost. TeamLab, Lightroom, Frameless, D'strict and more have made interventions in new-built mixed-purpose commercial developments.

But Las Vegas's Sphere, opened by an offshoot of the entertainment company MSG in 2023, is something architecturally more significant. It is a spherical dome covered entirely in video screens inside and out. It is both a radical new form of entertainment venue, and the way to a new form of architecture. The artist Marco Brambilla describes it as "Utopian architecture that is dynamic. People should really pay attention to that. It is essentially in the spirit of the 1960s plug-in city, creating a space that takes on whatever form the content gives it".

Driven by declining costs in LED video panels-and with similar developments in transparent LED panels, demonstrated at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas last month, following close behind-Sphere is a significant gesture towards a future where buildings everywhere could become a play of frenzies of digital light and shadow.

What happens next?

Can this moment of intense innovation in the creation of a new kind of art gallery last? Immersive institutions are exposed to the market in a way galleries and museums are not, and betting on their permanence would be unwise. Like the panoramas and music halls of the past, they may fade as fashions change. Already we have seen ventures in this category, such as Superblue London, recede just as others have blossomed.

But this is a moment when museums and galleries must decide, according to Szántó, "when to engage". Some have already; in 2022 the National Museum of Australia collaborated with Grande Experiences on Connection, based on the work of more than 110 First Nations artists and musicians, perhaps the largest example to date. "The museum is known for exploring and sharing First Peoples' stories globally, for increasing accessibility and for bringing our stories alive," says Margo Ngawa Neale, the National Museum's lead Indigenous curator and a consulting curator on Connection. "There can be no better way to bring our songlines stories alive than through this awe-inspiring multi-sensory display of Connection. This is the 21st century and younger demographics inhabit the digital domain. If we want to expose them to Aboriginal art and culture, we need to meet with them there."

Connections, an exhibition of First Peoples' art, is at The Lume, in Melbourne, until 4 February The Lume

Payne points out that Outernet has already partnered with the Saatchi Gallery, Serpentine and Frieze London, "proving that the market and desire for immersive experiences is big enough to support us all. Our advice to museums and galleries is to continue to be open to these types of collaboration." The Serpentine's collaborations with Outernet include presentations for Gabriel Massan's Third World game in 2023 and for Kruger's current show (until 17 March).

There can be no better way to bring our songlines stories alive than through this awe-inspiring multi-sensory display of Connection. This is the 21st century and younger demographics inhabit the digital domain. If we want to expose them to Aboriginal art and culture, we need to meet with them there

Margo Ngawa Neale, lead Indigenous curator, National Museum of Australia

Elsewhere, the National Portrait Gallery in London welcomes the emergence of this new kind of attraction, telling The Art Newspaper it has "always been part of a vibrant and varied community of visitor attractions, and we welcome the emergence of digital and immersive experiences, which engage audiences with art and culture".

The opportunities are significant if museums and galleries find ways to positively respond. Tullin says museums cannot afford to be complacent: "There are huge opportunities for the cultural sector if they embrace this new frontier but the immersive revolution is also bringing with it new competitors on a scale never before seen."

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Tipping point: how new immersive institutions are changing the art world

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Digital art venues are a global phenomenon, attracting massive audiences with radical new forms of immersive experiences. Are they a threat or an opportunity for traditional galleries and museums?

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Why are tech-centric, projection-based exhibits suddenly everywhere?

The lights were off, the air smelled faintly of roses, and New Age music flowed from room to room. TeamLab, a Japanese art collective of six hundred "ultratechnologists"-artists, software engineers, animators, and architects-had taken over an eighty-five-hundred-square-foot gallery at San Francisco's Asian Art Museum. Their "interactive landscape," called "teamLab: Continuity," promised "a wondrous ecosystem of lush imagery drawn from nature and East Asian art." Animated projections of flowers, fish, and birds drifted across the walls and floor; as visitors moved, the images reacted, creating ephemeral, mutating patterns. Butterflies, when "touched," faded and crumpled; blossoms and pine needles changed colors, or were swept aside. A woman tried to dodge a school of fish, which pooled and scattered around her boots. Looking around, I figured that the room was stuffed with sensors. (TeamLab is evasive about its technology.) "My hand just went through a tadpole," a girl behind me said.

"Continuity" is one of many technology-driven "immersive" installations, which have grown popular in recent years. Operated by artist studios, collectives, and production companies, these projects range in finesse from sophisticated new-media installations to animated retrospectives of Impressionist painters. I entered a room dedicated to a piece titled "Crows Are Chased and the Chasing Crows Are Destined to be Chased As Well, Transcending Space." Projection-mapped animations soared around me, shifting the center of gravity. Sweeping, cinematic music played, and the room appeared to move. In the catalogue for the show, Karin Oen, a curator at the museum, argues that teamLab's work invites visitors to "go beyond passively observing," instead making them "active protagonists in decentered narratives"; Toshiyuki Inoko, teamLab's founder, has said that the organization aims to obliterate boundaries between the self and the environment. "This is so trippy," a small child said. "This is extremely trippy," his tiny brother echoed.

I watched a group of crows beat across the ground, up a wall, and out the door. I followed them into an alcove, where a cluster of adults admired an explosion of sunflowers. In another corner of the room, butterflies pooled on the torso of a woman wearing a black winter jacket. There was something a little transactional about the interactivity; its action-reaction responsiveness reminded me of the mirror game, or contact improv. People took pictures of themselves and of one another. I took a few of my own and, cupping a hand over my phone to dim its light, texted them to a friend. The images looked somehow more arresting and otherworldly on a small screen-more consistent with the elevated rhetoric of the show. In person, the projections were legibly one-dimensional, but in photographs the gallery's mirrored walls gave the impression of endless depth.

Later that afternoon, my friend called. He had seen the photos, and found them deeply strange. "There's something interesting about something so maximal falling so short," he said. "The thing that's truly immersive is your phone."

In 2020, the Serpentine Galleries, in London, released a report titled "Future Art Ecosystems." It surveyed emerging practices among artists who work with "advanced technologies": everything from gene-editing to blockchains. The report, which was co-produced by a consultancy and framed as a strategic document, identified the trend of tech companies acting as art patrons, and advanced the idea of the "art stack"-a vertically integrated, artist-led system of production that operates at "unprecedented scale," bypassing the art establishment through centralization. In software engineering, a "tech stack" usually refers to a system's foundational software components, and a "full-stack" engineer is fluent in both front-end and back-end development. A full-stack art studio would own the process from beginning to end, employing both artistic and technology teams and controlling its own revenue streams and gallery spaces. Like movie studios, record labels, fashion houses, and video-game companies, studios that mastered the art stack could someday adopt an "industrialized" model, the report suggested; to monetize their offerings, they could broker corporate sponsorships, partner with real-estate developers, offer nonartistic technical services, or operate "like circuses and theme parks," going direct-to-consumer with mass-market, ticketed experiences. There could be art-stack I.P.O.s.

A number of organizations and artists already operate in this mode, more or less. They include Drift, which recently held an "immersive exhibition" of kinetic sculptures at the Shed, in Hudson Yards; Random International, whose 2012 "Rain Room" was a global crowd-pleaser; and Refik Anadol Studio, which creates, among other things, "parametric data sculptures"-abstract data visualizations, displayed on massive L.E.D. screens. No artists' collective seems to embody the art-stack model as fully as teamLab. Since 2018, in partnership with Mori Building, a major Japanese real-estate developer, the group has operated teamLab Borderless, an enormous exhibition space in Tokyo. Early press releases touted Borderless as an "unprecedented digital art museum," and highlighted its hundreds of computers and laser projectors. The facility's fifty exhibits include "Black Waves: Continuous," in which illustrated swells tumble and crash hypnotically around visitors, who are encouraged to lie back and relax, and "Forest of Resonating Lamps," a mirrored room hung with hundreds of Murano glass pendants that react to movement. In its first year, Borderless attracted more than two million visitors, who paid about thirty dollars per ticket.

In 2019, teamLab, which uses Epson projectors, opened a Borderless museum in Shanghai, sponsored by Epson, and signed an eleven-year lease on a large gallery space in Brooklyn's Industry City development. The Industry City plan fell through, but in 2020 teamLab opened SuperNature, a "body immersive" art space inside the Venetian, a luxury hotel in Macau. The group is represented by Pace, the blue-chip art gallery. The same year, Pace launched Superblue, a satellite company focussed on building "experiential art centers," or E.A.C.s. (Pace's partners in the venture are Emerson Collective, the for-profit philanthropic organization founded by Laurene Powell Jobs, and Therme Art, a culturally oriented offshoot of the high-end wellness-and-hospitality group.) The first Superblue E.A.C., a fifty-thousand square-foot converted warehouse in Miami, contains five immersive experiences, including "Forest of Us," a maze of mirrored and illuminated walls, by the artist and stage designer Es Devlin; "AKHU," a violet light installation by James Turrell; and a reactive digital environment by teamLab. The works themselves are difficult to sell to collectors or institutions, but Superblue makes money by selling tickets to visitors, with proceeds split between the gallery and the artists.

In many ways, the entrepreneurial bent of the art-stack model dovetails with long-running trends in the art world. It arrives at a time when museums have grown more corporate, and also face pressure to diversify their collections and expand their audiences. Art works are seen as financial assets, and flashy, "starchitect"-designed museum buildings, with airy, open gallery spaces, demand work of a certain size and scale. There is also the long-standing popularity of experiential, environmental art. Artists such as Turrell, Robert Irwin, and Robert Morris began creating such art in the nineteen-sixties and seventies; by the nineties, it had become an institutional fixture. Writing at the beginning of that decade, Rosalind Krauss, a critic and former associate editor of Artforum, argued that such art had altered the nature of museums. Once spaces full of objects, carefully arranged to tell a story, these institutions now sought to "forego history in the name of a kind of intensity of experience."

The new immersive art also reflects the rise of consumer digital technologies, and the behaviors and expectations that they cultivate. In " Contemporary Art and the Digitization of Everyday Life," published in 2020, Janet Kraynak, an art historian and professor at Columbia University, argues that the museum, "rather than being replaced by the internet, increasingly is being reconfigured after it." Museums now treat visitors as if they are the "users" of a consumer product, and thus cater to their preferences, creating "pleasurable, nonconfrontational" environments, and emphasizing interactivity. She suggests that, instead of striving to be places of pedagogy, museums are growing "indistinguishable from any number of cultural sites and experiences, as all become vehicles for the delivery of 'content.' " Kraynak told me that she thinks the user-friendliness of museums is making them less challenging and interesting. "That friendliness is kind of pernicious," she said. "They're not equipping the beholder to go outside of oneself, outside of one's comfort zone." In this fashion, she went on, museums have assumed a therapeutic function.

Marc Glimcher, the President and C.E.O. of Pace, seemed to regard therapy as part of immersive art's appeal. "We don't see a sunrise anymore, we don't see a sunset anymore," he told me. "We evolved over millions of years in this incredible environment, and then, over the last hundred, two hundred years, we've closed ourselves in, into these cities that erase nature." People are "hungry for transcendence," Glimcher said; "churches are emptying," and "these artists are trying to fill that gap." Technology, he went on, has facilitated a movement toward "pop art," which prioritizes the audience over the intelligentsia and seeks to skirt the entrenched art establishment. (He described N.F.T.s as similarly representative of this turn.) As a powerful member of the establishment himself, Glimcher seemed ambivalent about how to frame this development. "When you say we're bringing transcendent experiences to millions of people, your heart soars," he said. "When you say this is a populist shift, your heart sinks. The democratization of art sounds great. 'Populist spectacle' "-he let out a groan-"doesn't feel so good."

In 2021, Serpentine released a second "Future Art Ecosystems" report, in which the galleries expanded the art-stack category to include both Superblue and "Van Gogh: the Immersive Experience." The latter isn't a prestige new-media experiment but a large-format art-historical projection show-one of many exhibits that claim to re-present the work of long-dead artists in a rapturous technological context. Similar shows include "Frida: Immersive Dream" ("Immerse yourself in the art and life of Frida!"), "Immersive Klimt Revolution" ("Step inside his electrifying world and be swept away!"), and "Imagine Picasso: The Immersive Exhibition" ("Literally step into the world and works of the master of modern art"). There is "Beyond Monet" ("Become one with his paintings") and "Monet by the Water" ("Wander free in a world shaped by Claude Monet's art"), as well as "Gaudí: the Architect of the Imaginary," "Chagall: Midsummer Night's Dreams," and "Dalí: The Endless Enigma"; the latter is synched to back-to-back albums by Pink Floyd. Most of these exhibitions travel the world, showing in cities across Europe, Asia, and North America. Many are mounted in empty or transitional commercial spaces, as stopgaps of sorts, until a new tenant arrives. Cities, these days, are rich with empty box stores, event spaces, and theatres.

At least in the United States, the sudden proliferation of these shows has been attributed to " Emily in Paris," a Netflix series about a young, daffy American marketing professional with a frightening wardrobe and a penchant for pageantry. In the show's first season, which aired in late 2020, the protagonist visits "Van Gogh, Starry Night," an immersive experience at L'Atelier des Lumières, a real-life "digital arts center" in Paris. "Van Gogh, Starry Night" was not the first immersive Vincent van Gogh exhibit-the form dates back to at least 2008-but suddenly it seemed that walls across North America were being blasted with projections of flattened impasto. At present, there are at least five distinct digital exhibitions showcasing van Gogh's work, stationed in cities across the world: "Van Gogh Alive," "Immersive Van Gogh," "Van Gogh: The Immersive Experience," "Beyond Van Gogh: The Immersive Experience," and "Imagine Van Gogh: The Immersive Exhibition." (The nomenclature brings to mind an Amazon search result.)

We live, supposedly, in the age of "experiences"; the term evokes the tired trope that millennials-the most indebted generation in history-value travel and ephemeral encounters over material goods. In a 2018 Times article titled "The Existential Void of the Pop-Up 'Experience,' " the cultural critic Amanda Hess toured a range of temporary, ticketed experiences in New York City-the Rosé Mansion, Candytopia, the Color Factory, the Museum of Ice Cream's Pint Shop-and concluded that the real experience on offer was posting to social media. Twenty years earlier, in an article for the Harvard Business Review titled "Welcome to the Experience Economy," the business scholars B. Joseph Pine II and James H. Gilmore proposed that commercial services aim to engage people "on an emotional, physical, intellectual, or even spiritual level." There is something very literal about coupling this business philosophy with some of the most famous paintings in the world: visitors are predisposed to awe.

Today, commercial immersive experiences are beginning to move into more traditional, institutional settings. This spring, the Grand Palais, in Paris, will partner with the Louvre to début "La Joconde: Exposition Immersif," an immersive exhibit based on the Mona Lisa that the organizers say will offer a "unique interactive and sensory experience." And, in partnership with Grande Experiences, an Australian content-creation company, Newfields-formerly the Indianapolis Museum of Art-has converted a floor of its building into a dedicated exhibition space for immersive digital art, called THE LUME Indianapolis. Marketing materials describe THE LUME as a "contemporary, next generation, fully immersive digital art gallery" involving a hundred and fifty projectors, a musical score, thematic food-and-beverage options, and "suggestive aromas." (Grande Experiences works with ScentAir, a plug-in-fragrance manufacturer specializing in "memorable customer experiences.") A catalogue of presentations can be shown on rotation; the Grande Experiences portfolio includes "Street Art Alive," "Da Vinci Alive," "Monet & Friends Alive," and "Planet Shark." The inaugural show at Newfields is, unsurprisingly, "Van Gogh Alive," which débuted a decade ago, at Marina Bay Sands, a casino and resort in Singapore.

"Globally, a lot of museums, institutions, they're finding their visitation is dropping off," Rob Kirk, the head of touring experiences at Grande Experiences, told me. "They're looking at ways to bring audiences back-to reënergize the audience. I would say that, in the next five to ten years, there will be more exposure to these types of experiences within those types of institutions." Immersive art experiences are rarely very educational in themselves, but, Kirk said, they might tempt people into education-oriented institutions. "School groups love coming into our experiences," Kirk said. "They can run about, they can get enveloped with the color and the audio. They're not necessarily learning anything, but we're just introducing them in a different way, in some way. Hopefully, they'll get something from it that would engage them further."

Last year, Grande opened THE LUME Melbourne, which it touted as Australia's first digital-art gallery. Still, despite that designation, the space is content-agnostic: Kirk hopes to bring in audiovisual experiences focussed on many different industries and subjects-science, music, history, sports. Grande's goal is to attract the largest possible audience, but Kirk thinks that there is also room for experimentation. "There could be certain displays that present N.F.T.-based art, created by digital artists of today," he told me. (Art Blocks, a platform for digital art, recently opened an N.F.T. gallery in Marfa, Texas.) "It could be the digital equivalent, should we say, of Vincent van Gogh, Leonardo da Vinci, something like that, who would then have their own presentation of their art in a large-format environment." In the future, he suggested, such generalist digital spaces might become fixtures of major cities-institutions on par with museums, art galleries, aquariums, and zoos.

In January, I visited "Immersive Van Gogh" in downtown San Francisco. The show is housed in a trapezoidal, two-story event space that previously served as a Honda dealership and is currently slated for demolition, to clear the way for a towering condo development. The building was once home to the Fillmore West, a famous, short-lived concert venue at which Aretha Franklin, the Grateful Dead, Miles Davis, and Fleetwood Mac performed. Today, it is operated by Non Plus Ultra, a company that specializes in "reactivating" commercial spaces. The building also contains the Unreal Garden, an immersive experience in which visitors don mixed-reality headsets and navigate a blandly psychedelic artificial environment.

Outside, a bouncer watched the door, presiding over roped stanchions, behind which no one stood. Inside, the space had an air of transience, as if the tenants had made only a half-hearted effort to rise to the occasion of their own existence. In the stairwell up to the ballroom, a mounted television flashed a medley of statistics: "56,000 FRAMES OF VIDEO. 400 IMAGES CONTRIBUTED FROM THE WORLD'S FOREMOST ART GALLERIES. 40 PROJECTORS. 11 SERVERS." At the top of the stairs, a plastic mannequin, wrapped strategically in plastic sunflowers, had been placed in an inviting position beneath a mural that read, "We are surrounded by poetry on all sides." The mannequin's wrist seemed to be sliding away from its arm at the joint. A potted fern stood nearby, wilting.

Inside the ballroom, a looped, thirty-five-minute projection was under way. Edith Piaf 's "Je Ne Regrette Rien" blared from overhead speakers as a yellow sun-cropped from "Sower with Setting Sun," and given new life with animation software-swept from wall to wall. About twenty people relaxed on white benches placed in illuminated circles meant to encourage social distancing; two women sat on the ground, talking in hushed tones. I wondered whether the surging popularity of these exhibits might have to do with how they offered a predictable, roomy environment at a time when other indoor public spaces could feel claustrophobic and contagious. (Seeing original paintings, of course, at museums like MoMA and the Met, means standing in a crowd.) An enormous "Girl in White" scrolled past, soundtracked to a cello suite. Her face puckered and folded like a sock puppet's as it slid across the molding. I found an empty circle, sat down, and stared at the wall.

The credits rolled, and the sequence began anew. Sketches of cicadas swarmed the room, buzzing. Smoke rose from the table in "The Potato Eaters." Isolated objects from "Bedroom in Arles" rippled across the walls to moody electronic music. At one end of the room, two young people were palming each other's knees with deep intention. I took a video of saturated light passing over a fire extinguisher and tried to summon a feeling. All that came to me were lines from John Berryman 's "Dream Song 14," in which the speaker quotes his mother:

"Ever to confess you're bored
means you have no

Inner Resources." I conclude now
I have no inner resources, because I am heavy bored.

The poem was in my mind because, a couple of days before, my friend had idly recited it from memory over the phone while holding her infant-a genuinely thrilling and immersive experience.

The music intensified, and the animations chugged toward their denouement. From the depths of "Starry Night Over the Rhône," several of van Gogh's self-portraits wiggled murkily into view, his face superimposed over the river and the sky. Was this really the dawn of a new cultural form? Installation art is old, and so is the critical debate over its meaning and value. Are art stacks, commercial or prestige, primarily an economic idea-a business structure in search of practitioners? The principle features of the model-scalability, financialization, vertical integration-are financial. It seems inevitable that these values will infuse the work, in the same way that N.F.T. art, born of a technological possibility, has its own visual culture, one that appears to emphasize algorithmic generation and proficiency in graphic-design and rendering software. The work looks commercial, because it is fundamentally about commerce.

On the way out, I was routed through the building's spiralling garage, part of which had been converted into a gift shop. Since 2017, Lighthouse Immersive, the production company behind the show, has sold over three million tickets, and earned millions of dollars in gift-shop revenue. My ticket, the cheapest available, had cost nearly fifty dollars; the most expensive option, a ninety-dollar V.I.P. package, included a cushion and a poster. What we were paying for was proximity-not to the paintings themselves, but to the idea of them. The exhibit was a technology demo that traded on mythology. True immersion remains an unusual aesthetic achievement.

I walked down a ramp and through a side exit, and emerged onto an outdoor parking area. I had forgotten that it was daytime. The sun was warm; the sky was clear. Spring came early to San Francisco this year. This is unsettling, like getting away with something-it should be raining-but it's hard not to luxuriate. I was hit with the full force of an expiring afternoon. There were errands to run, phone calls to make, things to worry about. In a city where tech-driven business models routinely flourish and fade, I had the sensation of having witnessed yet another bid for the future. It was a relief to leave it behind.
An earlier version of this article incorrectly named the art studio Drift and James Turrell's "AKHU."

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Anna Wiener writes about the proliferation of technology-driven "immersive" art installations and the rise in the idea of the "art stack" (a vertically integrated, artist-led system of production).

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From the time he was very young, teamLab co-founder Toshiyuki Inoko took pranking to another level. In one instance, he recalls rigging a floorboard at his school so that it spun when walked on, causing the walker to change direction. In another, Inoko transformed an entire classroom into an immersive experience using found wood and cardboard. He remembers his fellow students lining up by the hundreds, down hallways and stairwells, to see his room of tricks.

Today, Inoko's work with the art collective teamLab has led to a similar series of long lines-albeit on a much bigger scale. Over the past 20 years, the group he founded has gone from presenting artworks on single monitors to employing a team of more than 600 people who create immersive digital worlds. Around the globe, people line up to experience the magic of teamLab.

They also pay up: teamLab charges fees for admission, a business model that makes them both a gallery-world disruptor and a fascinating example of the shift to a more experiential art world economy. In 2017, a three-location exhibition of their work through Pace drew an estimated 500,000 visitors, and over $10 million in ticket sales.

This year, teamLab is teaming up with Pace CEO Marc Glimcher once again. The collective is slated to present multiple immersive installations at Superblue, a new, 55,000-square-foot experiential art space in Miami headed up by Mollie Dent-Brocklehurst and Glimcher. As Superblue's long-anticipated opening day approaches, we sat down with Inoko to hear about the early days of teamLab and how he became one of the world's experiential-art powerhouses.
What was your first project?
The first work for teamLab was in 2001. It was a collaboration artwork with a musician. While the musician was singing, people watching the live show could put a comment on the internet. We took these comments and displayed them inside the space, so the comments were floating all around. It was projected on the wall, and the comments eventually created the shape of a tree, kind of like an immersive space, with all of the comments floating.

At the time, making this first artwork was really, really hard because we didn't have enough resources within the organization, and the technology was not that advanced. So once the technology advanced, it actually made it easier to do more complicated things. It sounds much easier than what we are doing right now, but it was actually quite difficult work.
Were there any projects that you thought of at the time, let's say in 2001, that you weren't able to execute because you didn't have the technology?
What we were trying to do from the beginning is make artworks without any boundaries, capturing the scenery without any boundaries, like a lens. To do that, we found out people were actually moving around our exhibition space-even if we only had a monitor-based artwork. We found that people feel more free when they are looking at our artwork, that is why they are moving around our space. But when people are looking at pictures, or traditional sculptures, they just keep standing at one point, focusing on the one thing.

At the very beginning of teamLab, we usually had a small screen, not a big space, like now. Then, in 2004, we displayed artwork using five screens in a row. People could walk around in front of the artwork. But even with the five-channel display, it was finished in like 30 seconds.

At the time, it was too difficult to create an immersive space, like we are doing right now. It was really difficult to make a big space filled with artworks. But now, we can actually display everywhere, inside of museums as well.
How have you seen the landscape of digital art change over the course of your career?
This is not only for digital art, and not only for the art world, I feel it's a trend for the entire world: People now are more interested in having experiences rather than owning something, like artwork. Usually, people buy a painting, sculpture, and then own it in their house or in a museum. But now, people's interests are shifting from there to become more interested in having experiences. We also think it is more important that many people have the opportunity to experience artwork, rather than just limited people buying or owning artwork by themselves.

I think before, many people were interested in seeing very expensive artwork, but the actual price or the physical artwork itself would not have any meaning [to them] in the future. It is more important to give people a meaningful experience with artwork, not the [physical] artwork itself.
Can you buy teamLab's art?
Sure, you can buy teamLab's artwork. Actually, some museums have a teamLab collection. Honestly speaking, we believe giving a meaningful experience is much more important than having expensive artwork. But as you may know, the current art world is more traditional. As artists, we make some artwork that people can actually buy and own. But a majority of the artwork is too difficult to buy. We have a[n immersive] display at Superblue, but a monitor artwork can be displayed in a museum or at a home. So these kinds of things are available for the art market, but that is not what we really want to do. But as an artist in the current art world, we make some artwork available for the collectors and museums as well.
At the helm of teamLab, you manage hundreds of people every day. How do you balance the collaboration between so many people and executing your vision as an artist?
Everyone at teamLab knows I don't do any management work. [Laughs] So I'm not balancing anything, I'm just focusing on what I want to make.
Could you break down your artistic process? How does it work with so many people involved?
That's a good question. It's difficult to have a clear answer for that because it's always different. It's actually difficult to say when the actual beginning of the creation is. Usually, at the very beginning, when I get an idea, I don't have any clear goal. I'll get some idea during a conversation with someone, then briefly start to do something with some other people, and so these kinds of seeds of the idea are everywhere. And then, sometimes, when the idea becomes more concrete, then we start to get more people who have actual skills to develop it further, focusing on making the idea into the artwork. But at the very beginning, when the idea is thought, we don't have any clear goal usually. So the team gets bigger and bigger throughout the process.
How would you explain what you do to someone who has no idea how technology works?
I would say that I like to make things that change people's perception.
Who are some of your inspirations as an artist?
I'm very interested in other artists' works. I have visited many museums and exhibitions as well. I definitely get some inspiration from so many different artists, but there are no specific people I am influenced by. I really respect James Turrell, who is going to exhibit artwork here at Superblue with us as well.
Where do you see the future of digital interactive art experiences?
I don't have a clear idea of what interactive digital art will be like in the future, but artwork itself will be shifting its value from ownership to giving an opportunity for many people to experience it. Before, artworks were supposed to be owned by a rich art collector or something. But, in the future, artworks should be, or could be, open for everyone to experience.
What is the best advice anyone has ever given you?
Generally, I do not listen to people. Not only for advice, just in general. [Laughs] Don't listen too much. When I have an idea, and I explain it to other people, and other people say, "Oh, it's awesome." This kind of idea is usually good. But when I have a really good idea, and I explain it to other people, and their reaction is not really positive-in that case, this idea could be .
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity. Translation by Noriko Taniguchi.

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TeamLab Co-Founder Toshiyuki Inoko on How He Went From High-School Prankster to an Architect of the Art World's Experience Economy

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The co-founder of the art collective shares his visions for the future of experiential art, and what teamLab has in store next.

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What will my dissertation include?

What questions will I ask and answer?

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How people react in an immersive space Vs. a gallery.

People visiting a real Van Gogh painting Vs. People Visiting a Van Gogh Immersive Experience.

Younger generation being introduced and interested in older artworks.

Look at the demographic.

More accessible for families and young children.

More socially acceptable for children to run around and shout etc. (have fun) in an immersive space rather than in a museum.

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Who is she?

Yayoi Kusama is a Japanese artist who is sometimes called 'the princess of polka dots'. Although she makes lots of different types of art - paintings, sculptures, performances and installations - they have one thing in common, DOTS!

What's with all the dots?

Yayoi Kusama tells the story of how when she was a little girl she had a hallucination that freaked her out. She was in a field of flowers when they all started talking to her! The heads of flowers were like dots that went on as far as she could see, and she felt as if she was disappearing or as she calls it 'self-obliterating' - into this field of endless dots. This weird experience influenced most of her later work.

By adding all-over marks and dots to her paintings, drawings, objects and clothes she feels as if she is making them (and herself) melt into, and become part of, the bigger universe. She said:

'Our earth is only one polka dot among a million stars in the cosmos. Polka dots are a way to infinity. When we obliterate nature and our bodies with polka dots, we become part of the unity of our environment'.

She also creates environments of dots so that we can experience this feeling of self-obliteration too. She calls these rooms her 'Infinity Rooms', and creates them by installing hundreds of flashing coloured LED lights into mirrored rooms. The pinpricks of light in the dark room reflect endlessly in the mirrors, making you feel like you are in an apparently endless space. The dots surround and engulf you...it's very hard to tell where you end and where the rest of the room begins!

How did she start?

Yayoi was born in Japan in 1929. She loved drawing and painting and although her parents didn't want her to be an artist, she was determined. When her mum tore up her drawings, she made more. When she could not afford to buy art materials, she used mud and old sacks to make art. This is a drawing she made of her mum when she was 10-years-old.

Eventually Yayoi Kusama persuaded her parents to let her go to art school and study painting.

In the late 1950s she moved to New York as lots of the most exciting art seemed to be happening there. It must have been a bit frightening arriving in a big city with such a different culture from what she knew. But she was determined to conquer New York. She later wrote about her feisty attitude: 'I would stand up to them all with a single polka dot'.

She had the first of many exhibitions there in 1959. She met and inspired important artists including Donald Judd, Andy Warhol and Joseph Cornell, and her art was a part of exciting art developments such as pop art and minimalism. She was also one of the first artists to experiment with performance and action art.

As well as being an art pioneer, Yayoi Kusama put her creativity into other things including music, design, writing and fashion.

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Find out who is Yayoi Kusama. Find out about her dots, her art and infinity mirrors with this Tate Kids art homework guide, includes facts for kids.

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Washingtonian - The website that Washington lives by.

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Hirshhorn’s Kusama Exhibition Will Stay Open Through the Summer

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Find out more about Yayoi Kusama’s art, childhood, activism and unique fashion sense

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Find out more about Yayoi Kusama’s art, childhood, activism and unique fashion sense

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Maggie West is a Los Angeles-based artist known for her colorful photo and video art installations. Her video work continues to push the boundaries of traditional time-lapse photography.

In 2023, Maggie was commissioned to create Coachella's first photography exhibit. Premiering at the festival in April, West's piece was one of the world's largest three-dimensional photography installations to date, further showcasing her innovative approach to photographic exhibitions.

West has contributed many large-scale architectural installations to the Los Angeles landscape. In 2020, she was commissioned to create the central artwork in the new Netflix campus located in the center of Hollywood. Her other commercial clients include Google, Coca-Cola, Adidas, and Universal.

West has also created a number of artworks and installations for notable institutions such as the California Academy of Sciences, The Smithsonian Magazine, and The City of West Hollywood. Her work has been featured in magazines such as Variety, Paper, The Huffington Post, Playboy, Allure, Cosmopolitan, and Newsweek..

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Maggie West is a Los Angeles-based artist known for her colorful photo and video art installations. Her video work continues to push the boundaries of traditional time-lapse photography. In 2023, Maggie was commissioned to create Coachella's first photography exhibit.