How 19th-century Singaporean illustrations inspired the 21st-century Japanese digital art collective, teamLab.
How 19th-century Singaporean illustrations inspired the 21st-century Japanese digital art collective, teamLab.
A small tapir wanders through a lush forest searching for its parents, while tropical birds fill the sky… This magical scene, which wraps around the National Museum of Singapore’s newly-reopened Glass Rotunda, is the latest immersive masterpiece to come out of the famed teamLab studios in Tokyo. The inspiration for this digital art installation? The William Farquhar Collection of Natural History Drawings, commissioned by the first British Resident and Commandant of Singapore in the early 19th century.
When teamLab was approached by the National Museum about the commission, its members thought about what Singapore meant to them. Not surprisingly, greenery came to mind. That prompted the museum’s curators to tell their collaborators about the natural history drawings they had in their archives. After sifting through 477 illustrations, the team chose 70 to digitally bring to life for a new generation in Story of the Forest.
“The drawings of the William Farquhar Collection represent an interesting fusion of the Chinese artist’s traditional methods of expression mixed with their desire to emulate the Western method of natural history drawings with perspective. Sometimes, certain features are exaggerated, giving the drawings a specific charm,” says Takashi Kudo from teamLab. “The biggest challenge for us was to maintain this charm and beauty when converting the animals into 3D models.”
The teamLab collective was started by two engineers from Tokyo University—Inoko Toshiyuki and Aoki Shunsuke, and Toshiyuki’s childhood friend, fellow IT expert Yoshimura JÕ. There are now over 400 people working at the teamLab studios in Tokyo, including programmers, CG animators, architects and engineers. The team might be large, but each ultra-technologist, as they call themselves, is committed to one simple task—to blur the line between art and the viewer, making each of its vivid colourful pieces as interactive as possible.
At the recent teamLab “DMM.Planet Art” exhibit in Tokyo, visitors were able to use their smartphones to release butterflies into the image, and watch fish transform into flowers upon colliding with the visitor’s body. With Story of the Forest, teamLab wanted to bring the same sense of interaction to Singapore—only this time around, using the interactive aspect to create a sense of community. In cities where people are usually fighting for their own piece of space and solitude, it wanted to show how the presence of others in a busy city could be a positive thing. “Factors such as whether there were any viewers that saw the work five minutes before you did, or what the viewer next to you is doing, suddenly become important,” says Kudo. “If the effect of another person’s presence on the art is beautiful, it is possible that the person’s presence itself will be seen as beautiful.”
While the theme was clear from the start, conceptualising the piece at the National Museum proved to be far more challenging. “In particular, how to effectively use the different spaces within the exhibit: The bridge, glass dome, passageway and drum; and how to link up these different spaces to create one homogenous installation,” explains Kudo. “The size and scale of the spaces were also a challenge in terms of creating the story technically. But it was the fantastic drawings of the William Farquhar Collection that helped bring the whole ‘Story of the Forest’ to life.”
While teamLab’s work is now wanted all over the world— it has exhibitions coming up in Taipei’s Huashan 1914 Creative Park, Derby QUAD in London and various sites across Japan—it took a long time for it to be recognised in its home country.
Even though its members had been working together since 2001, it wasn’t until fellow countryman, artist and mentor, Takashi Murakami exhibited its work at his Kaikai Kiki gallery in Taipei in 2011 that it was finally welcomed onto the world stage. Naming the exhibition “We Are the Future,” it was clear that it was set to be a force to be reckoned with.
Now, almost six years on, Kudo believes that digital art is receiving the credit it deserves. “We are seeing the birth of a new paradigm. The human race can move forward, collaboratively, feeling its way towards a new stage.”
Like other artists in the digital age, teamLab is not only trying to break new boundaries, but also hold onto what’s important from the past. Often referencing Japanese cultural practices, such as calligraphy and music, in its innovative works, it has created a marriage between the past and the future, through an approach that “explores which parts of these concepts we have lost during the modern period, and what transformation allowed some of these concepts to continue into contemporary society,” says Kudo. It is the future, indeed.
Story of the Forest by teamLab is now on permanent exhibition at the National Museum of Singapore. Visit http://www.nationalmuseum.sg
