Tokyo-based multimedia collective group teamLab has signed a partnership agreement with Saudi Arabia’s Ministry of Culture to provide immersive experiences for a new digital art museum in Jeddah, according to reports, the latest investment by the Saudi government into the culture and lifestyle industry in the Kingdom.
The new museum, called TeamLab Borderless Jeddah, will open in 2023 and will “house experiential pieces by the interdisciplinary collective, which comprises artists, programmers, engineers, computer graphics animators, mathematicians, architects and graphic designers,” according to The National.
The teamLab agreement is for 10 years and is part of Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030 framework and the Quality of Life program.
teamLab is known for producing “crowdpleasing immersive experiences awash with virtual waterfalls and flowers,” theartnewspaper.com reports. teamLab aims to “explore the relationship between the self and the world and new perceptions through art. 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 perception 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 of life,” the company says of its work.
The National describes what teamLab has done and what might be in store for visitors to the new museum when completed:
“Their work is articulated in light, sound and touch, programmed to respond to multisensory stimuli. In one piece, Multi-Jumping Universe, visitors spring on enormous flexible floors as their movement directs the flow of light and music around them; in Hopscotch for Geniuses: Bounce on the Water visitors hop on to shapes that appear on the floor, triggering the appearance of fish, insects and other animals. Other installations travel across gallery spaces, changing every time with new visitors.”
The Jeddah museum will open in 2023 near Al Balad, the city’s old town and Unesco World Heritage Site. The teamLab project could also establish a venue in Riyadh.
teamLab Borderless Jeddah is the latest investment into the Kingdom’s culture and society in line with Vision 2030. The new museum follows other cultural ventures such as the Desert X sculpture exhibition which opened in the AlUla region in northwest Saudi Arabia earlier this year.
Prince Badr bin Abdullah bin Mohammed bin Farhan Al- Saud is Saudi Arabia’s Minister of Culture.
[IMAGE: teamLab’s Catching and Collecting Forest. teamLab, 2020, Interactive Digital installation, Endless, Sound: Hideaki Takahashi. Screenshot via teamlab.art/]
