Drawing on the Water Surface Created by the Dance of Koi and People, Infinity
teamLab (founded 2001) · 2016 to 2018
You wade into a pool of warm water that reaches your knees, in a dark room whose edges you cannot see. Across the surface of the water swim shoals of luminous koi, painted in light by projectors overhead. They circle your legs, dart away and return, and their movement leaves trails of colour that spread across the whole pool like ink dropped into a basin. When a koi collides with a person it bursts into flowers, and the flowers scatter over the water and fade. The room is filled with the quiet sound of moving water and a slow musical score.
Nothing here is a recording. The koi are generated by software that reads where each visitor is standing through sensors and makes the fish react in real time, so their paths depend entirely on the people in the pool. Notice that the flowers change with the seasons: cherry blossoms in spring, sunflowers in summer, autumn leaves and winter plum. Stand still for a while and the fish grow curious and gather around you; walk quickly and they scatter. The trails they leave build up into an abstract painting on the water that is never the same twice, which is the drawing of the title.
teamLab first showed a version of this koi pool in 2016 and developed it into the infinite form for the opening of Planets in 2018. It is the clearest example of the collective's idea that the visitor should become part of the work rather than an observer of it, since without people in the water there are no collisions, no flowers and no drawing. The water is kept warm, and towels are handed out at the exit. Children usually try to catch the fish; adults soon do the same.
Did You Know? The flowers that bloom when a koi hits your leg change with the real season outside the museum.
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