The Infinite Crystal Universe
teamLab (founded 2001) · 2018
You step through a curtain into a room that seems to have no floor, no ceiling and no end. Thousands of strands of tiny lights hang from above, and every wall and the floor beneath your feet are mirrors, so the points of light repeat into infinity in every direction. Waves of colour ripple through the strands, sometimes as slow drifting galaxies, sometimes as sudden bursts that race past you like meteor showers. The people around you become silhouettes drifting through a field of stars, and after a minute or two it is hard to tell which way is up.
The piece is built from what teamLab calls point light sculpture. Each light strand is addressed individually, so the three dimensional space of the room becomes a kind of volumetric screen on which the collective can draw shapes and movements in the air rather than on a flat surface. Stand still and watch how a form is built up from single points, the way a printed image is built up from dots. If you open the teamLab app on your phone you can choose an element, a planet or a comet or a flower, and throw it into the room, where it joins the flow and alters what everyone else is seeing.
The crystal universe has become the most photographed work in the museum and the image most people associate with teamLab. It grew out of earlier crystal installations the collective made from 2015 onwards and was rebuilt at a larger scale for the opening of Planets in 2018. Because the room responds to visitors, no two moments are alike; the collective describes its works as existing only in the present, created continuously by the people inside them. Look down at your feet before you leave, the reflection below is as deep as the sky above.
Did You Know? The mirrored floor is why the museum asks visitors not to wear skirts; everything below you is reflected back up.
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