A Forest Where Gods Live Digitizes an Ancient Forest into an Interactive Art Space
The annually held open-air exhibition is open at Mifuneyama Rakuen in Kyushu’s Takeo Hot Springs, returning for its ninth year
A Forest Where Gods Live Digitizes an Ancient Forest into an Interactive Art Space
A Forest Where Gods Live Digitizes an Ancient Forest into an Interactive Art Space
Emerging from a 3 million-year-old forest in the vast nature of Mifuneyama Rakuen in Kyushu, teamLab’s nighttime forest museum teamLab: A Forest Where Gods Live has returned this summer for the ninth year. It’s open through November 5, 2023.
In the vast forest, teamLab incorporates nature and ruins in over 20 artworks, creating an interactive art space through nature and digital technology.
Relationship among Nature, Humans and Time
teamLab: A Forest Where Gods Live begins with people stepping into the forest that stretches across the darkness. It features light and sound, as well as flora installations that respond to actions. When someone approaches it, walking through the forest, it reveals a waterfall of light, flowers blooming and scattering on a giant rock, trees shining in response to human movement, and a work drawn by fish projected onto the surface of a pond. In this exhibition, teamLab explores new forms of expression using digital technology based on the relationship between nature, humans, and time.
Expansive Garden
Mifuneyama Rakuen is an expansive garden located in an ancient forest that spreads across 500,000 square meters. This outdoor exhibition transforms nature into art without altering its natural features. Since teamLab’s lifework project started in 2015, many new artworks have been explored and created in this place.
3 million-year-old Mountain
The iconic mountain that sits at the heart of the forest, Mt. Mifune (Mifuneyama) is said to have risen from the Ariake Sea 3 million years ago. Later, 1,300 years ago, the monk Gyoki entered the mountain and carved and enshrined 500 Arhats. In the late Edo Period in 1845, the 28th Lord of Takeo created Mifuneyama Rakuen Park on the 500,000 square meter land at the foot of Mifuneyama.
Borderless Continuity of the Activities of Humans and Nature
The forest, rocks, and caves of Mifuneyama Rakuen have formed over a long time. And people of every age have sought meaning in them in this ongoing relationship between nature and humans for millennia.
teamLab believes that these shapes and textures represent the long continuity of time itself. And they serve as a trace of the existence and activities of nature and humans that have taken place since ancient times. By turning nature into art in its natural state through digital technology, the project explores the fact that today is an extension of that long continuity.
“I myself wandered and became lost in this place where the boundary between the park and forest. And I could feel how my existence lies atop the borderless continuity of the activities of humans and nature that have taken place over a long period of time. That is why we wanted to create this exhibition. People can wander and lose their way in this vast park and forest.”
– Toshiyuki Inoko, founder of teamLab
Exhibition Information
teamLab: A Forest Where Gods Live
mifuneyamarakuen.teamlab.art
#AForestWhereGodsLive #teamLab
Dates: July 14 – November 5, 2023
Address: Mifuneyama Rakuen (4100 Takeo, Takeo-cho, Takeo City, Saga)
