teamLab Planets TOKYO Undergoes Major Expansion: Massive “Athletic Forest” and More to Open on January 22 2025

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Educational projects “Athletic Forest,” “Catching and Collecting Extinct Forest,” and “Future Park” to feature over 10 new art installations

TOKYO–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Nov. 05, 2024

“teamLab Planets TOKYO DMM” in Toyosu, Tokyo (hereinafter referred to as teamLab Planets), will unveil a large-scale expansion on January 22, 2025.

This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20241030183851/en/

teamLab, Rapidly Rotating Bouncing Spheres in the Caterpillar House, Courtesy teamLab Borderless, Jeddah (c) teamLab

The expansion increases teamLab Planets' area by 1.5 times, introducing an extensive space themed around educational projects. The new additions include Athletic Forest, a complex, multi-dimensional creative athletic space; Catching and Collecting Extinct Forest where visitors can capture and study extinct animals; and Future Park, a collaborative space for co-creation. Over 10 new artworks will be exhibited across these spaces.

Additionally, a new Sketch Factory will be established, allowing visitors to take home original products (such as tin badges, hand towels, T-shirts, tote bags, and paper crafts) featuring the drawings they create within the artwork spaces. Furthermore, the outdoor areas will also undergo a major renewal.

Tickets for visits until February 2025 are now available for purchase on the official website.

* Unlike the existing Water Area and Garden, where visitors experience the artworks barefoot, visitors in Athletics Forest, Catching and Collecting Extinct Forest, and Future Park will explore the complex, three-dimensional spaces wearing comfortable shoes.

ATHLETICS FOREST

Athletics Forest is a creative athletic space based on the concept of understanding the world through the body and thinking about the world three-dimensionally. People immerse their entire body in the complex and physically challenging three-dimensional space of the interactive world.

“Humans perceive the world with their bodies and think with their bodies. When you explore a complex, three-dimensional world with your own body, you physically perceive the world three-dimensionally and in turn your thoughts become three-dimensional. We started this project, Athletics Forest, with the hopes to enhance three-dimensional and higher-dimensional thinking.

Spatial awareness is said to be correlated with innovation and creativity. I grew up in a rural area and played in the mountains, but in today's society and schools, the body is stationary. I think cities are surrounded too much by flat information such as books, TV, and smartphone screens. That is why we created a three-dimensional space that excessively demands the physical body. It is a space where people can perceive art with their physical bodies.”

– teamLab Founder, Toshiyuki Inoko

Read more about the Athletics Forest concept:

https://www.teamlab.art/concept/athletics-forest/

Rapidly Rotating Bouncing Spheres in the Caterpillar House

teamLab, 2020-, Interactive Digital Installation, Sound: teamLab

Rapidly Rotating Bouncing Sphere is a space made up of spheres that people can jump on. The spheres rotate at high speed, but when people approach them, they stop rotating and become easier to step on.

Multi Jumping Universe

teamLab, 2018-, Interactive Digital Installation, Sound: DAISHI DANCE

Multi Jumping is a flexible surface that people can jump on, and sink or jump higher than usual.

Aerial Climbing through a Flock of Colored Birds

teamLab, 2018-, Interactive Digital Installation, Sound: teamLab

Aerial Climbing is a space where horizontal bars of varying colors are suspended by ropes and float three-dimensionally in the air. People use these bars to navigate the space in mid-air through three dimensions, trying not to fall.

Balance Stepping Stones in the Invisible World

teamLab, 2020-, Interactive Digital Installation, Sound: teamLab

Balance Stepping Stones are stepping stones that interactively change when a person steps on them, emitting a color and tone that affect the space. When a person steps on a stone, it wobbles in various ways.

Inverted Globe Graffiti Nature – Red List

teamLab, 2016-, Interactive Digital Installation, Sound: Hideaki Takahashi

All the various creatures drawn by everyone live in the inverted globe. Color in a creature on the paper provided, and see the picture you have drawn come to life and move in front of you.

Sliding through the Fruit Field

teamLab, 2016-, Interactive Digital Installation

Various kinds of fruit are growing on the slope. Balls are also bouncing around. The visitors become the sunlight and slide down the slope.

CATCHING AND COLLECTING FOREST

Catching and Collecting Forest is a learning space based on the concept of Catch, Study, Release, in which people explore the world with their bodies, discovering, catching, and broadening their interests based on what they catch. Visitors explore with their smartphones, capture various creatures, study them, and create their very own collection book.

The Catching and Collecting Forest at teamLab Planets is a forest of extinction. It is a forest of extinct animals.

“Physically exploring with others, discovering and catching something, then taking the chance to broaden interests based on what was caught. This is what we have been doing naturally over the long course of human history.

For humanity, the acts of catching and gathering are fun, educational, and part of life.”

– teamLab Founder, Toshiyuki Inoko

Read more about the Catching and Collecting Forest concept:

https://www.teamlab.art/concept/catching/

Catching and Collecting Extinct Forest

teamLab, 2020, Interactive Digital installation, Endless, Sound: Hideaki Takahashi

Depending on the season, different animals live in this forest and ocean that change with the flow of real time. When you touch an animal, it will turn to face you or run away.

Download the Catching and Collecting Forest smartphone application.

When you use your smartphone's camera to look at an animal moving in the space and shoot a Study Arrow at the animal in the camera’s view, the arrow flies out from your phone into the real space. When the Study Arrow reaches the animal, it disappears from the space and is added to your smartphone’s collection. Information about the animals you catch will be stored in the app's collection book.

When you swipe a captured animal towards a location you can see in the app’s camera, the animal is released and returns to that location.

FUTURE PARK

Future Park is an educational project based on the concept of collaborative creation (co-creation). It is an amusement park where people can enjoy creating the world freely with others. An artwork comes to life through the process of people creating something together with others. As people continue to co-create, the artwork evolves endlessly.

Read more about the Future Park concept:

https://www.teamlab.art/concept/future-park/

Sketch Umwelt World

teamLab, 2025, Interactive Digital Installation, Sound: teamLab

Color in an airplane, butterfly, or hawk on the paper provided and see the picture you have drawn appear three-dimensionally, flying through the world in front of you. If you touch them, they speed up or fly away.

A Table where Little People Live

teamLab, 2013-, Interactive Digital Installation

This is a table where little people live. If you put something, such as your hand, on top of the table, the little people will jump on to it. Depending on the shape of the objects you place on the table, the little people will slide, jump, or climb.

A Musical Wall where Little People Live

teamLab, 2017-, Interactive Digital Installation, Sound: teamLab

This is a musical wall where little people live. When stamps of various shapes such as mushrooms, sheep barns, or long sticks of ice are attached to the wall, these objects appear in the world of the little people. The little people notice these and start jumping onto them.

A Window to the Universe where Little People Live

teamLab, 2022-, Interactive Digital Installation, Sound: teamLab

This is a window into the universe where little people live. You can create a picture by drawing lines with a light pen or creating shapes with a light stamp. Each line has a special power depending on its color, and influences the little people’s world. The shapes created by the light stamps appear in the little people’s world and start to move.

ART

The Athletic Forest will also feature two new art installations: Autonomous Abstraction, and Existence in the Flow Creates Vortices.

Autonomous Abstraction

teamLab, 2022-, Interactive Digital Installation, Endless, Sound: teamLab

Autonomous abstraction.

The dots of light blink and change color in cycles unique to each dot. A spontaneous order phenomenon occurs between dots that are close to each other, and their hues and the rhythm at which they blink gradually synchronize.

Existence in the Flow Creates Vortices

teamLab, 2022, Interactive Digital Installation, Endless, Sound: teamLab

Vortices are created behind people as they climb against the flow. Although a vortex is steady, it is constantly moving and swelling like a powerful life-form.

SKETCH FACTORY

This is a factory where the creatures that you draw can be made into an original item (tin badge, hand towel, T-shirt, tote bag or papercraft) and taken home.

Make an order at the Sketch Factory with your drawing from Inverted Globe Graffiti Nature and Sketch Umwelt World, and the drawing will appear inside the Sketch Factory and begin to move about. When the drawing enters the printer production will begin and it will turn into a tin badge, hand towel, T-shirt, tote bag or papercraft.

* To experience Sketch Factory and purchase products, an admission to teamLab Planets is required.

teamLab Planets Concept

Together with Others, Immerse your Entire Body, Perceive with your Body, and Become One with the World

teamLab Planets is a museum where you walk through water, and a garden where you become one with the flowers. It comprises 4 large-scale artwork spaces and 2 gardens created by art collective teamLab.

People go barefoot and immerse their entire bodies in the vast artworks together with others. The artworks change under the presence of people, blurring the perception of boundaries between the self and the works. Other people also create change in the artworks, blurring the boundaries between themselves and the works, and creating a continuity between the self, the art, and others.

Official website: teamlab.art.planets

About teamLab Planets

An internationally acclaimed and globally popular art museum.

In Google's “Year in Search 2023” annual search ranking, teamLab Planets ranked in the top 5 for “Most Popular Art Museums in the world (*1). Amidst global museums with over a century of history, teamLab Planets is the sole museum from Japan to make the list. Furthermore, teamLab Planets also won the “Asia's Leading Tourist Attraction 2023”(*2) from the World Travel Awards, , often considered the Oscars of the travel industry, making it the first Japanese attraction to win this accolade.

*1 “These Were the Most Popular Museums in the World, According to Google's 'Year in Search.“ artnet. December 20, 2023.

https://news.artnet.com/art-world/google-trends-top-museums-teamlab-ark-encounter-2411845

*2 “Asia's Leading Tourist Attraction 2023, teamLab Planets TOKYO DMM, Japan.”

https://www.worldtravelawards.com/award-asias-leading-tourist-attraction-2023

Visitor Information

teamLab Planets TOKYO DMM

Toyosu, Tokyo (6-1-16 Toyosu, Koto-ku, Tokyo)

teamLab Planets in Toyosu, Tokyo, is conveniently accessible from popular tourist destinations like Odaiba, Tsukiji Market, and Ginza.

Opening Hours: Daily 9:00 – 22:00

*December 31 (Tue) – January 2 (Thu): 9:00 AM – 9:00 PM

*January 17 (Fri) – January 18 (Sat), January 21 (Tue) – 9:00 – 16:00

Closed on: November 7 (Thu), December 2 (Mon) – December 13 (Fri), January 20 (Mon), and February 6 (Thu)