Created in a computer-simulated environment, teamLab’s Universe of Water Particles is a digital waterfall that draws on the ancient Japanese’s concepts of space, time and the environment.

In traditional Japanese painting, oceans, rivers and bodies of water are expressed as a curvilinear series of lines. These lines give the impression of life, as though water itself were a living creature. The ancient Japanese depicted water in such a manner because they perceived the world they were in and nature as a living entity, of which they were an integral part.

Informed by these ideas, teamLab created water particles in a virtual 3D environment, expressing the materiality of water as a continuum of particles that flow in accordance with the laws of physics. Reasoning that while compiling visual information in their minds, the ancient Japanese would have experienced time on a longer axis, a time lag that left an afterimage was created during the simulation of the particles and lines were formed from the afterimages.

Challenging current modes of perception, Universe of Water Particles seeks to tear away the seemingly indivisible barrier between subject and object, observer and entity, while immersing the viewer in an experience not unlike that of the ancient Japanese.

-Ikkan Art International

Image: © teamLab