Build your own future

“Future World”, the new permanent exhibition at the innovative ArtScience Museum in Singapore, puts visitors right inside the artwork on display, with the installations reacting dynamically to their presence.
Spanning 1,500 square metres, “Future World” is a collaborative effort between the museum and teamLab, a Japanese interdisciplinary group. It offers a digital world of 15 interactive art installations that come to life through cutting-edge science and technology.
“We’re thrilled to launch ‘Future World’ to mark our fifth anniversary,” says museum executive director Honor Harger. “At the ArtScience Museum we explore the intersection between art, science, technology and culture. Our exhibitions and programmes show that it’s the interplay between these areas that creates innovation and new ideas. We believe that, where art and science meet, the future is made. So, we are naturally drawn to teamLab’s extraordinary work.
“Their fluid combination of artistic expression, technological ingenuity and scientific enquiry and their insistence that ‘We are the future’ make them ideal partners for the museum.
“‘Future World’ is an invitation to have fun, to play and explore,” Harger adds, “but also to reflect on our own position relative to the natural world, other people and the universe. We hope to evoke in visitors a new and imaginative sense of wonder in the world around us.”
A creative collective, teamLab brings together professionals from various fields in the digital community – artists, programmers, engineers, computer-graphics animators, mathematicians, architects, Web- and print-graphic designers and editors.
These “ultra-technologists” aim to achieve a balance between art, science, technology and creativity.
“I developed an interest in science from wanting to understand the world around me,” teamLab founder Toshiyuki Inoko says as he unveils the group’s first and largest permanent artwork exhibition outside of Japan.
“Science is about understanding and predicting phenomena by identifying effective rules for understanding the natural world. The difference between art and science is that there are no absolute ‘right’ answers to an artist’s questions. The answers come from people who sense beauty, are moved in some way, or feel shocked. Then, as a result of the selected answers, people’s understanding of the world has expanded, even shifting social values.
“We hope to expand humanity’s values and upgrade our brains through ‘Future World’ in such a way that the whole world in the future will refer to this exhibition and say, ‘This is where the story began.’”
Pixels replace the customary materials of art – the paint, glass, wood and metal. Children and adults experience both the interactive and non-interactive installations digitally. The displays come from teamLab’s extensive collection of artworks and are arranged in four categories.
In the section called “Nature”, humankind’s impact on the natural world is examined. One exhibit is titled “Flowers and People Cannot be Controlled but Live Together”. Blossoms gently bloom, but then wither and die at the visitor’s touch.
“100 Years Sea” visualises the anticipated rise in sea levels through 2109 due to climate change, based on World Wildlife Foundation estimates. The imagery is eerie, almost haunting, but also as aesthetically pleasing an “artwork” as any you’re apt to find, given the subject matter.
Then it’s off to “Town”, with exhibits that foster cooperation in the shared space of urban settings. It includes “Sketch Town”, where a pad and crayons are provided for visitors to doodle their ideas for a car, truck, plane or rocket. You can even design a municipal transportation network in “Connecting! Train Block”, creating roads and railways by linking wooden blocks. “A Table Where Little People Live” involves interacting with miniature figures as they go about their daily lives.
The jaw-dropping digital work “Universe of Water Particles” marks the transition point from “Town” to “Park”. As in “Sketch Town”, you get to create your own underwater world with “Sketch Aquarium”, complete with fish and other sea creatures waiting to be fed. “Story of a Time when Gods were Everywhere” is a digitally projected world where hieroglyphic characters turn into natural elements at a touch and, just as in nature, no two moments are repeated and you have a fresh experience with each encounter.
“Light Ball Orchestra” affords a chance to compose a symphony by bouncing coloured balls around, and “Create! Hopscotch for Geniuses” indulges your inner child with a round of interactive hopscotch that becomes more vibrant as your accuracy improves.
Finally there’s “Space”, in which viewers arrive at the heart of the universe and experience astrophysical phenomena through an interactive installation utilising 170,000 LED lights
 

This way forward

“Future World” is a permanent exhibition at the ArtScience Museum at the Marina Bay Sands resort in Singapore.
The museum is open daily from 10 to 7, though no newcomers are admitted after 6.
Tickets cost S$8 to $28 (Bt203 to Bt710) and can be used repeatedly on the same day.
Find out more at www.MarinaBaySands.com/ArtScienceMuseum.