teamLab Borderless: MORI Building DIGITAL ART MUSEUM

teamLab Borderless: MORI Building DIGITAL ART MUSEUM is an immersive digital art museum created by the interdisciplinary collective teamLab. It presents a “museum without a map”, where artworks move freely through spaces, interact with one another, and form a continuous environment rather than separate rooms or fixed galleries.

The museum is structured as a single, borderless world. Instead of remaining in designated areas, artworks leave their original locations, merge with other works, and influence each other. This creates a constantly changing environment in which no visit unfolds exactly the same way twice.

Visitors are encouraged to move freely, wander, and explore. The experience emphasises physical presence: perception emerges through walking, observing, and interacting rather than viewing from a fixed point. The artworks evolve in response to human activity, reinforcing the idea that the viewer becomes part of the exhibition itself.

The project is based on the idea that people do not perceive the world as a camera does. A camera frame creates a boundary between observer and image, while human perception is continuous and bodily. The installations therefore avoid rigid visual framing and instead allow viewers to approach, touch, and move through digital phenomena.

Because the perspective is not fixed and multiple focal points exist simultaneously, visitors maintain spatial awareness and agency. The museum’s environment changes dynamically depending on where people stand, how they move, and how many visitors are present.

Selected Installations

Universe of Water Particles on a Rock Where People Gather
A digital waterfall flows over a virtual rock formation. Water is simulated in real time according to physical behaviour and is influenced by visitor presence. The flow divides around bodies and reforms once space clears, emphasising the relationship between human movement and natural phenomena.

Sketch Ocean
Visitors draw fish on paper, which are scanned and released into a projected ocean. The fish swim alongside others created by different participants, react to touch, and may travel beyond the room into other artworks. Certain species can also appear in installations in other locations worldwide.

EN TEA HOUSE
Preparing tea triggers digital flowers to bloom inside the cup. The blossoms continue to grow as long as tea remains, presenting the beverage itself as a contained, infinite environment that is ultimately consumed.

People Don’t See the World as Through a Camera
When viewed through a specific camera position, text appears in space; it disappears when seen with the naked eye. The work examines how lenses create cognitive boundaries between observer and world.

Sketch Factory

Adjacent to the exhibition, the Sketch Factory transforms drawings from Sketch Ocean into physical items such as badges, towels, T-shirts, tote bags, and paper crafts. The drawn fish appears digitally in the factory space before being “produced” as a souvenir.

Artistic Approach

teamLab consists of artists, programmers, engineers, CG animators, mathematicians, and architects working collaboratively. Their works explore relationships between self and world, attempting to dissolve perceptual boundaries – between viewer and artwork, body and environment, and one artwork and another.