Team Lab Borderless holy smokes

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Months before our trip began, Kylie would show me fantastic pictures of sci fi light shows and insist we need to visit this art installation in Tokyo. I didn’t quite get it but also the pictures were stunning so when Kylie announced she was booking tickets I was up for it.

Honestly though I. Had. No. Idea…

Team Lab Borderless is the most incredible interactive art display I have ever seen. When we walked into the first area (pictured above) I thought “ok, this is what this place is”.

But as we explored it just kept revealing more and more and more.

I was thankful for the kids, as their inclinations taught me a lot. I would not have thought to smear the colours around on the wall, and maybe would never have realized that they would react.

I would not have thought to hit the birds flying by, or swipe at the butterflies, and I would have missed them exploding into stars, or dying on the floor…

Also the kids were much more able to navigate this dreamscape, recognizing where we had been before and seeing hidden doors into new realms. Ty in particular was skilled at investigating new zones, returning to the crossroads and then dragging his starstruck parents though the sensory maelstrom. I know I sound a bit cheesy but seriously…

The below area was full of toplit lily pads that allowed you to find a path between them, and the walls were mirrors making the room feel endless. Every room had different music, but it wasn’t a tune it was a deep thrumming with intermittent percussion and rising strings.

However this room was my absolute favourite. In reductionist terms it was made of hanging fiber optic lines creating a lit up maze of corridors, but the lights were centrally controlled producing intricate patterns that played through the entire room, simulating thunderstorms, flying through space, being inside a cloud of spirit birds. Seriously…

We took a lot of funky pictures and wondered at some mind bending illusions but this wasn’t the point.

Especially in these theme rooms, some of which people were encouraged to sit in a corner and just experience, I could feel the artists reaching into my mind and smoothing it out. Like a warm bath for your brain or a massage for your emotions.

The room pictured below was particularly immersive. It had mirrored floors and odd shaped polygons sticking out of the walls and ceiling. Almost every surface was covered in LED screens and the repeating patterns were completely disorienting.

This room was literally full of smoke and mirrors. Zeke and Levi were doing ominous poses and I enjoyed doing Tai Chi.

Tai Chi reminds me what I most appreciated about this art installation. It was a crazy effective meditation short cut. I have been meditating on and off for about 20 years, after taking instruction from the Vietnamese Buddhist temple in Edmonton at the behest of my Chinese medicine professor in med school (U of A pride!). The goal as I understand it (and as further clarified by Sam Harris) is not really inner peace or better concentration, although those can be side effects. It’s the realization that there is no self, only conscious experience. There is no tiny person sitting behind your eyeballs experiencing your experience. There is only experience. With the help of an artificial psychedelic environment, this awareness was suddenly attainable with a few intentional breaths and a widened gaze. Additionally being in a room with 20 other consciousnesses experiencing almost identical sensory overloads, the feeling of one’s “self” being merely an aspect of a larger whole was overwhelmingly apparent. Not sure if I’m getting this across, words are failing me here… Thanks Team Lab! Holy smokes I am a big fan.

Needless to say the family had to drag me out after over three hours. I woulda stayed til closing or maybe hid in some corner...

Rising on an escalator out of the exhibit felt like exiting a dream. On the way up and out we stopped at a health food store  and bought some snacks and ate them on the steps in the sunshine beside a Hermes store with a security guard out front (to keep precisely us out, as I explained to the kids…)

I was buzzing for hours and the kids had a lot to talk about. A truly transcendental experience.