whole new world | hamburg digital art museum

artwork. Universe of Water Particles on a Rock where People Gather ©teamLab

teamLab is set to bring their famous digital art exhibitions to Europe with a permanent location in Hamburg, Germany. This will be the art collective’s first European site — and its home will be the forthcoming Digital Art Museum, the largest digital museum in the continent. A keynote discussing the museum will begin on 21st September at 15:30 GMT+2 via the museum’s website.

After attracting so many visitors in their Tokyo digital museum — 2.3 million in the first year of opening — it’s no wonder that teamLab make its way to Europe and find a home in the Digital Art Museum. This museum will have around 7.000 sqm of floor space, with a number of projectors and other digital equipment still to be announced.

The exhibition on display will be teamLab Borderless Hamburg, created by teamLab. Art and technology combine in the Borderless exhibition to create the light installations and extremely vivid art projections. The installations aren’t confined and, true to the name, they are genuinely borderless as projections seam into each other. The technology used by teamLab recognises the visitors’ movements and actions, then prompting the displayed projection to change in response alongside the surround sound. With an aim to ‘explore the relationship between the self and the world and new perceptions through art’, rave reviews and consistently high attendance show that the art collective has achieved this goal. Visitors are becoming a part of the exhibition themselves — and they want more. It’s a truly immersive and unique experience where teamLab says ‘no two visits will ever be the same’ due to the interactivity.

artwork. Forest of Resonating Lamps One Stroke, Fire ©teamLab

The Digital Art Museum will be developed by Lars Hinrichs, a founder of XING. The proposed idea to bring the exhibition from teamLab to its new Hamburg home originated from First Mayor Dr. Peter Tschentscher of Hamburg after a 2019 delegation trip to Japan. A visit to teamLab’s Digital Art Museum in Tokyo’s MORI Building inspired him to share the exhibition experience to the rest of Germany and Europe, a vision similar to Hinrich’s.

Whilst the Digital Art Museum isn’t due to open until 2024, the 21 September keynote will be a good opportunity to discuss the plans for the Museum, as well as to answer any questions to the team behind the operation. Amongst Hinrich, Dr. Tschentscher, and teamLab, others will also be in attendance for the keynote. This includes Dr. Andreas Kleinau (CEO of HafenCity GmbH), Alexander Otto (CEO of the ECE Group), and Peter Brosi (Executive VP of the Pace Gallery). Enjoy the keynote, and until then, Europe will impatiently wait three more years for lantern filled rooms, flowing waterfalls and infinite LED-crystal surroundings.