Strangers Become Collaborators: An Interdisciplinary Analysis of the Disruptive Artwork of teamLab

Abstract

teamLab is a Japanese art collective that specializes in creating interactive immersive environments. Due to the group’s unique structure and interdisciplinary nature, their works are highly technical – using computer algorithms to generate interactive visuals in real-time. Since 2014, teamLab has received immense public popularity, yet only tepid reception by art critics, significantly undermining typical attitudes toward experimental artwork. In an effort to explain such responses, this thesis proposes that art historical evaluation methods do not currently have the language to fully interpret teamLab’s works from a technical or an experiential standpoint. Thus, this thesis argues for the value of an interdisciplinary approach to evaluating digital art, using methods from Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) research in conjunction with those from art history. teamLab’s artworks can be considered interfaces between viewers and the software systems that power their art. Therefore, this thesis uses HCI frameworks, specifically Cornock and Edmonds’ matrix, Edmonds’ pleasure framework, and Reeves’ spectator experience taxonomy, to augment art historical methodologies of iconographic and formal analysis. In a novel interpretation of teamLab’s work, this thesis reveals a new language to describe how digital artwork produces interactions; in doing so, the effects of these art-interfaces can be understood with greater nuance. This thesis also broadly discusses how teamLab’s work presents new viewpoints within existing HCI debates on seamless design and the invisible interface, and theorizes how teamLab and their work are disruptive to art historical conventions of authorship and the role of the artist.