Immersive Experiences in Tokyo
I’ve been excited to discover Japan’s immersive / interactive theater scene and there’s been scant information on the English web. This week we tried two immersive experiences: TeamLab Borderless and The Lighting Art of Kabuki
TeamLab Borderless
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One highlight was a tea room where digital flowers grow out of your tea cup and the petals flow around the room.
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There was a mirrored room with dozens of synchronized spotlights that danced around and reacted to the attendees.
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And a hybrid virtual and analog town where the roads and rails would rearrange themselves as you moved around buildings.
Almost all of our friends raved about their visits to Borderless. Although I enjoyed it, I didn’t love it. I would have appreciated more narrative, more integration across installations, and even more interactivity. Overall though great to see experimentation on this scale!
The Lighting and Art of Kabuki
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In one area, we carried lanterns (tea lights on top of Vive controllers) which illuminated a scene animated through shadows. The shadows reacted in real-time to us moving around the lantern, which was a pretty cool effect.
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Another allowed audience members to puppeteer characters and make them dance around (using Kinect), while a third area used holographic pedestals to let folks play a virtual drum.
Overall, the experience felt more like a string of thematically linked tech demos than a narratively coherent interactive experience but it was still nice to check out.
We’ll be looking for more interactive experiences to check out so let us know if you find any!