Uncovering Saudi's First Immersive Museum: teamLab Borderless Jeddah
Nestled in a decade-old UNESCO World Heritage site, teamLab Borderless offers a world of seamless interactive digital art.
Aug 13, 2024
teamLab Borderless Jeddah, Saudi Arabia's first avant-garde immersive museum, emerges at the heart of the Historic Jeddah World Heritage Site. Building on Saudi Arabia's Vision 2030 to enhance economic, social, and cultural diversification, this collaborative initiative between the Saudi Ministry of Culture and the Japanese interdisciplinary art collective teamLab has given rise to the premier of teamLab Borderless Jeddah.
This 10,000-square-metre museum debuted in July 2024, which coincides with the 10th anniversary of the district's designation as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, adding a celebratory dimension to the overall experience.
Centred around escapism, the immersive museum typology is a burgeoning trend in the attractions industry blurring the lines between reality and illusion taking art to a whole new realm beyond the physical world. Progressive high-tech techniques, like virtual reality (AR), holography, digital projectors and many others are used to repackage exhibit different art types.
In a world where reality and dreams collide, teamLab Borderless Jeddah brings dreamland inside a time capsule. Confined in the heart of Historic Jeddah, the museum is strategically located on the shores of Al-Arbaeen Lagoon, offering a dichotomously rich experience. It provides visitors with the sensation of a world without borders amidst a site marked by boundaries, complemented by scenic views of a rich, historically sacred context. Inside Borderless Jeddah, over 80 curated immersive dreamy artworks that transcend physical boundaries, fostering interaction and creating a seamless, unbounded environment. Amidst the surreal truths of our daily lives, the exhibit offers a refuge - a gateway into an intricately woven digital tapestry of seven curated dreamlands: Borderless World , Light Sculpture , Athletics Forest , Future Park , Forest of Lamps , EN TEA HOUSE , and Sketch Factory .
Borderless World features unbounded, human-like artworks. Free to move from space to space, like our human body in motion, each art piece navigates the rooms, interacting and impacting one another, creating a seamless continuum of spaces without boundaries to be explored by visitors. 'The Borderless World transforms according to our presence, and as we immerse and meld ourselves into this unified world, we explore a continuity among people, as well as a new understanding of the continuity between ourselves and the world,' teamLab tells SceneNowSaudi
Light Sculpture exhibits a series of massive sculptures, with the light appearing to flow out sweeping towards people, expanding, and drawing the audience into it.
The Athletic Forest reimagines athleticism through immersive, three-dimensional experiences. One attraction is the Rapidly Rotating Bouncing Sphere , where visitors leap onto rotating spheres of the same colour, forming dynamic caterpillar-like patterns. Another highlight is the Multi Jumping Universe , where each jump distorts the exhibit surface, drawing in stardust and ultimately forming a captivating black hole. 'We started this project, Athletics Forest, with the hopes to enhance three-dimensional and higher-dimensional thinking,' Toshiyuki Inoko, founder of teamLab tells SceneNowSaudi. 'Spatial awareness is said to be correlated with innovation and creativity. I grew up in a rural area and played in the mountains, but in today's society and schools, the body is stationary. I think cities are surrounded too much by flat information such as books, TV, and smartphone screens. That is why we created a three-dimensional space that excessively demands the physical body. It is a space where people can perceive art with their physical bodies.'
Travelling into Future Park is an educational, collaborative amusement park where the experience comes alive through collective creativity. Visitors actively participate in the creation process, with the park's art continuously evolving as long as the collaboration continues. This unique concept ensures that the joy of creation is central to the park's ever-changing landscape.
En Tea House is not your typical tea garden; it's a sanctuary surrounded by ever-blooming flowers. Here, digital tables display infinite worlds of floral blooms that continue to flourish as long as your teacup is filled, allowing you to savour your tea in a vibrantly expanding floral universe.
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