coloring outside the lines

today was a pretty short day. i have a huge day ahead of me tomorrow, so i kept it pretty light so i wouldn’t be tired going into tomorrow.

i visited the teamlab borderless digital art experience and got some food at a noodle restaurant called rage.

i didn’t know what to expect with teamlab borderless. it is a very popular thing to do in tokyo, as is another teamlab experience called planets (that i am visiting on the 27th).

i arrived about a half hour early so i could find something to eat. i walked around the area the museum was in, and found a noodle restaurant called rage. it is like just barely not rage against the machine themed - enough to not get sued. the sign outside literally said “bulls on parade”. the music playing inside was notably not rage against the machine, but really fit into that sort of genre. i ordered the monday special:

google translate might be one of the greatest inventions in human history.

i really like that the bowls and spoon were custom made for the restaurant. but there was a strange feeling, eating one of the most delicious meals of my life while repeatedly reading the word rage - as if saying “bet you can’t right now”. it was very good. notably not as good as the 5 dollar ramen that made me see god the other day, but it was still very good. i wonder if i would feel differently had this been the first meal i ate in japan. i don’t think so, but perhaps.

with that out of the way, it was on to teamlab borderless.

before getting to the photos, i do want to mention that the nature of teamlab borderless makes it basically impossible to really capture with still images. the reason it is called “borderless” is because the entire thing is animated digital art projected onto walls, and the art moves around from room to room. the structure of it is sort of an open maze. they tell you at the beginning that there are hidden rooms that are hard to find. and they also tell you that every visit here is different, because the art that is displayed on the walls is constantly shifting and changing. if you, the person reading this, went there today, you might have a completely different experience than i did. it is really interesting, and does a great job subverting the idea of what an art museum is.

i took a ton of photos in here. most ended up unusable and deleted, because pictures don’t really capture it. nearly everything is constantly shifting and flying from room to room. almost nothing in this entire place is static. everything either moves or changes color. i want to put one picture i took at the exit first, because it seems to be the theme of this place.