The point made about how “experiences are inherently personal” and that “no two people can have the same experiences” made me think about my experience in teamLab. After hearing Audrey talk about the museum’s online presence, it made me think a lot about my visit there. My visit to teamLab didn’t feel like a traditional museum at all, I felt fully apart of the actual artwork. In terms of active participation, a lot of the projected lights actually move if you put your hands up on them. One of the areas that mimics an ocean actually allows you to draw your own fish on paper and then scan it in to get projected up into the “ocean.” In one of their really iconic installations, there are a bunch of hanging lights in a room and as you enter, the lights turn on if it senses someone near it. As a viewer, you are absorbing the other people viewing the installation with you while also being immersed in the lights changing around you. The explanation of theming as “scripting a story in which guests participate in a narrative that would seem incomplete were they not there” connects really well with the En Tea house where your cup of tea makes a flower come alive projected over your cup.

I bring these points up because I think a huge part of teamLab’s success is that they hit a lot of the points mentioned in this reading. The inside is completely dark for the projected lights to be easier to see, and it creates an altered sense of reality. Though they don’t sell merchandise, the tea house is a say to stimulate the senses. It does make me wonder how unique my experience at teamLab really was though. I was able to go with two friends and I question how differently we experienced certain installations. Additionally, when an experience becomes a franchise, they don’t always feel as authentic. teamLab has done two newer exhibitions in Shanghai, and I was able to go to the first one. It seems that the second one had a broader range of installations, but the one I went to felt less immersive. It had to do with the general number of artworks itself but I also question how transportable these experiences is are, and how much we lose in the process of moving them?