Founded in 2001, teamLab is an artistic collaboration with over 400 members, bringing together professionals from various fields of practice in the information age. The interdisciplinary group work to produce completely immersive environments using digital technology.
 
They weren’t immediately well received in the art world, but since 2011 they have exploded onto the international scene, exhibiting in Japan, the USA, France, Australia, Turkey and just last year, the UK.

​I speak to Takashi Kudo about digital technology's important role in promoting positive relations between people.

​On the final day of Leake Street’s six-week VAULT festival, I took to the tunnel to have my senses livened by some classical music courtesy of a secret BitterSuite performance. Immersive theatre and dining experiences are now fairly common place on the urban social scene, but immersive concerts less so. 

Established by musician and composer Steph Singer, the BitterSuite collective is inspired by synesthesia and psychology and designed to make audiences really feel the music. The concert offered unique one-to-one experiences where each audience member was led through a choreographed sensory experience to Debussy, performed by Phaedra Ensemble instrumentalists. 

Taking lead from Samuel Beckett’s vision, internationally acclaimed director Max Stafford-Clark of Out of Joint theatre company recently took audiences into darkness with a blindfolded live performance of Beckett’s radio play ‘All That Fall’ at Camden School for girls, using 360 degrees sound design and unique audience proximity.

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“When asked by Beckett’s nephew what my vision for the play was, I replied that there would be no vision, that the play would take place in darkness," explained Stafford-Clark as he introduced the show, “He replied that that was exactly how Beckett imagined it – with voices coming from the void.” ​

When I first visited Battersea Arts Centre (BAC) a couple of years ago it was to see Daniel Kitson in the Grand Hall, which looks somewhat different now than it did back then after flames engulfed it last March. 

BAC was adamant that the building would get back to its former glory ‘brick by brick’, and this resilience will see the new Hall opened in 2018. Until then a more temporary space is in use; after all the show must go on! 

Theatre Ad Infinitum’s ‘Light’ went down a storm at The Barbican last year, so I was keen to bag tickets when I heard it was returning to London at BAC.

​It is fitting that such an immersive, ground-breaking show was to grace the stage at a venue where the mission has always been to ‘invent the future of theatre’.

This evening marks the end of London's first major light festival, Lumiere London, which has seen the capital's iconic architecture transformed with 3D projections, installations and unique light works. The 4 day festival ran from Thursday 14 - Sunday 17 January, every evening from 6.30pm-10.30pm . Produced by Artichoke and supported by the Mayor of London, it has widely been hailed as a success, with works shown in central locations, from Kings Cross, Mayfair, Picadilly, Regent Street and St James's to Trafalgar Square and Westminster. 

My favourite works were Janet Echelman's 1.8 London at Oxford Circus and Patrice Warrener's The Light of the Spirit at Westminster Abbey. 
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​As the final months of 2015 arrived and the year sped towards its final hour, I visited a flurry of participatory art exhibitions across London, all of which had something in common. In a city which constantly churns out exhibitions and events, it was, as ever the immersive shows which won my time and appreciation. The Old Masters never did appeal to me; a child of the times, it has always been Contemporary Art which strikes a chord. 
 
Viewing art is always fascinating on some level, but truly experiencing art is something altogether more memorable. With so much visual stimulation in today’s world, now more than ever it is not enough just to look, we want to get involved. Art which forces the viewer to in some way participate is not new. In the 1960s American artist Bruce Nauman’s ‘Performance Corridor’ forced his viewers to walk down a 20 inch wide corridor, and experience the constraints of space - not too dissimilarly to Höller’s opening corridor in his 2015 ‘Decision’ show, albeit with light rather than space being withheld. Such experiences place the viewer in situations which stimulate the senses and provoke a reaction; this is the artist’s intent.

When the viewer becomes a performer in the work, they are given a role to play in creating its meaning. It is the participation itself which completes this kind of work; unlike a painting which needs no viewer to add the finishing touch, without the viewer participatory art remains incomplete.

Camden’s Roundhouse was recently home to Utopia, a reimagined sensory city experienced through a series of walk-through environments. Created by filmmaker, writer and artist Penny Woolcock and renowned Glastonbury Festival stage designers Block 9, the series of installations, projections and sound pieces brought to our attention the substance of the city; the voices that we would otherwise miss. Recognising that ‘most of the time we just pass each other’, Woolcock spoke to a number of Londoners about their lives and experiences, encouraging them ‘to tell stories which were unique to them, but somehow told a bigger truth’. With an overwhelming number of voices combining to disorientate the senses, visitors had to get close to each speaker, and give the stranger’s voice their undivided attention; quite uncommon for London.

German artist Carsten Höller - ‘the guy that makes the slides’ - is no stranger to London, having installed ‘Test Site’ in the Tate’s Turbine Hall in 2006.  Nine years later he’s back, whipping up a media frenzy with his current exhibition ‘Decision’ at Southbank’s Hayward Gallery and triggering the age old question ‘but is it art?!’ from critics and the general public.

BBC’s Arts Editor Will Gompertz thinks not, imploring us to question more what is and what isn’t art. With the idea that anything can be art no longer an avant-garde concept, he sees ‘Decision’ as no more than a collection of ‘fairground type rides that happen to be in an art gallery’. The main concern seems to be whether in 2015, contemporary art is being reduced to nothing more than entertainment. However, a recent panel discussion led by Ralph Rugoff, Director of the Hayward Gallery, raised an important point: since when were art and entertainment ever separate? The title of this blog takes inspiration from the very name of this discussion.

Japanese electronic composer and visual artist Ryoji Ikeda first came onto my radar last summer thanks to Spectra, his light and sound installation which lit up Victoria Tower Gardens in August. Spectra bore some resemblance to the United Visual Artists Barbican exhibition Momentum of the same year, which used pendulums to choreograph light, sound and movement, distorting the visitors experience of space. Similarly Umbrellium, part of last years Digital Revolution exhibition at the Barbican,allowed participants to shape, manipulate and interact with luminous forms. Preceding the examples above, the 2013 Light Show at the Hayward Gallery showcased the experiential and phenomenal aspects of light like never before, remaining to date one of my favourite exhibitions.

The power of light and sound to create atmosphere and shape spaces is clearly not new - it dates back to the 1960s in fact - however Ikeda brings the immersive, sensory experience to the public in unusual ways...