Digital Art Can Be Beautiful

Recently we were in Silicon Valley pitching DADA to investors. It was an intense and exhilarating experience. We capped it off by going to a fun exhibition at Pace Art + Technology Gallery in Menlo Park by the Japanese Team Lab collective. It is a large-scale, immersive, site-specific installation that delights people of all ages with beautiful and playful digital creations.

Digital art is sometimes blunt and clunky, but not this. We loved the delicate style and its traditional Japanese influences. The Flowers and People room, for instance, is a gorgeous soothing space, covered in velvet, where flowers bloom and petals float and respond to your movements. Our amazing team members María from aomm.tv and Alyssa from Maven, took a few moments to decompress from all the Silicon Valley excitement:

We really liked this rotating cherry blossom with butterflies and a distant moon. So reminiscent of traditional Japanese imagery, but with a tech twist.

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There were several works that reacted to the viewers’ movements. Here, blossoms closed when you approached and they opened up if you moved back, their petals floating into the air.

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The one we loved best was this mesmerizing piece of waves tossing and crashing. The exhibition was both meditative and playful, which are such essentially inspirational states for creativity. You can explore and experiment but also take time to experience the art and the sensations it brings.

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In another more hands-on creative area, kids and adults can draw on paper and scan their drawings, which then are animated into two lovely interactive murals, one about the ocean and another one about a city. You can customize an interactive hopscotch to make it more challenging and play with a mural about prehistoric animals that appear when you touch certain points.

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There is so much to still create at the intersection of art and technology. We can’t wait to see more!