How Tech and Flowers Can Work Together to Sooth Humanity

A collective of “ultra-technologists” based in Tokyo, Japan, has set up an artwork made of living orchids and technology – including soundscape – encouraging the public to immerse themselves and hopefully experience patience, understanding, and tranquility.

“We are using real living orchids, but behind them are so many technologies,” says Takeshi Kudo, communications director at teamLab. “The orchids, you can see, have so many colors and there are so many different types. They can live without soil, and we can learn so many things from these orchids and other plants. (They have) more history than human beings.”

The installation entitled “Floating Flower Garden; Flowers and I are of the Same Root, the Garden and I are One” required more than 13,000 living orchids that are suspended from the ceiling. They grow along near-invisible wires as if they are floating mid-air. Thanks to sensors, the curtain of flowers rises up to let people in, and descend behind them: “The garden starts to make space for humans… But they are moving super slowly, so you have to adjust your time to the garden’s.” A soundscape accompanies the installation, and mirrors and aromas complete the sensory journey.