100 Years Sea | teamLab

100 Years Sea is a video work that teamLab unveiled in 2009, with a running time of 100 years.
The work is based on the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF)’s prediction in 2009 that sea levels will continue to rise by a maximum of 120cm by the end of the century. Beginning in 2009, the sea level in this work rises over the course of a hundred years until 2109. In this space as well, the sea-level rises little by little with each passing moment.
From the moment of this artwork’s creation in 2009, a world parallel with the actual sea is born. When looking at the artwork 100 years from its beginning, what will be the state of the actual sea? Will the rise in sea levels be more serious than the WWF predicted? Or will the sea levels be lower? The sea in this work continues to rise as we head toward that inevitable time.

In classical East Asian art, waves and whirlpools are often expressed using a combination of lines. These waves and whirlpools created by lines allow us to realize that each wave or whirlpool is one part of a larger flow, and conveys life as though the waves are a living entity.

When the waves rise, we can feel a powerful breath of life, as though life is blooming. It feels as though each wave has a life of its own. But when the waves collapse and disappear, we realize, with a sense of fragility, that they were a part of the ocean. And that ocean is connected to all of the other oceans. In other words, all of the waves in the world are connected to each other.
The waves seem alive because life is like a rising wave. It is a miraculous phenomenon that continuously emerges from a single, continuous ocean.