Abstract
“After the Museum: Immersive Experience as Art-Object in the Cases of Sakura Yume and Graffiti Nature” compares and critically analyzes two art experience spaces that transform from experience to art-object through intentionality of design: Artechouse’s Sakura Yume in Washington, D.C. and teamLab’s Graffiti Nature: Still Mountains and Movable Lakes at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota. These exhibitions were designed by artists with the intention of anticipating how they will be used, navigated, and transformed through visitor activation and social tools. Aside from the original social tool of communication and interaction with others in person, new social tools include the use of the social media platform Instagram, where artists post and share content from their exhibitions for future access. The Artechouse app is another social tool that allows visitors to further activate the spaces through the use of their smartphones. The spaces have been developed as “microtopias,” which can be defined as a temporary escape from reality through the activation of the senses and perceived sense of fluidity. Artechouse’s Sakura Yume and teamLab’s Graffiti Nature: Still Mountains and Movable Lakes will be examined through the lens of relational aesthetics and the laboratory concept. These spaces exist as a development of visitor interaction and immersive art experience. Using relational aesthetics and the laboratory concept, this paper will return to the intentionality of Sakura Yume and Graffiti Nature’s design. Intentionality of design makes these spaces function as fluid microtopias even through their anticipated transformation from space to art-object.