The TEA-ROOM

21/09/2021

We exhibited new artworks “Hello, Error! #1” in an exhibition of 「Jack into the Noösphere」 in July 24th - August 8th at Japanese Garden “Mihama-en”.
https://thetearoom.jp/portfolio/helloerror-1_2021/

The essence of chanoyu (tea ceremony) is the discarding of the fiction of the secular world and the enjoyment by the host and guests of a new fiction created within the space. A nijiriguchi is a tiny doorway to a tea room which guests crawl through to enter that spiritual world. Japan’s Warring States period saw strong hierarchical relationships, but the contrivance of the nijiriguchi ensured that all guests, regardless of social standing, transcended their positions and met as equals.

This work extracts and expresses technology that neutralizes a nijiriguchi-like fiction, paradoxically to pursue fictional mechanisms. Humans have in-built perceptional bias, as typified by the “halo effect” (or “halo error”). There is no doubt our assumptions are complicit in strengthening power structures. In this age of deepfake, where anyone can freely manipulate highly realistic falsehoods in an instant using artificial intelligence, nijiriguchi-style technology is essential. But this error, obtained through our long struggle for existence, is not entirely bad. Surely being able to help ourselves is also an existence that we should treasure.

[Credit]
Concept, system design and development: Ryuta Aoki
Technical support: Takeshi Doi

13/09/2021

We exhibited new artworks “UCHIROJI #0” in an exhibition of 「Jack into the Noösphere」 in July 24th - August 8th at Japanese Garden “Mihama-en”.
https://thetearoom.jp/portfolio/uchiroji-0_2021/

The uchiroji is the inner garden of a tea house, beyond the sotoroji. While the sotoroji retains a certain secularity, the uchiroji takes the guests into a more profound space leading to the tea house. Typically, a tea garden is comprised of a double-garden, with sotoroji and uchiroji, but in this exhibition, this space is considered the uchiroji.

An uchiroji quintessentially expresses a quiet, profound world, that can be interpreted as a process that draws us into the spiritual world.
In modern times, it is the artist who creates this mysterious world, and the atelier is the creative space where they open our minds to reveal this. This piece is actually a work-in-progress, an artwork under construction, which changes and is updated daily.

[Credit]
Concept: Ryuta Aoki
Participating artists: Gentaro Yokoyama, Ryota Hagiwara, Mami

06/09/2021

We have exhibited new artwork “SOTOROJI #1” in an exhibition of 「Jack into the Noösphere」 in July 24th - August 8th at Japanese Garden “Mihama-en”.
https://thetearoom.jp/portfolio/sotoroji-1_2021/

A sotoroji is the garden path to a tea house. Unlike a regular path, it is a spatial device incorporating Zen spirituality to enable one to dust off the impurities of the secular world to enter the higher dimension of chanoyu, considered as a spiritual diversion. Chanoyu can be seen as a ceremony to separate ourselves from every day and enter the spiritual world, through the act of drinking tea and the setting.

We seek to pursue a contemporary form of chanoyu, use modern objects to represent the spirituality, objects, and processes that form the world of chanoyu. Capitalism is the personification of the secular world. QR codes are one of the technologies that lead us into the Internet space that occupies this.

This work enables us to jack in through a QR code, then, by this space recalling something important that was driven to the edges of the capitalist space, providing a ceremony causing us to forget the affairs of secular life, making this a decentralized point by which to transform the world into a sotoroji.

[Credit]
- Concept: Ryuta Aoki, Souryou Matsumura
- System design and development: Ryuta Aoki
- Server-side development: Kokoro Aoki
- Lighting design: Jiro Endo
- Special Thanks To: Shingo Takahashi, Mucha-Kucha

04/06/2021

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The Exhibition of Jack into the Noösphere
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An exhibition of “Jack into the Noosphere,” a collaboration project with .jp which installs the concept of teaism on an urban scale, will be held as one of the programs of Chiba City’s first art festival.
https://2021.metacity.jp
　
Set in a Japanese garden at night, the exhibition will feature works by 14 up-and-coming artists who are attracting attention in the fields of contemporary art and media art, likening them to the process of tea ceremony.
　
Ryuta Aoki , who is also the director of The TEA-ROOM, is the artistic director and curator of this exhibition. And our new works will also be exhibited.
　
[Date] July 24th, 2021 (Sat) - August 8th, 2021 (Sun) 18:00 - 21:00 (last admission 20:30)
[Venue] Japanese Garden “Mihamaen”
[Admission] Free (reservation required)
[Artists]
- Masaya Ishikawa
- ALTERNATIVE MACHINE
- Akinori Goto
- Hanna Saito
- The TEA-ROOM
- Ran Sekino
- Dorita Takido
- Keio SFC Hiroya Tanaka Lab. + METACITY
- METACITY
- Kenta Tanaka
- Dead Channel JP
- Katsuki Nogami
- Masahide Matsuda
- Ray Kunimoto
[Team]
- Office Manager: Takeshi Doi
- Artistic Director / Curator: Ryuta Aoki
- Project Manager：Keita Uno
- Art Director/Designer: Takeshi Kawano
- Copywriter: Shin Aoyama
- Venue Director: Jiro Endo
- Exhibition Management：Keita Uno
- Exhibition Coordinator：Takahiko Azami
- Publicity：Miku Sega
- SNS management：Shin Aoyama

We translate the teaism concept into a new style through such means as technology and street culture to design new spaces, to produce experiences, and to create works of art.

23/12/2020

The TEA-ROOM’s new work
“Artificial Moon”

We created the first public art named “Artificial Moon” in the fictional city of “Makuhari City”. The theme is The structure that generates culture.
YouTube: https://youtu.be/RPf-EWunU6Y

The nine moons which are also the city emblem of Makuhari and exist only in the virtual space, continue to move erratically through the N-body simulation, and the light from the moons illuminates the buildings. This is a ritual that connects the fictional Makuhari City with the real world of Makuhari, and breathes life into the newly born city. In order to create naturalized light, a unique lighting system was constructed using 16 of the world’s largest moving lights, and a 150-meter-long building and virtual space were used. The nine moons will continue to exist on the information space of “Makuhari City” even after the exhibition ends in about 1.5 months. The sun is the source of life, but the moon is the source of culture.

Open to the public from 18:00 to 21:00 until Januaryr 31st, 2021. The building is 150 meters long, so it can be viewed from around Kaihin-Makuhari!

[Credit]
Artist: The TEA-ROOM
Software Design: Ryuta Aoki 青木 竜太 (VOLOCITEE)
Software Programming: Takeshi Doi (Unlit), Ryuta Aoki (VOLOCITEE)
Lighting Direction: Eishi Katsumoto (Lighting Lab)
Lighting Technical Direction: Michiyuki Ish*ta (PMAJ), Takeshi Doi (Unlit)
Lighting Production Management: Michiyuki Ish*ta (PMAJ)
Lighting Production Support: Takashi Shigetake (PMAJ), Keita Uno
Lighting Equipment Setup: m-tech style, C-COM
Lighting Material Verification: Eiji Katsumoto (Lighting Lab), Tokyo Lighting Design
Lighting Equipment Verification: Tokyo Lighting Design
Special Thanks: Mitsui Fudosan Residential, Kumagai Gumi, Noriko Shindo (Environmental Planning Laboratory Inc), Shin Aoyama (VOLOCITEE), Yoshihiko Kaneoya (Makuhari Messe), Makoto Hosoya.
Produced by: METACITY

To commemorate the establishment of the "Makuhari City" project, the art collective "The TEA-ROOM" created a new public art piece, "Artificial Moon." This is...

14/12/2020

The TEA-ROOM website has been updated!

https://thetearoom.jp/

You can learn more about the philosophy of The TEA-ROOM, its members, and see what we're up to. We're on the move!

Credit:
– Direction: Ryuta Aoki
– Web Design: Shin Aoyama (VOLOCITEE)

Tokyo-based art collective creating alternative tea ceremony on The TEA-ROOM…

10/09/2020

SPECIAL EVENT:

October 16th-17th, 2020

The TEA-ROOM Tea Party will be held at Setouchi Retreat Aonagi. This is the first tea party at Aonagi. Tadao Ando's museum hotel will be transformed into a huge tea ceremony room. Please enjoy an all-inclusive evening tea ceremony.
For more information and to register, please visit the following page.
https://setouchi-aonagi.com/tea-room/

The TEA-ROOM is a Tokyo-based art collective creating a future tea ceremony.
http://thetearoom.jp

26/07/2020

The Essence of Tea Ceremony, the Spirit of Hospitality.

On June 4th, 2016 The TEA-ROOM built a tea room for an outdoor music festival TAICOCULB and held tea ceremonies to offer a hospitality to the artists from abroad.

This tea room is a very special one, as it is portable so that you may offer hospitality to the guests anytime anywhere providing comfortable time and space.

Below are some pictures of the guests we had welcomed at the event, including a drummer Marcus Gilmore, an airtist Jesse Kanda, and a music producer Tobias Freund.

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The TEA-ROOM is a Tokyo-based art collective creating a future tea ceremony.
http://thetearoom.jp

18/07/2020

How about a taste of the extraordinary?

Glow in the dark tea room.

On October 30th, 2016 at the Sanrio Puroland's Halloween Pink Sensation event, the TEA-ROOM designed a new experience of the tea ceremony by mixing light technology with the tradition.

In this event, we challenged the conventional image of the tea ceremony by serving glowing matcha tea and Japanese sweets with glowing tea utensils.

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The TEA-ROOM is a Tokyo-based art collective creating a future tea ceremony.
http://thetearoom.jp

12/07/2020

What kind of living environment do you want now?

In 2016, The TEA-ROOM collaborated with Sony Life Space UX to showcase “市中の山居 Shichyu no Sankyo ” at the Sony Building, formerly located in Ginza. "Shichyu no Sankyo" was a new concept of living space inspired from the rich culture of Japanese tea ceremony.

In this showing, Fumihiko Sano's expertise of traditional material and tea room design and Souryou Matsumura's tearoom coordination skills were reflected, both of whom are the founders of The TEA-ROOM.
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The TEA-ROOM is a Tokyo-based art collective creating a future tea ceremony.
http://thetearoom.jp

04/07/2020

What if we installed the concept of teaism in the city?

We launched a joint art project last year in collaboration with METACITY, which is a research project exploring forms of "possible cities" through experiments and prototyping.

https://metacity.jp/projects/random-seed-garden

The art exhibition of this project was scheduled to be held in July of this year, but it has been postponed to the next year 2021 due to COVID-19.

We will be keeping to spread our activities here, and please check it out!

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The TEA-ROOM is a Tokyo-based art collective creating a future tea ceremony.
http://thetearoom.jp

茶の湯にまつわるアート集団「TheTEA-ROOM」と協働し、新たな茶会の形を探求するアートプロジェクト | An art project to explore a new form of tea ceremony in collaboration with TheTEA-ROOM, an art collective related to the teaism.

27/06/2020

Media:
BS Fuji, Japan

Location:
Chubu Centrair International Airport(Aichi, Japan)

Outline:
The TEA-ROOM's work "SOTOROJI #0” was featured in a special program on Japan Media Arts Distributed Museum. In this program, the works of Mr. Manabe from Rhizomatiks, Mr. Ukawa from DOMMUNE, and artists David OReilly and Akinori Goto, who were exhibited at each airport, were also introduced.

Detail:
https://jmadm.jp/en/airport/chubu.html

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The TEA-ROOM is a Tokyo-based art collective creating a future tea ceremony.
http://thetearoom.jp