Saudi Arabia: a museum of “digital art” will open its doors in Jeddah

By 2023, the inhabitants and visitors of the city of Jeddah, on the Red Sea coast of Saudi Arabia, may not see art in the same way. For by then, with the planned opening of a “digital art” museum, a trip to the museum will be much more futuristic than the idea we have today.

According to the announcement of the Ministry of Culture, the museum entitled TeamLab Borderless Jeddah, in honor of the Tokyo-based collective TeamLab that is collaborating on the project, will be located not far from Al-Balad, the old city of Jeddah, classified as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

 

When technology meets art

Created in 2001, teamLab describes itself as “an interdisciplinary group of diverse specialists such as artists, programmers, engineers, computer graphics animators, mathematicians and architects whose collaborative practice seeks to navigate the confluence of art, science, technology and the natural world”. All this little world has thus signed a ten-year agreement with the Saudi Ministry of Culture to develop works for the future Jeddah space. Inside, they intend to exhibit a myriad of experimental works of all kinds.

For skeptics who still doubt the capacity of a team with such atypical skills in the art world, here is a foretaste:

 

 

This is an exhibition realized by TeamLab in a similar space in Macau.