A museum where staring at your phone is the point? We’ve lost the plot

2 months ago 19

December 3, 2025 — 5:00am

At least you don’t have to get angry at all the people staring at their phones. Here, it’s the entire point.

This thought occurs to you while visiting teamLab Forest in Fukuoka, Japan. This is a digital art gallery and installation from the same company that runs teamLab Planets and Borderless in Tokyo, two phenomenally popular attractions filled with foreign tourists every moment they’re open, with reservations required weeks in advance.

The first exhibit at Forest is a large, dark room with wall panels lit with colourful displays of animals moving through vivid landscapes. To the naked eye it’s interesting, even beautiful, but then there’s a sign at the door telling visitors to download the teamLab app on their phones to properly view the work.

teamLab Forest’s colourful animal displays.

Rapidly Rotating Bouncing Spheres … bubbles burst with light when you step on them.

This is augmented reality as art. The app accesses your camera, which shows the room with its animals and its landscapes. The idea is that you tap the animals and watch as they move towards you (on your phone) or run away. Some are captured in nets. Some just stare dolefully.

The rest of the gallery is made up of more large rooms filled with colour, bubbles on the floor that burst with light when you step on them; large translucent eggs that wobble around a room; multi-hued fish swimming across the floor.

A real-life Pokemon … in the Catching and Collecting Forest visitors use smartphones to photograph digital animals they find.

The necessity of the app was annoying to begin with. Like, why are you making me stare at my phone? I come to art galleries to avoid interacting with the tech that I spend all day doomscrolling on. I want to see something beautiful and real with my own eyes.

This isn’t the only modern art gallery to do that, either: Mona, in Hobart, also makes you download an app to read any descriptions or information about the artworks. You’re forced to spend the gallery experience staring at your phone.

Mona, in Hobart, also encourages visitors to download its app for information about the artworks.

But then I realised, at Forest at least, staring at your phone is the point. Even outside of that first room everyone is still staring at their phones because they’re here to capture images for social media. This entire attraction is inspired by and designed for Instagram, to be filmed and photographed and posted online.

You will notice this around the world now. Japan is on the forefront of the technological transformation but it’s not unique. TeamLab is not unique.

I was in Busan, South Korea, just before Fukuoka, and visited ARTE Museum there. This, again, is a series of dark rooms with colourful light displays, sights that stop you in your tracks, that make you say “wow”, that make you want to pull out your phone and capture it or pose in front of it.

This is no accident: bright colours look great on Instagram (and similar social media apps). They pop out. They make people stop scrolling and consume your content.

It’s not just modern art galleries that understand this now – even modern restaurants do. Check out the dishes being served in any of the world’s most talked-about high-end eateries and you will see waves of colour, flower petals, contrasting tableware, saturation turned up to 11. Food is being designed for Instagram.

Tourist attractions and hospitality providers around the world are now having to build social media appeal into their products. It’s the way to survive, to prosper, to … go viral? Shudder.

You could view this skew of artistic endeavour towards our vanity and our online engagement as a sign of Earth’s impending doom, as an indication that we as a species have entirely lost the plot. And in some ways I agree.

I find it frustrating enough walking around a normal art gallery and being forced to view historic masterpieces through the camera app on 20 phones being held up in front of me. The same thing happens at concerts. Our collective desire to capture and post every experience means we never properly have those experiences.

But an entire establishment designed for the Meta algorithm? We’re all screwed.

Though, maybe we’re not. The flipside, the positive spin, is that these places are still beautiful in a genuine, awe-inspiring way.

Someone has created something that will make you say “wow” – and when was the last time that happened? When were you last truly stunned by something beautiful?

Maybe it was in front of a natural vista, a sunset or a mountain lookout. That’s great. But it also happens in dark rooms splashed with gorgeous colours, with flower petals and koi fish and pouring water.

So what if everyone has their phones out, if they’re posing like dorks in front of these amazing displays? They do that everywhere anyway. They do it at the sunsets and the Impressionist galleries and the rock concerts.

At least at teamLab and its ilk, it’s the entire point.

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Ben Groundwater is a Sydney-based travel writer, columnist, broadcaster, author and occasional tour guide with more than 25 years’ experience in media, and a lifetime of experience traversing the globe. He specialises in food and wine – writing about it, as well as consuming it – and at any given moment in time Ben is probably thinking about either ramen in Tokyo, pintxos in San Sebastian, or carbonara in Rome. Follow him on Instagram @bengroundwaterConnect via email.