ArtScience Museum at Marina Bay Sands is one of our favourite family-friendly museums in Singapore. Located the basement is Future World: Where Art Meets Science, the museum’s permanent exhibition in collaboration with teamLabs from Japan.
The Future World: Where Art Meets Science exhibition recently reopened on 31 May after a brief refresh.
Future World Exhibition: Where Art Meets Science at ArtScience Museum
Future World was created by teamLab for ArtScience Museum teamLab is the well-loved group of ultra-technologists known for their use of digital technology as a medium for art.
First launched in 2016, Future World consists of art installations and creative projects for both adults and children to interact with, play, explore. The digital artworks are also reflective pieces that aim to allow us reflect on ourselves in relation to our world. Since its launch, it has undergone several exhibit refreshes.
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The exhibits at Future World are divided into two parts:
- City in Nature; and
- Exploring New Frontiers.
Through the various interactive digital artworks, the Future World exhibition is truly where art, science and technology meet.
Part I: City in Nature
The opening section is inspired by Singapore’ approach to nature in the urban environment. Our founding Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew had his plan to transform Singapore into a garden city, and this grown into part of Singapore’s identity as well.
In this first section, the artworks by teamLab are intended to make use consider how nature and people can thrive together in harmonious co-existence. In this first part of the exhibition, you will find following interactive digital art installations:
- Continuous Life and Death;
- Moving Creates Vortices and Vortices Create Movement
- Sliding Through the Fruit Field
- Water Droplets, Flowing Down a Slope
- A Table Where Little People Live
- A Musical Wall Where Little People Live
- A Window to the Universe where Little People Live
- Sketch Aquarium: Connected World
- Animals of Flower, Symbiotic Lives – A Whole Year by Year
- Dissipative Figures – 1000 Birds, Light in Dark
- Dissipative Figures – Human, Light in Dark
Continuous Life and Death & Moving Creates Vortices and Vortices Create Movement
When you step into the first gallery, you will be greeted by an immense room filled with a digital flower field – a personal favourite of ours.
The mesmerising piece on the walls of the room is titled Continuous Life and Death showing how flowers bud, grow, blossom, wither and fade away. It is a reminder of the cycle of life – a cycle that repeats itself and, in this work, is actually rendered by a programme in real time.
On the floor, the movement of people creates an ebb and flow, thanks to the digital artwork entitled Moving Creates Vortices and Vortices Create Movement.
Sliding Through the Fruit Field & Water Droplets, Flowing Down a Slope – Just for Children
Head into the next room where Future World caters to young audiences in many of the interactive elements. This part of the City of Nature section has much to occupy the kids.
The highlight of the segment for the children is the ever-popular Sliding Through the Fruit Field! This magical slide grows fruit when children, representing the sunlight that transfers the energy with the balls bouncing all about. When the balls collide with the fruit – it grows!
The light blue ball represents water and it helps the seeds to sprout, bud and blossom. The yellow ball is the honeybee ball which helps pollinate the flowers to become fruit. When a fruit is hit by a ball, new seeds are sown.
To reach the top of the slide, kids will need to make their way up Water Droplets, Flowing Down a Slope. Water droplets flow down the ramp and when people climb up the steps, they break up into droplets.
Room Full of Little People
Under the slide, there is an orange-coloured, kid-sized tunnel that kids will have fun exploring. Don’t worry if you can’t fit through it. Instead, you can just go around the corner to the interactive room where there are three exhibits that feature cute miniature people scurrying all about.
A Table Where Little People Live
At the centre of the room is A Table Where Little People Live. You can interact with them by placing objects on the table. The three laws of mechanics work here: the law of inertia, the law of motion as well as the law of action and reaction. The objects on the table will change the motion of the little people who can interact with the objects by jumping, climbing and sliding onto them.
A Musical Wall Where Little People Live
A Musical Wall where Little People Live expands on the whimsical realm by giving you more ways to engage with this community of miniature characters within their world.
Visitors can interact with the Little People through a special technology that allows them to attach objects – such as mushrooms, sheep barns or long sticks of ice – to the wall, causing these objects to appear in their world.
Depending on the shape and placement of the stamps, the little people will slide, jump, or climb atop them, finding different ways to play with them.
A Window to the Universe where Little People Live
A Window to the Universe where Little People Live is the third digital art installation in the room and you can influence the Little People’s world by using light pens and light stamps to draw lines and create shapes.
Depending on its colour, each line has a special power that interacts with the little people in a unique way – for example, yellow lines send the little characters bouncing and flying, while blue lines increase their speed, making them run faster.
The shapes created with light stamps also appear and move within the little people’s world as they play more energetically with every new line and shape added.
Sketch Aquarium: Connected World
Across from the room full of Little People is the Sketch Aquarium room. Step inside for the opportunity to transcend physical boundaries and connect with people from other parts of the globe.
First draw and colour a fish on paper and then take it to be scanned to see it come to life and swim out into the massive digital ocean.
If there is a segment your child might be spending the most time at, it could be the Sketch Aquarium. Colour a sea creature like a jellyfish, shark, squid, turtle, seahorse, coral and watch the creation come to life in the aquarium.
You can also interact with the marine creatures and even feed them virtually by touching the feed bags.
This installation is also connected to other Sketch Aquariums and Sketch Oceans around the globe with tuna fish being able to travel to other cities worldwide. Likewise, tuna drawn by visitors at similar teamLab installations around the world may also venture to Sketch Aquarium at ArtScience Museum’s Future World’s artwork.
Animals of Flower, Symbiotic Lives – A Whole Year by Year
You will also notice clusters of flower moving on the walls. Take a step back and you will notice that these flowers are shaped like animals. The flower-animals roam and move about.
If you touch them, the flower petals scatter. If the flower-animals are touched too much, all the flowers will scatter.
Dissipative Figures
Leaving behind the flower and the animals, you will arrive at a narrow room that serves as a transitional spot to the next section of Future World.
Dissipative Figures – 1000 Birds, Light in Dark visualises the motion of birds flying through the air. At the far end of the room is Dissipative Figures – Human, Light in Dark. A figure of a human hangs suspended in mid-air. These two digital artworks explore the idea that all living things are connected.
Part II: Exploring New Frontiers at Future World
Part II of Future World at ArtScience Museum is called Exploring New Frontiers and was first introduced in November 2022.
Exploring New Frontiers at Future World invites visitors to experience the wonder of flight and perspectives from above with the following interactive digital art installation:
- Aerial Climbing Through a Flock of Coloured Birds; and
- Sketch Flight
Sketch Flight
The installation of Exploring New Frontiers is where you can colour airplanes, birds and butterflies and have them scanned in to be sent up to a digital wall.
It focuses the imagination skyward and is intended to you reflect on the interconnectedness of existence and the environment.
Aerial Climbing Through a Flock of Coloured Birds
Then it is time to take to the “air” at Aerial Climbing Through a Flock of Coloured Birds. This work by teamLab requires visitors to physically climb across various suspended horizontal bars with surrounding flocks of birds soaring past. These flocks of birds also change colour as they interact with the people.
It is an installation that completely immerses a person’s whole being into the artwork and you will get a mesmerising feeling that makes you feel like you are soaring with the birds.
[Still Closed] Crystal Universe
The instagrammable exhibit of Future World is Crystal Universe and is found right at the end of the Future World exhibition.
However, as of the end of May 2025, Crystal Universal at Future World is still closed. So you will have to wait for a while more if you wish to take a journey into space amongst the thousands of LED lights.
Future World Review
Future World rates highly in our books. It’s a tactile exhibition, encourages movement and sensory experiences with varied activities cleverly conceptualised by the exhibition designers.
Even though my children have experienced Future World a couple of times, I was surprised at how much they loved it and spent close to 2.5 hours just creating, laughing, playing and watching the motion of the visuals.
The exhibition was captivating, even for the adults and we would love to be back again, especially on a rainy day.
For more information on the Future World exhibition, visit this teamLab website.
Future World is a ticketed exhibition at ArtScience Museum
Where: 6 Bayfront Avenue
Opening Times: Every 15 minutes from 10 am.
Ticket prices:
Singapore Residents
Adult: From $18
Concession: From $13
Tourists
Adult: From $23
Concession: From $18
Website: Future World at ArtScience Museum
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