Over a dozen installations are bringing Japan’s 5,000,0000-square-foot Mifuneyama Rakuen to life, combining nature with cultural traditions and modern technology in dazzling and moving ways.

Designed by TeamLab, this exhibition incorporates a sweeping landscape of lakes, mountains and forests as well as ancient structures, some predating the park (which itself is nearly 200 years old).

Their driving idea: create new immersive interactions with nature without doing any damage, using an array of lighting techniques to facilitate a unique nighttime experience. In some places, abstract lighting patterns contrast with or highlight natural elements, like koi fish swimming in a lake — in other instances, projections of scanned nature illustrate the cycle of seasons in underground caves.

“Winding promenades, a picturesque pond and an ancient villa-turned-tea house blend seamlessly with the natural surroundings, blurring the borders between wild and manmade,” reports DesignBoom. “High above, the monumental mifuneyama mountain watches over an active and lush ecosystem of sacred trees, ancient stones, hidden caves, and a diverse community of flora and fauna. It is a peaceful and poetic place that induces a deep sense of contemplation and calm. Serenity lives here.”

Visitors can journey through this hybrid wonderland moving from one exhibition to the next in sequence, or simply get lost in the trails that open each evening as the sun goes down. The project, titled “A Forest Where Gods Live,” is open through this fall.

Broken down to its most basic characteristics, the traditional Japanese zen garden inspires innovative design in everything from toys and candy to the most impossibly relaxing modern bathrooms you’ve ever seen. These unexpected takes on the traditional play on the meditative activity of dragging a rake through sand, the pleasingly minimalist aesthetic of the resulting lines and the sense of tranquility a zen garden can bring to a built environment.

Sugar Art: Edible Zen Garden

This miniature zen garden is entirely edible, with sugar standing in for sand and rocks made from black sesame candies. Created by designer Tomonori Saito, the Shinan-ji Temple Rock Garden provides you with a tiny wooden rake so you can play with your food before you eat it.

Kinetic Drawing Machine Creates Sand Art

Instead of a rake in the hands of a human, the patterns of lines in these circles of sand are created by steel marbles controlled by a kinetic drawing machine. The Sisyphus Machine by Bruce Shapiro produces mandala-like designs that swirl and change as the marbles move.

Interactive Zen Garden Installation in Quebec

This new take on the traditional Japanese zen garden replaces sand with gravel and uses three spinning tools inspired by agricultural machinery to create the patterns. Created by Talmon Biran Architecture for the International Garden Festival in Quebec, the ‘Dry Landscape’ installation requires participants to work in tandem to create their own circles without bumping into each other.

XYZen Garden Works Like an Etch-A-Sketch

Create your own relaxing DIY zen garden game with a tutorial at Instructables, which even includes shop drawings and templates. The XYZen Garden by Jonathan Odom works like an Etch-a-Sketch toy, using a pulley system to move the stylus across the sand.

Next Page - Click Below to Read More:
Zenith Of Zen 13 Nontraditional Takes On Japanese Gardens

Reclining in the space between the extremes of sped-up, movie-style GIF files and traditional, immobile paintings, this artist brings lazy scenes of everyday reality to life.

Rebecca Mockam is a Brooklyn-based illustrator and comic artist whose cinemagraphs move only as much as needed, a different kind of visual artist’s takes on medium most often associated with photography.

Note that these reduced-sized examples don’t do justice to the detail and seamlessness of her originals, so it is worth looking more closely at her portfolio for these and more.

Her work is peaceful and contemplative, lending itself to a lot of potential comparisons, including Edward Hopper and Norman Rockwell. At the same time, much of the subject matters is definitively contemporary, including all-too-familiar ringing phones and tablet swipes. Still-life Americana revisited, this approach (in the age of portable computers, tablets and phones) uses a medium that makes sense with its era.

Mockam has worked on everything from art exhibits and comic covers and is currently drawing a graphic novel titled Four Points, set to be released in 2015. She uses a Wacom tablet for most of her illustration work, sketches with a pencil and ink with various brush pens, and a nib & ink when it comes to drawing comics.

In his most voluminous undertaking to date, this book artist bids farewell to the long legacy of printed Encyclopedia Britannica sets with a mountainous tribute to their 244 years of history.

Guy Laramée, book artist and author of this piece titled Adieu (French for goodbye), has done similar works at smaller scale, sometimes carved into single books and other times made from whole sets or entire series. A range of fascinating examples can be seen below and certain pieces are available for purchase from the Foster/White Gallery.

The act of gouging into a book seems almost violent, making the idyllic and often nature-centric compositions this artist creates via that destruction seem strikingly peaceful by contrast.

Next Page - Click Below to Read More:
Encyclopedic Landscape Artist Carves 24 Volume Book Set