Overview
“SOTOROJI #2” is part of the SOTOROJI series of spatial devices that lead from the ordinary to the extraordinary, utilizing the modern social affordance of “seeing a QR code and scanning it with a camera,” just as soto-roji (the outer garden,) in the chanoyu (the Japanese tea ceremony) serves as a space leading to a world of profound subtlety.
This work uses an old pine tree, considered a yorishiro (object capable of attracting spirits) for the god of performing arts, as its motif, expressing it through more than 130,000 QR codes across an area exceeding 100 square meters, becoming a boundary where physical and digital spaces, the ordinary and extraordinary, and reality and profound subtlety intersect. When viewers scan the QR codes, they are led to spaces of over 100 artists, testing whether they can transcend their own frameworks.
Credit
Artist: The TEA-ROOM (Ryuta Aoki + Souryou Matsumura)
System Design & Dev: Ryuta Aoki (VOLOCITEE)
Server-side Dev: Ryuta Aoki (VOLOCITEE)
Special Thanks: Shigenori Kimiwada, Jun Takeda, Ryo Sekido, Akio Aoki
Related Link
Artist
Art collectiveThe TEA-ROOM
Tokyo-based art collective creating alternative tea ceremony
The TEA-ROOM is an art collective exploring tea ceremony as it could be.
Tea ceremony (cha-no-yu) is not just serving and drinking tea but one of the fine arts of Japan, consisting of gardens, architecture, paintings, calligraphy, incense, flowers, sounds, bowls, food, clothing, and rituals.
We have been translating this concept into new style through such means as using technology and adopting street culture to design new spaces, to produce experiences, and to create works of art since 2015.