SOTOROJI #1

“SOTOROJI #1” 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.

QR (Quick Response) codes exist as tools to efficiently guide people from physical space to the internet. With the spread of camera-equipped smartphones and the behavioral patterns of contactless interactions during the COVID-19 pandemic, humanity has acquired a new affordance of “launching the camera from QR codes.” When presented with numerous QR codes, people naturally activate their cameras without instruction.

Up close, it appears to be just a mass of QR codes, but when viewed from a distance, an image of the actual outer garden emerges through subtle size variations among more than 100,000 QR codes. Through this work, installed at the beginning of the exhibition, viewers access QR codes and witness activities that have been pushed to the periphery of capitalism, becoming extraordinary in modern society.

chanoyu (the Japanese tea ceremony) : It is a Japanese comprehensive art form composed of gardens, architecture, painting, calligraphy, incense, flower arrangement, sound, utensils, food, clothing, and etiquette. It is a traditional Japanese ritual deeply connected not only with Zen but also with other Japanese traditional performing arts like Noh and Kabuki. The TEA-ROOM, composed of artists involved with tea ceremony, reinterprets and expresses the tea ceremony using contemporary situations and objects.

soto-roji (the outer garden): Tea masters admired the world of profound subtlety depicted in ink paintings and expressed this worldview in tea rooms and tea gatherings. Tea rooms, including their gardens, are designed to gradually lead into this world of profound subtlety. The garden path from the entrance (rojiguchi) to the middle gate is called the outer garden, where guests participating in tea gatherings brush off worldly dust, immerse themselves in the world of profound subtlety, and engage in higher-dimensional play.