仮想通貨奉納祭 - Virtual Currency Offering Festival

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“Virtual Currency Offering Festival” is a project attempting to “update the Shinto rituals”. It is a new form of celebratory festival in which virtual currencies are collected from across the world for later redistribution, bringing “a good harvest” to the community. It is intended to expand, by way of technology, the sense of citizen participation, the essence of festive rituals, using virtual currency characterized by ability to transfer money across space instantaneously.

“Virtual Currency Offering Festival” was held in an actual living setting of a traditional shopping street in Tokyo supported by citizens. Residents in and around the area, corporations, local government as well as renowned experts, entrepreneurs and researchers made “offering” of various resources and technologies of their fields. The project created a large number of collaboration work which encompassed the following, among many others; “Yokai-monster-robot based on animatronics technology, “Kishu (peculiar sake), a liquor with extraordinary fermentation process by a fermentation professional”, and an “AI voice synthesys of Heart Sutra”. The citizens brought their own projects, musical instruments and fancy-dress costumes of their choice and enjoyed themselves. In the festival, approximately 18000 people in total gathered at the shopping street over the course of two days. Men, women, young and old including the local residents took part in the “Virtual Currency Offering Festival Parade”.

Although indigenous folk religion may seem irrational at a glance, it has rational functions such as maintenance of community, consoling the spirit of the diseased and disaster prevention. Ichihara attempted to create “new Shinto rituals” and “new tradition”, deriving from her question, “how will it be possible to continue these peculiar festivals in the next 100 years, not as an outdated and dying tradition due to lack of successors but instead, as “living culture” in which blood flows?”

Ichihara’s question was catalytic in creating a platform for people of a wide variety of background participating and meeting one another coincidentally. This work is a social experiment envisaging “grant economy” in the aftermath of end of capitalism. It is a new interactive art which creates a community by connecting a diverse pool of people in an urban space which now has weaker connection with the indigenous tradition.

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