With its stunning rice terraces, ancient castles and iconic hot air balloon festivals, Saga prefecture has a lot to offer travellers looking for a spot of sightseeing. With Covid-19 travel restrictions firmly in place, however, the prefecture has lost many of its visitors, and with them some of its spark, in the past few months. To help reinvigorate the area, art collective Naked is holding a digital art exhibition across two venues in Saga city.
Naked Garden Saga will open on October 1 at the Saga Prefectural Government Office Observation Hall and the Saga Castle Park. The former will feature Naked’s ‘Dandelion’ installation, where you can see a giant dandelion projected inside the observation deck against the backdrop of the Saga city skyline. The artwork is also interactive, so if you wave your smartphone in front of the dandelion puff, the seeds will float off to create new flowers.
There’s even more to see over at the 17th-century Saga Castle Ruins, where you can explore the castle’s surrounding park while holding a special lantern that projects pink sakura petals over the ground as you walk.
As a nod to the prefecture’s annual Saga International Balloon Fiesta, the park will feature an interactive hot air balloon installation, including a fleet of augmented reality hot air balloons, plus a digital art projection against the castle walls.
You’ll be asked to sanitise your hands before you enter the park, but you’ll be happy to know that even this simple safety protocol is tied in with its own digital art piece, titled ‘Naked Tsukubai’.
The Saga Castle Park exhibition will run from October 1 until November 23, while the installation at the Government Office Observation Hall will be available until February 28 2022. Tickets can be booked online – admission for the observation hall is ¥500, while tickets for the Castle Park Ruins are ¥700. A set of tickets for both venues is also available for ¥1,100.
For more information, see the Naked Inc event page.
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