Artificial Moons

This is an artwork of light based on the theme of a mechanism of fiction.

Multiple moons existing in a virtual space create movement through N-body simulation, and from that movement, lighting in the real world is controlled to illuminate a moon rainbow on a 150-meter-long building. This work was exhibited in the real world for 1.5 months as the first public art of the non-existent administrative district "Makuhari City". The Makuhari area actually exists in Chiba prefecture next to Tokyo, but somehow people living outside of this area believe that an administrative district called "Makuhari City" exists. Even the newspapers and TV news sometimes report it incorrectly. “Makuhari City" is a citizen-driven art project to create a city using this misconception.

If you were to ask people to imagine the moon, most people would think of a single moon, although it may have different shapes and colors. However, the origin of this moon, which is considered to be self-evident, is still unclear. What we can say for sure is that it is the product of a chain of coincidences caused by universal gravitation, and as the N-body problem proves, it is unpredictable, and like Saturn and Jupiter, it was quite possible that there are multiple moons.

The similar phenomenon can be discovered in human society. The origin of the Kanda Festival, one of the three major festivals in Japan, and its god is actually unknown. Other festivals of unknown origin exist all over Japan. The difference between this phenomenon and the one caused by the moon is not the movement caused by the physical phenomenon of universal gravitation, but the culture created by the continuous behavioral patterns of people. In other words, if we can keep inputting a trigger, a force that starts a movement, at a certain cycle, we may be able to create a new culture.

This work expresses the structure of generating culture, and also tries to input a trigger to create the fiction of the city. The sun is the source of life, but the moon is the source of culture.