JAPAN|
An unusual sight greeted residents at a popular park in Tokyo Friday morning – a giant face, hovering high in the sky and staring right back at them.The floating head was seen looming above trees in Yoyogi Park, a popular tourist destination in Shibuya City just west of Tokyo’s city centre.
Video captured by Greg Yang and corroborated by news agency Storyful shows the massive human face-shaped hot-air balloon drifting above the cityon July 16, 2021.
The head is said to be the work of a local contemporary art collective called Me, according to a story published by the Japanese magazine Casa Brutus.
Google-translated text from the Casa Brutus article states that the hot-air balloon artwork is some seven storeys high and took three years to create. Me’s artwork is meant to provoke an awareness and “manipulate the perceptions of the physical world,” according to the magazine.The team reportedly used technology to collect more than 1,000 faces from around the world, as well as faces of Tokyo residents that were gathered through special “face-collecting workshops” to come up with their final selection.
何コレ、めっちゃ怖いんだけど
代々木公園上空に顔が浮いてる
※合成じゃない pic.twitter.com/jQgTrXvne6
— みね / 峰岸 啓人 / Minegishi Hiroto (@mine_roto) July 15, 2021
This apparently isn’t the first time the art collective has pulled off this kind of project.
Me unveiled another floating face artwork called “Day With A Man’s Face Floating In The Sky” in Utsunomiya City in Tochigi in 2013, according to the group’s website.
朝起きたら代々木公園に女型の巨人いるんですけど… (;´༎ຶД༎ຶ`)＜こ… 怖い… pic.twitter.com/mFsRpeORF6
— 西川貴教 (@TMR15) July 15, 2021
A gigantic face of an existing someone floating up in the sky of Tokyo, on the occasion of human’s largest gathering once in four years. Such devastating scene would allow us to reexamine the unbelievable yet realistic experience of our existence in this huge world. The face floating up in the sky would be nobody special; it could be me or you.”