Vilnius celebrates world tourism day with unique digital 3D sculpture

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Photo credit from website: risingvilnius.it

The 27th of September marks the annual world tourism day. To celebrate the occasion, the Captial of Lithuania, Vilnius, presented a unique and one-of-a-kind digital 3D sculpture to honor more than 100 representatives of the tourism sector.

To celebrate world tourism day, Go Vilnius, the official tourism and business development agency of Vilnius, initiated a modern art production. The 3D sculpture depicts a hot air balloon, which has a deep meaning for the tourism sector in Vilnius since they used the hot air balloon to celebrate the reopening of Vilnius to tourists after the first COVID-19 lockdown.

The 3D digital sculpture was created using the popular NFT (Non-Fungible Token), and it contains photos of more than 100 representatives from the tourism sector in Lithuania.

Inga Romanovskienė, the director of Go Vilnius, said that the sculpture was created to congratulate the city's tourism specialists and reflect their hope that the tourism sector will once again flourish and grow, as it did before the pandemic. Therefore, the installation was named "Rising Vilnius."

Milk, the creative agency behind the project, said it is the first time in the world that NFT was used to celebrate the tourism sector.

A hot air balloon has a special significance to Lithuania's capital. Flying over a city using a hot air balloon is not very common in Europe, and Vilnius is one of the few European capitals that allows this kind of flight over the city.

Moreover, the hot air balloon sculpture was a reference to the reopening of the city to tourists after the first lockdown due to the pandemic last year. Back then, an hot air balloon flew across the city and carried the message "Vilnius is calling" to signal the capital was welcoming travelers again.

Inga Romanovskienė said: "We wanted to create a sculpture to celebrate all of the dedicated people who work in the tourism sector of Vilnius’s city. The main aim was to make an installation that commemorated the hard work, dedication, and unity of the city’s tourism specialists in the face of the pandemic. That’s why we decided to embody a simple card or photo collage into the digital sculpture “Rising Vilnius” and chose the hot air balloon—a symbol of rebirth and growth—for its’ foundation."

Rimantas Stanevičius, the creative director at Milk, said that NFT’s popularity has been increasing over the years, but this is the first time it was used to commemorate the tourism sector. He also said that the team at Milk was happy to be a part of this unique and one-of-a-kind project, which also became a valuable experience".

To view the installation of the sculpture, you can visit risingvilnius.it

This is not the first time Vilnius has showcased its innovative approach. During the pandemic, the city got praises for their futuristic sculpture "portal," which allowed contacting new people by connecting between the city of Vilnius to the city of Lublin, Poland, without the need of leaving the country, and the outdoor cafe project that enabled a safe visit to cafes during the pandemic.