As part of an eco-friendly reimagining of an old celebration, youngsters from Thailand constructed digital rafts and sent them soaring down digital rivers.
People have been sending ‘krathongs’ down rivers for decades to make wishes and pay respects to water spirits. Krathongs are little baskets of plants stuffed with flowers, candles, and bamboo.
The Loy Krathong celebration, also known as the “floating basket” festival, is a magnificent event that illuminates Bangkok’s canals and rivers at night. However, the festival organizers frequently face the challenge of clearing the waterways of hundreds of thousands of wet vessels the following morning.
This year, participants created over 3,000 drawings of ‘krathongs’ and scanned them into computers during the festivities to reduce the amount of required cleanup.
A vivid picture of the water’s surface was then projected onto the patterns once they had been created.
The reduction in the number of trees that are chopped down is a significant benefit. Things are thrown into the water when you float, which is the genuine basket thing. Jirayada Surapant, who is 11 years old, displayed her creation alongside a canal in Bangkok on Monday evening. She stated that this would contribute to the reduction of garbage.
On Tuesday morning, there was still much work to be done. Monks use row boats to collect the physical krathongs and then recycle them into animal feed. This process takes place across the capital city.
While standing on the side of a boat, the revered monk Mathee Vatchara Prachatorn said, “The trash will end up in the sea, at the river mouths, completely filling them.” “To reduce trash, everybody has to pitch in; all the villages must help.”