movement & impact
| 2009 |
| live-bits, web, reactive |
| intervention in urban space, cooperation with Sabine Haerri, supported by Pro Helvetia |
 |
 |
| location: 80+1 Festival, Ars Electronica, main square Linz (Austria) | |
Ars Electronica 2009: Live-Bits from the Saint Gotthard road tunnel
The Gotthard Tunnel is a major traffic bottleneck. The «movement & impact» installation lets visitors to 80+1 in Linz experience this massive confluence of vehicles with their own bodies. The Gotthard Road Tunnel is Switzerland's most important north-south transalpine traffic artery and links north and south, cold and warm, work and vacation, business suit and bathing suit. An average of six million cars and trucks pass through the tunnel each year – at peak times causing traffic jams extending for miles.
Switzerland's Federal Bureau of Statistics has set up traffic monitoring devices to count every passing vehicle and register its speed and make. This information corresponding to the events transpiring in the Gotthard Tunnel is communicated to the installlation visitors reclining on the platform in Linz via simultaneous vibrations.
This installation is designed to increase awareness of the impact of this «avalanche of steel» on the alpine region, and sensitise people to the consequences of a globally network linked world and increasing mobility.