Let’s Build Strange and Radiant Machines
You probably know the feeling when you go past certain objects in public spaces, that are neither explained nor do they make any obvious sense.
After I got stared at twice by an 50-60ish man, with the interruption of me asking him if anything is wrong (answer: “No, everything’s fine”) I came across one of them at the U4 station of the Landstrasse. Since I live in this city I wonder what this might be:
It seems to involve a camera, pointing from the ceiling to the floor. You can see people going by and the white dots move independently. As far as I can remember, there are a few of them placed at different stations. There’s no label or any kind of note explaining what it is. I asked people living here for their entire life, and they just shook their heads. Do I really have to ask Wiener Linien? What is it? Art? Fart? What is it?
it’s an ancient computer art installation, and also a clock. i think in the picture it shows 10:40.
yeah it`s a clock but i never found out where the camera is positioned - my guess was somewhere up in the hall at landstrasse.
once upon a time they had an explanation posted to that installation, promoting the idea that the dots of that clock symbolize a sort of planetary system, rotating around the big sun of people passing by, who themselves represent sort of orbiting planets, usually coming by at the same time every day…
http://wbb.cc/content/index.php?page=aktuelles&os=32&id=1505
at this station i am every day and it never catched my eye. so i really NEVER recognized it. although - i know this strange things …
so it is a clock … interesting. i will watch out tomorrow.
this really sucks the f**k out of me everytime I come across it. and also I never found out where the camera is. but there seems to be feminist group which put a ladder underneath the camera and made a victory sign. not my kind of art (but if I knew the place of the camera, I’d think different maybe.)
what if the camera is nearby but the video is time-shifted? no, wait, the floor is different … you should be able to find the spot by the pattern of the floor. hofstetter (the artist, he’s originally from the same town as i, where i attended every ars electronica festival since about 1993, when this piece was installed, and i’d seen it there) wouldn’t put in a different floor with some analog video trick just to fsck with us, or would he?
Along with this mystery of the U-Bahn, might I add another?
WHO IS THE VOICE BEHIND WIENER LINIEN? The droning, melancholic hack who haunts me before every stop, every day, on the U-Bahn? I have tried to find who this man is, but have yet to make any progress. I was told by one Viennese woman that he was replaced some time ago, but protesting by the Austrians promptly brought him back.
I hope this blog can help me uncover another mystery of the U-Bahn!
that’s easy to google - it’s Ing. Franz Kaida. his original job is “sicherheitsbeauftragter” at the wiener linien.
Franz Kaida, you say? So I guess we have to be glad he’s not called Albert, or we’d have USian invasion troops, right?
Oh, and the floor shown is roughly in the middle of the lower hall, before you go downstairs to the U3.
th, if you google franz kaida, it actually asks you if you rather meant franz quaeda.
oh dear … the comment speech bubbles only go up to 10? it’s not proper text inside a bubble graphic, but an individual image file for every single bubble? i hate that.
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nex, don’t do that to me. uncontrollable chuckling is painful with a sore throat.
die kamera ist in der mitte des verbindungstunnels (der lange gang) von u3 zur s-bahn.
wenn man beim laufen nach oben schaut (blöderweise schauen in der ubahn alle ständig nach unten) kann man sie eigentlich nicht übersehen