Bump
Telematic Installation Linz–Budapest

' association.creation association.creation

A tactile interface to counter the disembodiedness of network worlds: two wooden catwalks in public space, ready for the masses to stage. Every pressure exerted causes resistance that comes through on the other side. There is a knock from underneath, the slats rise, power transmission via network—sensations on the move.

Tactile sensation as an elementary experience confers a feeling for distance and proximity. Fond regards or insults transmitted by media are mere trivialities in comparison to a tender embrace or a resounding slap in the face.

bump produces an irregularity in the urban interface, a site at which one no longer has firm ground under ones feet. A wooden grating on the asphalt—maybe an excavation? But now there is knocking from below and the boards rise up. Below is another city, reflecting the same irregularity, linked via data transmission line. What is going on there? Undifferentiated mass movements, a stampede of hundreds of feet at rush hour? What about late at night: two or three pairs of feet. A perceptible rhythm. Perhaps a message? Or just a game? We sense the illusion of proximity: directly below the board which raises up, we presume a force which approximates our own. But there is the apparatus, the pneumatic piston, the control valve, the sensor. Closeness is only an illusion; the distance is not abolished.

The thin pine board is a wall hundreds of kilometres thick. A casual encounter turns into a lasting irritation of the sense of direction: west is below, below is east. How close can we get together?

A 1.5-meter wide and 20-meter long wooden catwalk is installed in a public space of each city. If a person steps onto this catwalk, his/her body weight triggers an impulse which is transferred into the other city by means of a dataline. There a pneumatic piston raises the corresponding board.

bump to hit or collide with a jolt, ~ into: fig. to meet someone unexpectedly; swelling, lump, bulge; ~ of locality: sense of direction

STASTO, ROCKWELL AUTOMATION, BOSCH
Austrian Federal Chancellery, Art Section; Ministry of Science; Austrian Cultural Institute; Upper Austria. association-creation in collaboration with Ars Electronica, c3-Budapest and TU-Vienna.