In the project "bump", two wooden bridges in two different cities form the meeting point for large public events. When someone steps on one of these bridges, this person's weight triggers an impulse that is transmitted through a data transmission cable to the wooden bridge in the other city, thus moving the corresponding plank by a few centimeters.

A tactile interface versus the disembodiedness of network worlds


Two bridges in public space; the inhabitants of one space cannot see the others, but they can sense them and make contact with them. The deformation of space becomes the interface. The interface is called "bump", is ready for the masses to come. 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".


"If you move along a city's compact walls, when you least expect it, you see a crack open and a different city appears. Then, an instant later, it has already vanished. Perhaps everything lies in knowing what words to speak, what actions to perform, and in what order and rhythm." (Italo Calvino)


"bump" creates a crack in the urban interface, a place where there is no more solid ground under your feet.


A crack in the urban surface


"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 only 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 kilometers 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?" (Christian Kühn)


A catwalk - 1.5 by 20 meters - is installed in the public space of each city. If a person steps onto this catwalk their weight triggers an impulse which is transferred to the other city by means of a data-line. There a pneumatic piston raises the corresponding board by a few centimeters. At the same time, the principle of the effect can be grasped through a video conference transmission - and visual contact can be made with the "other side."


How close do we wanna get today?


The free-standing bridge on the street refers to something absent: approaching one another, mutually sensing, sensuously experiencing one another.
The Internet has brought us all closer together, yet with all our fascination with incorporeal, virtual space, we must not forget the quality of what is missing when we go into the Internet. The world has become larger for "bump" users.
Sensing as an elemental experience gives us a feeling for distance and closeness. Collective experience is the prerequisite for common impressions and imprints in a game with an anonymous opposite. Interaction becomes communication.


Sensations on the move


"The spacelessness and the disembodiedness of the virtual world returns to the sensuous, tactile world, which means that crossing the border of an 'abstract' medium creates a new actionist reality that would be unimaginable in a reality without a virtual opposite. This enables an intensification of the perception that was previously mourned as loss. Perhaps a new medium is born with this virtu - reality?
"bump" affords the 'virtual world' a new field of action and the sensuous perception of impulses from previously unimaginable networks." (Friedrich Achleitner)

An intelligent urban fixture, accessible

"The telematic arrangement of "bump" is prototypical for intelligent urban fixtures: beyond the specifically local experience in two cities, the interaction and communication of the people in both places through the telematic furnishing are the prerequisite for experiencing telematic simultaneity." (Gerfried Stocker)


The telematic bridge is imprinted with logos from companies that enable Internet communication. "bump" as an image and a part of the commercialized world in which we live, and which we cannot elude. "bump" as a furnishing of a city that you traverse.
"bump" has proven itself as a transparent and functional medium. The many people who have enthusiastically stepped on it call it a sensation that awakens associations and creates connections.


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


1998 BUMP: Opening of the Ars Electronica 99 by the mayors of Linz and Budapest on the bridge
ESTABLISHED in 1997 by: Christian Smretschnig, Michael Bieglmayer, Roland Graf, Werner Schmid.
Technical directors: Christian Troger, Elmar Trojer.
ac@bump.at,http://www.bump.at