At the invitation of PASSAGE CEO Werner Prödl, the Ars Electronica Futurelab has created an interactive installation custom tailored to The PASSAGE. “Innocence” is the title of a work that has to do with Linzers’ childhood memories of The PASSAGE.

The site of the installation is the area in front of the elevators on the Ground Floor. All visitors passing through this space on their way to and from the elevators, the information desk or the parking garage are captured by two cameras, and their images are displayed in real time on a 2½-m2 monitor set up in front of the bank of elevators. Pedestrians walking towards the monitor see themselves “approaching themselves, as it were,” and find themselves transported into a fairy-tale world. Framed by branches and leaves, the shopping center’s passageway now appears as a forest clearing. Here and there, deer peek out of the thicket; hesitant at first, they venture out into the open. Pedestrians cause fallen leaves to swirl up from the forest floor—more or less, depending on how fast they’re walking through the clearing—and this either frightens the animals away or entices them to come closer. All of a sudden, it starts to rain. What begins as a light sprinkle suddenly becomes a cloudburst and turns the clearing into one big puddle. The deer have vanished, replaced by swans and ducks splashing about in the water. Each step by a pedestrian now triggers waves that spread out in concentric circles across the Ground Floor of the shopping center. Just as suddenly as it began to rain, the sky clears again. The water dries up and the clearing reappears. This is a cyclical sequence that alludes to the transformation The Passage has undergone over the
years and, thereby, to the experiences and recollections of the generations who have grown up in Linz and been affected by this process in ever-changing ways.