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Virtual tunnel links London and New York
• Telectroscope installed at Brooklyn and Tower Bridges
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 On the Web |
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By
Mayzee Krakatoa, contributing editor
Sunday,
25 May, 2008
New Yorkers could see their English cousins across the pond Thursday without benefit of cable TV or video conferencing, courtesy of an unusual live optical hookup created by Paul St George, a conceptual artist with a fanciful tale of a long-lost tunnel.
An optical device called a "telectroscope" was placed at the Fulton Ferry Landing in Brooklyn and another one on the Thames River in London on Thursday. Spectators stepped up to the machine on both sides of the Atlantic and waved and wrote greetings to each other in real time on wipe-off message boards.
The contraption is the invention of Paul St George, a London artist known for his tiny replicas of monumental pieces of art. Publicists will say only that it uses fiberoptic communication. St George prefers to stick to his story that the machine was started by his great-grandfather in Victorian times and transmits images via a tunnel under the ocean to connect New Yorkers with Londoners using giant parabolic mirrors installed in a forgotten Trans-Atlantic tunnel.
As found on the official website of the project, everything began when the artist found a set of papers consisting of a plan that was put together by his great-grandfather, engineer Alexander Stanhope St George.
According to the project's Web site, St George's work "has always been concerned with questioning the relationship between the viewer and what is viewed. His work is also often associated with different realities, spectacle and viewer participation."
The telectroscopic spectacle and viewer participation will be in operation on both sides of the Atlantic until June 15.
Peter Coleman, the producer of the project in New York, sees the device as both a piece of art and a curiosity in a public space. The unusual transoceanic connection will be kept open until June 15 and a very large number of visitors is expected to show up and take a look.
The 37 feet long 11 feet high device was built by the same team who created the 42 tonne mechanical giant elephant for the Sultan's Elephant spectacle which entranced Londoners two years ago. St Geoprge pitched the idea to Artichoke, the British arts group responsible for taking the Sultan's Elephant -- a 42-ton mechanical creature -- for a stroll through central London in 2006. The company was immediately taken by St George's idea.
"The whole thing is about seeing what is real and what isn't real and how the world is," said Nicki Webb, a co-founder of Artichoke. "Is it nighttime when we are in daytime and does it look familiar to us or not?"
When the sun illuminated the lens of the Telectroscope next to the Thames this morning, it was, of course, still nighttime in New York. So the screen inside the scope broadcast back only an empty sidewalk silently framed by the Brooklyn Bridge and Manhattan skyline. But then something miraculous occurred. A police officer and a street cleaner walked into the frame. Stopped. And waved.
Source ENews, Press Association
The Naked Reader 2008
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