Pedestrian Levitation

Pedestrian Levitation, by Thomas Laureyssens, is based on the movement of pedestrians on a pedestrian crossing. Some pedestrians walk on the sidewalk and use the pedestrian crossing, others make shortcuts. PL visualises the real movement of people, and adds a virtual movement based on the assumption that the mind of people is not subject to gravity or any other physical limitations.

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Irregular white triangles are applied on the sidewalk- for the real movement, and up onto a wall for the virtual movement. The work creates a visual motion: when you walk into the work, your visual senses are pulled to the directions of the triangles.

The movement of the pedestrians is recorded with a camera. A pattern of movement is extracted by reworking this recording frame by frame with video animation software. From this pattern, some dominant directions can be found. They are what the urbanist foresaw, but be the real flow, the real use of the city by its inhabitants.

The first node of the PL network was installed in Brussels in April 2005, and more will follow. Every node will be an artwork with an own identity, because every city has its own specific situation

Via r-echo.