Ok, so what’s this guy up to? (answer after the jump)…

Yes, he is an Aus­tri­an. His name is Miguel Gon­za­lez. No, even though he looks as though he is earnest­ly search­ing for his coun­try’s nation­al iden­ti­ty, he is in fact check­ing out the view here on the oth­er side of the Earth.

It’s 7.5° and back, a col­lab­o­ra­tive project by Gon­za­lez and Welling­ton artist Alan­nah Gunter. In Linz, Aus­tria passers-by watch a mon­i­tor inside a canal-tube (above) and are in turn watched by a web­cam. Placed at 7.5° to the earth, the cam­era-tube is a vir­tu­al tun­nel through the earth to Welling­ton where the live image screens night­ly at the Film Archive Load­ing Bay. A sim­i­lar cam­era-tube is installed in Abel Smith street; what it sees is what the Linz passers-by will see.


It’s all part of the Linz Cen­ter of Con­tem­po­rary Art’s 2008 art-project Tiefen­rausch (Rap­ture of the deep) — Art and Tours through the Under­worlds of Linz. Gon­za­lez came up with the idea to cre­ate a vir­tu­al hole drilled at an angle of 7.5 degrees through to the oth­er side of the plan­et, and emerg­ing in Welling­ton.

Linz is a tech­nol­o­gy and knowledge–based urban indus­tri­al cen­tre in Aus­tria. It takes cul­ture very seri­ous­ly and places tremen­dous val­ue on eco­log­i­cal­ly-ori­ent­ed qual­i­ty of life. This year Linz has been named co-hold­er of the title Euro­pean Cap­i­tal of Cul­ture, a fit­ting match for Welling­ton as New Zealand’s so-called cul­tur­al cap­i­tal.

It’s not a com­plete­ly orig­i­nal idea — see for exam­ple the Telec­tro­scope which mag­i­cal­ly links Lon­don and New York — also remem­ber when Tele­com had those view-por­tals installed in War­ing-Tay­lor St and then Courte­nay Cen­tral which were linked to Cashell Mall in Christchurch and some­where in Auck­land? — but it promis­es to be a bit of fun, fer sure.

Drill more holes through the Earth (ok, kin­da) using Ze Frank’s If The Earth Were A Sand­wich Google Maps mash-up toy.

Date: Mon­day 23 June — Sun­day 13 July
Time: 7pm-7am
Loc’n: The load­ing bay on the Tarana­ki side of the Film Archive build­ing; some­where as yet unde­ter­mined in Abel Smith Street