Bridge Installation - Mémoire de forme
Installation - 2017
Type: Competition - Second phase
Location: La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland
Team: Víctor Díaz, Multiply
The project offers a testimony of the past during the day and a representation of the present at night. A sort of interactive poetic screen managed by an algorithm that offers a different show every day. The intent and focus on the power of history in the roots of a population, but also to affirm the value of the individuals that make up the city and its identity.
The first aspect of the intervention is a nod to the history of the bridge, which is highlighted by a series of vertical aluminum tubes that resemble the curve of its ancient metal arches. The prowess of the past represented symbolically by the expression of a vault consisting of five lines of tubes, attached below the beams of the current bridge. A contemporary solution to evoke the richness and the importance of the historical heritage.
The second aspect of the intervention emphasizes what is happening daily in this part of the city, an intersection between two traffic axes that ignore each other, one above and one below.
Each of the tubes contains in its center a LED bar. At night, the bridge lights up and transforms into a dynamic picture influenced by the surrounding traffic that has taken place throughout the day. These luminous fluctuations constitute an abstract image which is renewed every day at nightfall. A group of motion sensors record the activity of the day on the bridge: the passage of trains, pedestrians, cyclists, cars, etc. These measurements are retranscribed at dusk by moving lights mimicking the traffic recorded on the bridge during the day.