Rides and waves
Art for our public transportation company and underground system Wiener Linien
Wiener Linien and our underground system connects wien & viennese like no other company. Every day, we take a tram, bus or train and rush home, to work, to meet friends, or to the restaurant at the other end of the city. The ones who don’t use public transport themselves, will get in touch with Wiener Linien on our daily street traffic or watch a tram passing by. More sustainable and affordable than owning a car, more efficient and cheaper than the infrastructure in many other european cities, a better choice in winter than a bicycle and one doesn’t even need to look for a parking space ~ an art project with our underground / „Wiener Linien“ is desirable
so we are working on our project idea, making and developing it. Our design proposals hace an approach and we are working on our designs. In our christmas holidays 2018, we were working and realzing our ideas
An artistically design for visual shields and our construction site at our Viennese transit station Meildinger Hauptstraße. In order for hiding ongoing renovations of escalators and elevators, we were putting construction sites into masks and gave it a temporary cover, to not disturb the visual appearance of the station through dusty working sites. Our outcome was a beautiful camouflage and visual style for our ungerground system in Vienna called Wiener Linien
In order to artistically capture the busy transit station Meidlinger Hauptstraße and to remain true to the style of the Wiener Linien, we chose a comprehensive wave pattern, which reflects the dynamics and flow of the transport company as well as the transport hub of the city of Vienna. Color-coded to Austria as well as to the company colors of the Wiener Linien, the visual shields create a bright and friendly atmosphere.
Each plate is handpainted. In order to keep the installation and use of the plates as easy as possible, they were painted on both sides and do not follow a fixed sequence. As a result, they are constantly rearranged and create a new piece of art and an unprecedented picture landscape.
In total, we painted about 200 panels of different sizes and different materials of varying haptics, forming a total area of 347.15 m². Even though it was a new and therefore challenging experience for us, we grew with the process, due to the outstanding cooperation of all involved helpers and supporters.
A huge thank you goes to the gallery „Die Schöne“, whose premises and lighting conditions offered us an ideal working frame. In addition, we benefited from the fireplace in the loft, without which we would have had to surrender to the freezing temperatures.
Thank you for the fun and helpful cooperation! Stay tuned. More is coming soon…
Many thanks also to Mariam Gomez for her help with the visualization as well as to all the other helpers,
especially Feodora Leslie Keferstein, who realized the project. A very big thank you to Valerie Huber,
without whom the project would not have come about.
Our partners did a great Job! Thank you for Logistics & Transport cooperation with Synthesa, OTIS & H & W.
Text by Verena Backes
