Kaistapää

Sculpture with sound. The Vehicle Administration Centre, Helsinki, 1998

The Vehicle Administration Centre in Helsinki committed a sculpture project especially made for their newly renovated facilities.

My idea was to make an interactive sculpture to amuse people waiting in the assembly hall. The sculpture is, among other things, made of metal ”roads”, a gear stick, a steering wheel and a road sign.

When somebody approaches the sculpture, the infrared sensors trigger a loudspeaker placed on the sculpture’s ”head”, producing a sound controlled by a small computer chip, onto which you can record a message.

For the inauguration of the sculpture a sound loop of birdsong on top of the heavy sound of traffic, was made.

The employees were asked to name the sculpture and they came up with a name in Finnish, Kaistapää, which refers to road lanes as well as to a crazy person.