Zürich HB Flap Original

Zürich HB Flap
2016
1380 x 280 x 25 cm

The installation consists in the appropriation and recontextualisation of the original mechanical timetable of the SBB CFF FFS Zürich train station which was replaced at the end of 2015 by a new silent digital model.
This old display panel is formed by 452 split-flap elements (88 with 40 flaps and 364 with 61 flaps).
Each PVC flap is silk-screened with a destination, time or rail informations.
In the installation these informations made of words or numbers become abstract moving shapes, forming a bigger composition where the text looses its meaning becoming only form, color and movement.
At a regular time interval the configuration of the display starts a long animated transition producing different compositions and sounds.

Since we were kids we were fascinated by this huge and loud display when passing under it in the station of Zürich. We wanted it so badly that in 2006 we managed to build an installation made of the same brands of split-flaps.

The display was exhibited at the opening of the Museum of Digital Arts (MuDA) in Zurich, in 2016.
As from 16th November 2017 it is installed at the Zürcher Hochschule der Künste (ZHdK).

See also:
creativeapplications.net/processing/gysin-vanetti-o-is-not-a-letter-its-a-circle/

Video:
Gysin-Vanetti Catalogue, MuDA
© Digital Arts Association 2016
Camera:
Lauschsicht