MOTH MOTION
Karlsruhe/Germany. The Schwarzwaldstraße underpass near the train station has the function of a city entrance. Various vehicles and users pass there on prescribed tracks under the railway. Depending on the means of transport, there are different speeds and perspectives. The artistic concept of "Moth Motion" takes up these aspects of "change of place over time" and works on them on different levels. 41 large black panes of glass were mounted in front of the raw concrete. The backlit glass wall stretches over 60 m and shows an image that varies depending on the time of day and perspective: reflections mix with abstract forms; printed grids overlay the rough concrete structure. Slightly stretched to extremely distorted images allow passers-by to recognize motifs that disappear again as they move through the underpass. An overall panorama can only be seen from certain angles. »Moth Motion« shows hummingbird hawk moths from the butterfly family in unreal sizes – delicate creatures of the air, which for the moment make one think of fossil worlds and the deep sea. The model for the creatures shown is the peregrine butterfly, whose wing beat is extremely fast, its flight direction can change up, down, to the side, forwards and backwards in fractions of a second. In the tunnel, isolated specimens of the hawkmoth glide past the viewer; the two largest of them look as if their paths could cross. The form concept is the anamorphosis, a representation form known since the Renaissance. With this form of perspective, the object is represented deformed and can only be recognized from certain angle points. "MOTH MOTION" is just conveyed through the function and the "nature" of the underpass: the strictly directed movement through it – in one direction or the other. Standing still doesn´t help to recognize.
Angela Lautenbach, September 2008
This project was a cooperation with netzwerkarchitekten/Darmstadt.