Materials: Iron, electrical motor, PVC balls, sensors, technical apparatus

Dimensions: Balls: ø 25 cm, Circuit: variable (length between 400 and 800 metres)
Editions: 3 + 2 a. p.

Courtesy: Johann König / Berlin

Exhibitions: Distance, Barbican Art Centre, London, UK, 2007
Distance, Forum Ludwig, Aachen, D, 2004
Roller Coaster, Dunkers Kulturhus, Helsingborg, SWE, 2005
Distance, Moore Space, Miami, US, 2005

The work is a site-specific installation that relates directly to the architectural configuration of the exhibition space. A modular design using steel tracks makes it adjustable to various spatial settings, and it is assembled to run through the entire building and/or the exhibition space. The work thus takes on different forms depending on the spatial conditions of the exhibition venue.
At Forum Ludwig, Aachen, the work was tied to the visitors’ movements and time spent in the exhibition space. The 400-meter-long ball circuit passed through the whole art museum, with the balls released by a sensor reacting when the visitor entered the first room, rolling from one room to another through holes in the walls, moving up again by escalator, following the path visitors usually take when making their way through the museum. The balls’ passage time was conceived to be twice as fast as the average visitor, who would take about 12 minutes to pass through the museum. For six minutes, the visitor could follow his ball through the track and would find in each room a playful attraction in the form of the track, which took on a different sculptural quality in each room.

In the version shown at Dunkers Kulturhus, Helsingborg, the work took a different aesthetic approach. It was conceived as a huge dynamic sculpture with labyrinthine qualities in the middle of a large exhibition space. In this space, the tracks wind around like a roller coaster. When a visitor enters the space, a sensor reacts and releases a ball which is set in motion and runs the length of the track, passing loopings, sharp curves and other dynamic sections within the 800-meter-long circuit. At first, the visitor follows the white plastic ball on its route, but as multiple visitors trigger a new ball every 15 seconds, one soon loses track of one’s own ball and starts experiencing the whole architecture as a moving and dynamic structure.