Hallway to Highway

Ideas I’m Working with

I am focusing on the idea of the way humans behave walking in a crowd. It is my observation that it is similar to way they behave in traffic. The way I plan to show this is by turning a hallway into a highway.

Equipment

Yellow tape
White Tape
Cardboard
Printer
Double sided tape
Stands
Help

There is no help needed for this project

Describe what I’m Planning on doing

I am planning on turning a hallway that supports a large amount of human traffic into a highway. This will entail using tape to simulate the markings on the road. Yellow tape in the middle in variations of double lines and single lines will be placed on the ground. There will be white tape on the edges to represent the outside line of the highway also on the ground. This tape will not affect the flow of traffic as they can be stepped on. There will also be traffic signs such as speed limit and turns. These signs are hopefully going to be put up on the edges of the hallway against the wall by being secured by a stand, or hung from the ceiling, or attached to the wall with double sided tape depending on what the facility will allow. If this is unacceptable then they will be taped to the hallway wall by a means of double sided tape, so it will not affect the wall.

Inspiration

My inspiration came to me one day in Cost-co. The way people pushed their carts around the store in a large crowd were similar to the rules of the road and obeying the traffic laws. I am inspired by my curiosity of human nature as well.




Overview of Ideas

My idea is to turn a hallway into a highway. I am hoping to see if the transformation will change the way people walk down the hallway. I am curious to see if people follow the rules of the road that I set out in the hallway or will it not change the way people walk.

The Location of the piece will be located in the hallway going into the Archer Library. The piece will occupy that entire hallway area (the area with the dark gray brick). There will be 6 signs put up on a stand that is located along the wall. The signs will be put in a location so they do not interfere with the flow of people. The installation will go up on March 25th 2012 at 6:00pm-8:00pm. The Installation will remain up till April 2nd where it will be taking down at 8:00pm-7:00pm.

The installation activity is just to see how people react to the space when it is changed to represent a road. The question I am looking at is do the people walk and obey the rules that are set or walk do they walk and ignore the rules that are set. The installation should only take an hour and will be installed on Sunday at 6:00pm so there is a very low flow of traffic in the hallway. This piece will not generate any noise during the set up or the duration of the installation project.