CLIENT: Stadt Dortmund
2000

Masaki Fujihata’s interactive and networked installation VERTICAL MAPPING is oriented along the communication between miners above and below ground.

The installation consists of five hoisting cages that serve as the basis for the exploration of a three-dimensional computer-animated underground landscape where you can meet other visitors and communicate with them. Two of these cages are the original hosting cages of the Zollern ll/IV coal mine, two stylized copies can be found in the maintenance building of the mine, and another one on the balcony of the pithead baths. The different places where the hoisting cages are positioned are linked by “Shared Virtual Environment” technologies. VERTICAL MAPPING is a virtual pit system that contains quite a few surprises and invites the users to communicate.

The interface of the control system is the hoisting stand, or rather, its copy. The right lever is used for the movement along the X-axis (left and right), the left lever along the Y-axis (up and down). Next to the chair there is a telephone over which one can communicate with the actors of the other hoisting stands.

VERTICAL MAPPING uses an extended version of the software for “Global Interior Project”, 1996, and “Nuzzle Afar”, 1998, developed by Takeshi Kawashima.