GATEways (2000)

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Global acoustic network performance on the occasion of anti racism day world-wide.

March 21st, 2000. Original duration: 30 hours.
 
GATEways was a Live-Event that acoustically connected, for one day via the World Wide Web, the newly renovated Siebenbrunnenplatz in Vienna with other locations. Concrete local squares, that acted as intercultural gateways, became nodes of a global acoustic network: local bound soundscapes went through the data-ways on a tour to other spaces, diversified the intimate atmospheres, mixed with them and were sent back.

GATEways had cultural diversity, languages, and cultural transient situations as main themes. The question of various cultures living together daily in one place (like for example in the 5th district of Vienna) was the central motif. Conversations with people of differing ages, career and ancestry served as a starting point for the entire event.

GATEways was also a project about time. Culturally-bound local times became transparent and formed a new unfamiliar time sculpture in the synchronous global network of the World Wide Web's space. On the 21st of March, - where times for day and night are equal - daytime is exactly 12 hours long at every point on earth. The single events at each location were spawned from this 12 hours' rhythm. The entire event, however, began with the sunrise at the eastern most point of the network in Melbourne and ended with the sunset at the western most point - in Vancouver. Consequently, the day of the occurrence was 30 hours long altogether - structured through a diversity of sunups and sundowns.

GATEways had many stages: the Siebenbrunnenplatz in Vienna, the Domplatz in Erfurt, the Bauhaus University in Weimar, a space in the centre of Melbourne and the Gallery of the Western Front in Vancouver. Not only were the concrete places the stages, but also the homepage itself which served as a platform displaying, in picture, text and sound, the entire event in all its single pieces for the entire length. Additionally, radio stations in Austria, Germany, Serbia and Canada acted as live media and so as "loudspeakers" for an audience that couldn't be on site nor had access to internet.