Online Project (Network Link for Google Earth)
Are we living in a globalised world that is becoming increasingly homogeneous? Languages, plant and animal species are continuously decreasing. Supermarkets, buildings and cities look more and more alike. Technological progress is accelerating this process. Fast means of transport and communication such as airplanes, satellites and the Internet enable ever faster and apparently more comprehensive access to information.
With Airport Lounge you fly continuously from airport lounge to airport lounge, to the rhythm of the posts that users of airport lounges send to Instagram.
In the clash of the Internet giants Google and Facebook and their services Google Earth and Instagram, Airport Lounge poses the question of what the ever-growing similarity of airports, airport lounges, their equipment, commodities and foodstuffs means.
Do we love moving from one airport to another to enjoy a life that is almost identical, no matter what city you find yourself in?
Will all cities be equal in the distant future, as Trude in Italo Calvino’s surreal short story “Invisible Cities”?
If on arriving at Trude I had not read the city’s name written in big letters, I would have thought I was landing at the same airport from which I had taken off.
The suburbs they drove me through were no different from the other, with the same little garnish and yellowish houses. Following the same signs, we swung around the same flower beds in the same squares. The downtown streets displayed goods, packages, signs that had not changed at all.
This was the first time I had come to Trude, but I already know the hotel where I happened to be lodged; I had already heard and spoken my dialogues with the buyers and seller of hardware; I had ended the days identically, looking through the same goblets at the same swaying navels.
Why come to Trude? I asked myself. And I already wanted to leave.
“You can resume your flight whenever you like,” they said to me, “but you will arrive at another Trude, absolutely the same, detail by detail. The world is covered by the sole Trude, which does not begin, nor end. Only the name of the airport changes.”
How to install Airport Lounge
- follow this video tutorial
- set the network link in Google Earth to: http://1go1.net/pic-me/v2/index.php?tag=airportlounge