Namsan Tunnel No.3 / installation / Ministry of Culture and Tourism, Korea
To city dwellers, streets and motorways constitute a wholly other order of space to the usual architectural spaces that are the focus of their activities. Despite the not inconsiderable time spent on the road, these spaces are not centred on humans, but are dominated by traffic typically reaching speeds of 60-100 km/h. Mere "speed passages" or "time tracks" without actual substance, let alone human scale, they are "voids" calibrated to purely ballistic numerics. Traffic tunnels especially, in a conspicuous amplification of such 100% artificial spatial conceits, take the form of "space-time tubes" volumetrically moulded around the high-speed traffic flow.

The Namsan Tunnel No. 3 Project is an attempt to retrieve just such a faceless abstract "void" and draw it more towards a humanised "environment" with all the evocative variegations of scenery we see in the outside world. To the spatial designer, the "physics experiment" setting of the tunnel is an unknown realm of cold friction where bare speed strafes past human perception.
What is needed, then, is a design interface between such speeds and perceptual thresholds: to effect a temporary delay in this ultra-accelerated techological overkill wherein to introduce/discover some algorithm or schema of compression-decompression that might allow for an interactive play of human perceptions and feelings; to create a time-axis dynamic at speeds of 60-100km/h to "score" the otherwise monotonous grey of the tunnel more "in tune" with the continuously unfolding landscape outside. Here, just as in music, first arises rhythm, then melody and harmonies. A visual symphony, from pianissimo to adagio, moderato, allegro, vivace, crescendo, forte, creating a narrative overture to finale.

Bearing in mind the north-south axis of the 1200m long Namsam Tunnel No. 3 in central Seoul, we gave visual interpretation to the popular Korean folksong "Kyongbok-Taryon". At 60km/h, a drive through the Sonic Space clocks in a just under 60 seconds, a brief time-travel experience to bring a refreshing moment of relief to the tired city dweller.
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