Another highlight is waiting to be discovered in the airport’s outside area: A huge string of pearls made of white synthetic balls is wrapped around the passenger boarding bridge where the A380 wide-body aircraft docks. The balls wrap around the bridge like a bracelet and signal whether it is currently in use or not: The frequency of the lighting changes depending on whether the boarding bridge is not being used, is currently being used or is ready for take-off.
The artist: Olaf Nicolai, born in Halle/Saale in 1962, is a German conceptual artist who works with a wide variety of materials. Since the early 1990s, he has exhibited in almost all of the most prestigious contemporary art locations. Olaf Nicolai lives and works in Berlin.
Having engineering controls like those balls is generally a good idea and promotes safety.
Unfortunately having a safety indicator be completely unpredictable in appearance (like art) at every different airport, or even every gate at the same airport, not as good of an idea.
But the real answer is that installing art costs more than $0 and 0 seconds, so nobody making the decisions cares.
I wish this happened more often! Why not infuse art into routine notification lights/bells?
Having engineering controls like those balls is generally a good idea and promotes safety.
Unfortunately having a safety indicator be completely unpredictable in appearance (like art) at every different airport, or even every gate at the same airport, not as good of an idea.
But the real answer is that installing art costs more than $0 and 0 seconds, so nobody making the decisions cares.
Fair point! I figured the money thing but didn’t think about the standardization thing