What Would You Do To Make London A Better Place?
Tube Tunnels as giant immersive flip books. We all travel miles and miles underground everyday through black tunnels. The Tube carriages have all got amazing windows to look outside of the train at... well, nothing. Wouldn't it be nice if the walls of the tunnels were covered in series of pictures that vary gradually from one to the next, so that when the trains goes through the tunnel they get animated? This way you could watch short films in between two or more stations. This could led to developing a tube-specific form of narrative where one stop equals one episode and the entire line would be the full story. You could then build combinations of storylines between the various lines and branches, based on where the people change line more often (data courtesy of the mighty Oyster). People would be entertained and learn something while commuting or they could actually start using the tube not just in a functional way but to watch great stories unfolding in front of their eyes and keep going until the end of the line just to see how the story goes! anyway, let's not get carried away, maybe I should mention as well that you could sell more advertising space...?
Posted by abc3d 6 months ago · 13 comments reply
LOVE THIS IDEA!
Posted by Benamin about 6 months ago
thanks ;) now let's get some votes!!!
Posted by abc3d about 6 months ago
Gets my vote. This would be lovely, and could be installed in conjunction with line closures for engineering works as an immediate return for the pain commuters are going through.
Posted by mattfromlondon about 6 months ago
I think anybody with epilepsy would have a seizure.
Posted by cdaltonmoore about 6 months ago
A bit like the Heathrow Express LED tunnel advertising wall, but hopefully a lot more interesting: http://www.creativematch.com/viewNews/?95272
Posted by SharmilaSub about 6 months ago
i was thinking more of old school posters strips rather than screen...
Posted by abc3d about 6 months ago
Presumably they will need to be lit up?
Posted by cdaltonmoore about 6 months ago
if you use the light from the train there's no blinking effect
Posted by abc3d about 6 months ago
Such ridiculous and expensive. What about rush hour when you cannot even stand in a small space? How do you think it would be possible to "admire" such beautiful art that will become obsolete and dirty in a quicker way (I would say one month). And how did you plan to commute with, meanwhile the painter will decor the tunnel keeping blocked the line? Oh man, that's very funny idea.
Posted by seoer about 6 months ago
that is a very constructive comment. if you can make the effort, read the comments above. you'll discover that all your smart questions have been already addressed
Posted by abc3d about 6 months ago
Lovely idea! Anything that brings proper art into the tube instead of constant billboards that tell you you're not good enough until you buy more stuff is a good thing in my book. But let's think about how this might be done: Possibility 1: A series of images that tell a story as you pass them by, like a picture book I fear that tube trains go too fast for this to work. Think of trying to read the station signs as they flash past the window when you come into a station - it's difficult until the train is slowing right down. You'd just see a blur. You could just put them near stations where the trains go slower, but that limits the ability to tell a story. I'm not sure this is a go-er. Possibility 2: A zoetrope-style animation To create a zoetrope effect you need a series of quite static images. But this is not what you see from the window of a tube - you see a continuously moving flow. In order to create an 'animation' effect you'd need some kind of system to make each 'frame' distinct and separate - some kind of slatted window arrangement or flashing lights. I'm not convinced you could make slatted windows produce the right effect in the context of a tube train, and flashing lights introduces another whole set of problems. I don't think this is practicable. You might as well just install TVs. Possibility 3: Scrolling abstract animation Despite the points above I don't want to pour cold water on this great idea. Try looking at it this way: tube train windows provide a 'scrolling' screen rather than a 'flashing' one. Think of the squiggly lines drawn on a long scrolling sheet of paper by a seismometer or a lie detector, only with lots of lines swirling around, all in pretty colours. No good for drawing pictures or telling much of a story, but still, potentially, a thing of beauty. Graffiti artists have already achieved something like this in parts of the Paris metro and it looks pretty cool - like a big colourful snake swinging and wobbling up and down as you go through the tunnel. But with some proper thought, planning and the support of TfL we could execute it a hundred times better throughout whole stretches of the network. It could be themed to the colours of the different lines. It could be a really beautiful piece of public art. Tourists would ride the tube just to see it. People would feel proud they lived near it. It could be proper proper cool. So, to sum up: squiggly lines.
Posted by spdrmnky about 6 months ago
they have this on the tube shuttle in Zurich airport
Posted by dan_hud about 6 months ago
Projectors on the side of the trains would do this nicely
Posted by morgzzz about 5 months ago
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