In each of the two cities Linz and Budapest a foot bridge made of wooden planks are installed. If someone steps on a plank in one of the cities, an impulse released from the body weight is immediately sent to the other bridge. So a pulse can be felt in the other city, as the parallel plank lifts itself around 1 cm which releases a pounding noise. One can feel realistically the footsteps of strangers in a foreign city.
Bump produces a gap in the urban interface, a site at which one no longer has firm ground under ones feet. A wooden grating on the asphalt - maybe an excavation? But now there is knocking from below and the boards rise up. Below is another city, reflecting the same irregularity, linked via data transmission line. What is going on there? Undifferentiated mass movements, a stampede of hundreds of feet at rush hour? What about late at night: two or three pairs of feet. A percept ible rhythm. Perhaps a message? Or just a game? We sense the illusion of proximity: directly below the board which raises up, we presume a force which approximates our own. But there is the apparatus, the pneumatic piston, the control valve, the sensor. Closeness is only an illusion; the distance is not abolished. The thin pine board is a wall hundreds of kilometres thick. A casual encounter turns into alasting irritation of the sense of direction: west is below, below is east. How close can we get together?
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