landfall-project.info, 2005

website for the public art project ‘Landfall’

The temporary art project Landfall by the artists Elodie Hiryczuk and Sjoerd van Oevelen consists of 10 large panorama billboards with photographs of the youngest island in the world, Surtsey in Iceland. The small island, which is of equal size as the financial district Zuidas Amsterdam, has become a protected area since its discovery, and is only accessible for the purpose of scientific research.

Hiryczuk / Van Oevelen reconstruct Surtsey to scale by placing the bill-boards according to their original geographical positions. In 2003 they were granted permission to take pictures of the landscape during a scientific expedition.

The website www.landfall-project.info contains selected texts and images of the artists’ expedition. It provides additional information on the art project; more detailed documentation material is made available when a respective square in the map is selected and enlarged. Step by step the user zooms in or out of the topography of Surtsey. The closer he gets, the more details he sees: the daily routes, the 10 locations of the panorama photographs, the original GPS coordinates and additional hotspots with linked texts and images. Even the sleeping tents, the storage hut and the landing platform of the helicopter have been considered in the map.

A new way of combining new and old media, a digital map that allows the user to access the target area in different dimensions. The grid becomes a scalable navigation tool that filters the amount of information.

In 2005 the website has been awarded the red dot for high design quality.

programming: Pascal de Man