Skype-like art installation connects Moscow to St Petersburg

A new art installation connects visitors in Moscow’s Gorky Park to those on the island of New Holland in St Petersburg via a communication tube that uses Skype-like technology. Until September, anyone speaking into the pipe near Golitsynskiye Lake in Gorky Park will be heard by passers-by near the entrance of New Holland, a former shipyard turned cultural hub, and vice versa. Over the next few months, city listings guide Time Out plans to organise press conferences and rap battles using the pipe.

The installation was conceived by Vlad Kiaune, a physics student from St Petersburg. Inside each pipe is a simple computer — a hard drive, a speaker and a microphone — that uses VoIP technology, the same software used by Skype. With the help of two of his friends, designer Alexander Bratchikov and technologist Denis Sharokhin, Kiaune plans to create a network of different installations for people across Russia to communicate with. So far he has found sponsors in the Russian cities of Krasnodar, Tomsk and Novy Urengoy and the Polish town of Głogów. The idea is that once a day, any two of the installations will randomly connect to each other so that people on either end can talk to each other.

Kiaune said: “I have no previous experience of being an artist or designer. I had an idea and decided to make it happen. I was smoking with my friend on a street in winter and I saw a pipe and thought it would be cool if it could speak to us and my friend agreed.”