Before I begin, just thought i'd update you. I put that link over there >>>>>> for the pictures from the Berlin bus tour that I promised last time. Oh and the IT guy has given up on us Mac users who can't get wireless in our rooms and told us just to ring for our money back. Very dissapointing, but onwards and upwards I guess. Anyway, onto the good stuff.
The college lavished us with another welcome present yesterday in the form of a tour of an art exhibition. When I signed up for this I imagined a big fancy art gallery. You can imagine my surprise when we arrived outside a large office building with "Allianz" in big blue letters on the top. It turned out that when Allianz built their new headquarters (called the Treptowers they commisioned a number of artist and sculptors to create pieces for the numerous corridors and open spaces within the building. Quite a smart idea, but I imagine it wasn't cheap!!
There was art all over the place but I took some photos of my favourite pieces. And here they are!!
Firstly we have this peice by some German lady who's name escapes me at the minute. From the side it looks like this:
But from the front it looked like this!!
The other cool thing about this piece is that she didn't paint on the picture but, from what I could understand from guide, blasted it with some sort of powder that stuck to the reeds. It's kind of hard to explain.
The next artwork was a big log. But not just any big log!!!
The artist lady cut long pieces out of the log and replaced them with similar shaped pieces of perspex creating this smooth/rugid look. Very cool when the light shone through it, like in the photos!!
One of my favourite things in the building was on the 5th floor. This floor was given over to one artist who took the long narrow corridors and used them as optical illusions. You'll have to excuse the poor picture as I had a security guard standing right behind me ushering me on, but here goes:
He painted similar patterns in each of the corridors so that when you look at them head on they look normal but as you walk down the corridor, some of which were 700m long, the pattern had been painted the whole length of the corridor. I would've gotten better pictures if the security guard hadn't been standing over me waiting to move on.
The other artwork that I really liked was on the 3rd floor and was based on office clothes. I really should've done a better job of remebering the names of the artists but they were mostly Germans with really long names. Anyway, this artist took apart sterotypical office clothes and hung the remnants on the walls, like so:
The pockets were my favourite!!
The next exhibit we were shown was fantastic. It consisted of a number of thin metal poles with small light bulbs on the top. On these bulbs were tiny pictures of face,s that when lit up, were projected onto the wall, like so:
The final peice we were shown in the offices was along a 700m corridor, and again thanks to the security guard the hurried picture didn't turn out too good. Along the floor was a strip, a couple of inches wide, that lit up as you walked along. It followed you as you walked and was supposed to make worker feel more involved in the business. I don't know how it did that, but apparently it does!!
The exhibit also extended outside into the nearby river.
The large sculpture of three men is entitled 'Molecule Man' and is placed near to where the three borders of Berlin met.
That concluded our tour of Allianz's lovely new offices. Definitely one of the most unusual tours i've been on. But I suppose, when in Rome, or in this case Berlin!!!
