sensomatic

Brennpunkt

Von Wegen stilles Örtchen

Design and architecture of an exhibition about public toilets in Vienna, curated by Beatrice Jaschke and Monika Sommer.

The room for this special exhibition inside the ‘Brennpunkt — Museum der Heizkultur’ was difficult to deal with. A very low ceiling plus big heating pipes create a rather claustrophobic feeling. We divided the space by installing zigzag rows of toilet walls. For the installations we used ‘typical’ toilet materials like alloy, plastic and coated chipboard. There's an interactive quiz, a UV-light box, several sound installations and a lot of historic material.

Fotos: Hanna Haböck

Everybody needs to go

Everybody needs to go

 — Animation of randomly appearing toilet icons cueing up for entering the exhibtion. The wheelchair overtakes them all.

All Spatial items
Floating display cabinet

Floating display cabinet

Flush sounds

Flush sounds

 — Pushing the button on flushing tank next to the vintage ones triggers different flush sounds of the depicted toilets.
Sound artist Johannes Kapeller visited all kinds of toilets to catch the most different sounds on tape.
Blue LEDs indicate to which tollet the sound belongs.

Visitors can rest on a stylised roman latrine.

Arcade game

Arcade game

 — In this arcade style game you have to answer as many questions as possible about water usage while the flushing tank get’s filled up again.
No shooting involved.

Non reliefing activities

Non reliefing activities

 — The ‘ intimacy’ area deals with further usages of toilets, like refreshing your look but also sex, drugs and other kinds of arrangements.

Big Brother

Big Brother

 — A surveillance camera records people in the ‘intimacy’ area since cctv doesn’t stop at private places.
The video image can be seen outside this area.

Audio players and amplifiers are hidden in flushing tanks.
Visitors can leave their comments on a tiled piece of wall.

Hygiene is an important aspect when it comes to public toilets. When you peek through the holes in this toilet door you can see what you don’t want see when you need a wee.

It glows in the dark

It glows in the dark

 — The lit toilet gives an impression of a clean toilet.
When the lights are off a UV-lamp makes the contamination visible.
So wash your hands after visiting the bathroom!

A video about sewage pipe cleaners is placed inside a toilet bowl. Other videos are placed more commonly at the walls, like a philosophical excursion into how nationalities are reflected by their toilet culture by Slavoj Zizek.

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