alois mosbacher

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artistic design for the recreation yard at mistelbach regional vocational college

It was a strenuous historical process before our current worldview could establish itself in the scientific world: The earth is not flat and nor is it at the centre of the solar system.
Our geographical image of the world is, however, still a very two-dimensional one. The cartographic projections of the earth limit the dimensions to top and bottom, left and right.
The globe can also be mathematically projected onto a circular surface with any possible centre point. The size and shape of the countries and continents is distorted in the process to the point of becoming unrecognisable.
For my public art project at Mistelbach vocational college, I have 'painted' just such a circular image of the world onto the playground. The landmasses of the planet have been applied with the yellow paint used for road lines on cycle path sign-blue oceans. Mistelbach is, of course, at the centre of this map of the world. A tree has been planted at this point around which benches are grouped that were completed in a workshop with the pupils.
The result is a homely sense of cosiness embedded in the state colours of Lower Austria.
If one goes leaves the college playground, a couple of steps into the field then a new perspective becomes imaginable: the limits of the locality is transformed into a global space, the round map of the world becomes a planet.
(Alois Mosbacher)