The video offers a virtual walking tour of Berlin’s Bahnhof Zoo area by way of two algorithms: one for stereoscopic street imaging, one for automated motion-to-sound generation. Rendered through hundreds of still images, the route transforms into computable coordinates of inanimate figurations that pulsate in idiosyncratic timelines of sound. What is uncaptured lurks in the form of blank spots and auditive distortions.
At once a virtual reminiscence of the past glories of West Berlin’s central station, this seemingly dystopic view of Berlin’s streetscapes has been converted into a lived reality amidst the COVID-19 pandemic. With public life being deprived of its main ingredients, the public, the Zoo area transformed into a concrete simulacrum – a strangely depopulated space reminiscent of its own virtual copy.
