social and physical inquiries into the ambient Media event of Piano-Stairs
Odenplan Metro Station
Stockholm, Sweeden
59.3428° N, 18.0489° E
In her 2001 book, Ambient Television, Anna McCarthy explores the subtle yet intriguing characteristics of television sets that appear in significant locations outside the traditional home establishment. When placed in public spaces, McCarthy notes how the televisual media introduces private spaces to viewers while playing on social cues to transmit a multitude of signals to an otherwise occupied public audience despite the ambient, unforced nature of its existence in a predetermined space. As a media event, the ambient television stands as a prime example of the ambient media as a whole, a media that grants positive, mediated benefits to "viewers" that participate in it in a way that verges on passivity. Another such ambient media is that of the piano staircase (hereafter, piano-stairs), one such example of which exists at an exit to a particular metro station in the heart of Stockholm, Sweden. Created by "Volkswagen initiative" thefuntheory.com, these transformed stairs were part of a social experiment to discover whether, as their YouTube video explicitly states, making the act of taking the stairs more fun would decrease the number of people using the adjacent escalator. Below is the record of the experiment itself.
Stockholm, Sweeden
59.3428° N, 18.0489° E
In her 2001 book, Ambient Television, Anna McCarthy explores the subtle yet intriguing characteristics of television sets that appear in significant locations outside the traditional home establishment. When placed in public spaces, McCarthy notes how the televisual media introduces private spaces to viewers while playing on social cues to transmit a multitude of signals to an otherwise occupied public audience despite the ambient, unforced nature of its existence in a predetermined space. As a media event, the ambient television stands as a prime example of the ambient media as a whole, a media that grants positive, mediated benefits to "viewers" that participate in it in a way that verges on passivity. Another such ambient media is that of the piano staircase (hereafter, piano-stairs), one such example of which exists at an exit to a particular metro station in the heart of Stockholm, Sweden. Created by "Volkswagen initiative" thefuntheory.com, these transformed stairs were part of a social experiment to discover whether, as their YouTube video explicitly states, making the act of taking the stairs more fun would decrease the number of people using the adjacent escalator. Below is the record of the experiment itself.
Since much of what McCarthy describes about early uses of ambient televisions in public spaces started as social experiments with consumers, it is natural to explore if these particular piano-stairs operate in the same fashion in order to positively impact a public audience with a private experience and whether the social result can be determined in the context of societal reaction to it and the overall physical space it occupies.
Before one can begin exploring this musical feat of engineering as set out previously, one must be sure that it truly is within the realm of media, not to mention within the realm of ambient media. All forms of media allow users to interact with content inherent to the medium itself. For example, film, firmly entrenched in the concept of media, provides cinematic texts for viewers to watch, digest, over a period of time and can stimulate interaction beyond the filmic medium in the form of conversation or film study itself. Interactions with film, and all other media, can range from passive to highly interactive, all depending on what the user wants to extract from their experience. Likewise, these piano-stairs mediate user interaction, not only with the physical space that the stairs allow for passage through (rather than having to climb bare earth or utilize another method of reaching the street level), but also with the musical notes that chime whenever pressure is applied to each different step. Users may take away the impact of music from their physical movements which can then be discussed with others in a completely different location. Therefore, the piano-stairs truly act as other media do.
What's interesting is that many of the reports on this piano-stairs project and others frequently reference the 1983 film Big starring Tom Hanks. The famous piano scene from the movie is said to be at least a partial inspiration for projects like this. A media event, the film, is therefore incarnated in "real life" through the piano-stairs, gifting them with another tier of media to operate in beyond their physical presence mediating space. Not only is this a medium in which physical steps become musical, but also a medium in which cinematic moments of musical entertainment are called back to which further call back memories of actual pianos, yet another tool to create a media event: music.
While the point has been made that these stairs are truly one of many media in the modern world, there is sufficient opportunity for counter argument. These stairs can be seen as the opposite of a media, as something that slows our interaction with the world, our passage through space. Speaking in terms of efficiency, the piano-stairs require much more effort in order to travel from point A at the bottom, to point B at street level than using the escalator would. One might be able to get to the top faster than they would riding the escalator if they ran up the piano-stairs, but more energy would have to be expended. These piano-stairs, then, seem more like a hindrance than a media that facilitates quicker passage through space towards the pinnacle of its purpose. The recent trend in media, specifically in the digital medium of the Internet and high speed computers - both of which provide more efficient ways of recording, editing, and projecting cinema, an older media, than traditional, physical storage and editing practices - has seemed to streamline the user's ease and speed of access to the products of media in general. Film and music files can be remixed, edited, stored, and copied ad infinitum, ad nauseam. For the user, the advancement of media runs parallel with the desire to increase the speed of actually experiencing the fruits of the media. Therefore, digital media are embraced by the public and private sectors alike. How, then, can piano-stairs still be considered a media if they complicate and slow down, rather than expedite, one's progress towards the fruits of the stairs themselves (the top level) if they clash, apparently, with this trend? Though the piano-stairs may slow one's ascension to the street level, this essay contests that what they add outweighs what they subtract (energy and/or time). Just as the radio, a prime example of a media, presents entertainment and information at the cost of the time spent gathering the entertainment and information through the act of listening to it (participating in the media itself), so to do the piano-stairs present entertainment and health benefits at the cost of spent energy to walk (casually or whimsically) towards the upper landing. Though the piano-stairs come at a cost of efficiency, unlike more modern examples of media, they are most definitely a media to be experienced because all media come with a price. There's no such thing as a free lunch, or media, after all.
With the piano-stairs firmly entrenched in the definition of media, analysis of them can begin. As has been alluded previously, the piano-stairs act as an ambient media that allows for both active or passive interaction. Passive interaction arises from their status as physical stairs that just happen to play music. They are a means to an end, albeit a musical media event, in the sense that they can be climbed to the street level. Because an escalator is located directly adjacent to the stairs, and because the escalator provides a more efficient passive means of traversing the same space, most commuters tended to use it instead of the stairs (as seen in the YouTube video above). Time and exertion are saved using the escalator, thus it appears constantly clogged with travelers before the piano-stairs are installed. Active participants that use the piano-stairs prioritize the musical notion of the medium over the strict notion of the stairs as a physical means to an end. The piano-stairs become a toy, of sorts, that one can interact with and hear one's interaction with. The ambient nature of these piano-stairs is their strongest aspect. No one is pressured into interacting with them for musical ends, but the chance to hear one's motion through space in musical form is hard to pass up in a (global) society as molded by music as ours.
However, such noisy interaction in a public space can be troubling for shy individuals, so the active participation is something hard for public users to allow themselves to buy into. Note how hesitant people are, at first (which may, admittedly, be a contrived effect of the editing used by thefuntheory.com, though it remains relevant because a change was noted after the completion of the project), to use the piano-stairs. Since not everyone else is using them (due to the fact that few realize that there is a new media at work where once static stairs once resided), the crowd is hard pressed to join in. Once more individuals discover the unique musical media nature of the stairs, more users enter into the new mediated public space to hear the sound of their own footsteps Through the course of the project, the behavior of people, even the entire crowd of people as a whole, as a society, is changed through the mediated environment of this ambient media. Though the piano-stairs do not bring about sweeping changes in public/private space like McCarthy's ambient television, the media of the piano-stairs encourages interaction and grants impact in exchange just like the ambient televisions do.
What is this particular impact that people choosing to interact with the piano-stairs desire to have on themselves? If thefuntheory.com is to be believed, the answer is fun, or "change for the better." Entertainment. Rather than passively riding the escalator, the piano-stairs invite society into a medium where music accompanies physical exertion in the form of climbing to a different height with each step. Perhaps, then, this is a newly social space. The piano-stairs become a public musical space to extract private musical satisfaction from, if one chooses to interact with the stairs in such a way. Whether a user chooses to walk up without interacting much or whether they choose to "walk" a song in a private moment of interaction apart and distinct from the public space of the metro station, the result of the users interaction with the music, the physical space itself was mediated by the media nature of the piano-stairs themselves.
The physical placement of the piano-stairs is significant, along with the social spaces that result from the user's interaction, as well. Prior to the advent of the piano-stairs, passive users of the Stockholm metro system emerge to find a bottleneck where two choices are given to return to the street level: passive stairs and passive escalator. A very small population, as evidenced in the YouTube video above, make the social choice to use the stairs, perhaps for health reasons or because they feel that their journey can be completed faster under their own power. The overwhelming majority seem to patronize the escalator for efficiency reasons, or to simply follow the crowd. Once the piano-stairs are in place, the physical space is put into a state of conflict. The choice between the two options is no longer as straightforward. Now, there is a choice between a primarily passive object that exists more as a transportation mode rather than a media (that of the escalator), and a more "fun" option in the media event of the piano-stairs. The social intrigue of the musical stairs disrupts the social patterns at work in the prior physical space and transforms it into a more entertaining space that verges more on media than on transportation. The usage of the stairs went up 66%, according to thefuntheory.com, meaning the physical space was made more attractive to potential users, more "fun" for users to travel through. The physical space was mediated with a simple ambient change that added just enough to the experience of climbing the stairs for people to want to do so.
Even from the start, however, before anyone has the chance to utilize the piano-stairs and before the musical aspect of them comes into play, the stairs themsevlves are already a physical space distinct from that of the escalator. Unlike the escalator, the piano-stairs are not unidirectional. The escalator passively carries users upward while active users of the piano-stairs are not confined to traveling in one direction or another. Users may go down from the street level to "play" the piano-stairs despite the fact that the basic stairs were only meant to bridge the gap upwards. Users may, also, from whichever direction they begin their usage, "play" songs, which might require them to travel up or down the piano-stairs. This affront, in extreme terms, to the original social order, the intended usage of the physical space of the stairs as a means of allowing upward movement, is yet another aspect of how the piano-stairs make physical movement "fun" and entertaining. Could this be part of a larger issue in society where breaking social morays is considered to be a humorously entertaining endeavor? Perhaps, but the concept of civil disobedience seems a bit beyond the scope of this analytic inquiry since one wouldn't be incarcerated for walking down the stairs, let alone the escalator, against the flow of human traffic, unless it severely disturbed the peace.
All in all, the piano-stairs, as a media event, allow for users to be injected with a bit of whimsy in musical form. In a way, they almost encapsulate the adage that one should "stop and smell the roses" once in a while, which very well could be interpreted as advocating for pausing one's life to interact with media in order to differentiate one's life from passive monotony. The very act of transforming the stairs into piano-stairs did indeed make taking the stairs more fun, as well as, beyond what the creators may have intended, a more intriguing social and physical space to critique and analyze as an ambient media event.
Before one can begin exploring this musical feat of engineering as set out previously, one must be sure that it truly is within the realm of media, not to mention within the realm of ambient media. All forms of media allow users to interact with content inherent to the medium itself. For example, film, firmly entrenched in the concept of media, provides cinematic texts for viewers to watch, digest, over a period of time and can stimulate interaction beyond the filmic medium in the form of conversation or film study itself. Interactions with film, and all other media, can range from passive to highly interactive, all depending on what the user wants to extract from their experience. Likewise, these piano-stairs mediate user interaction, not only with the physical space that the stairs allow for passage through (rather than having to climb bare earth or utilize another method of reaching the street level), but also with the musical notes that chime whenever pressure is applied to each different step. Users may take away the impact of music from their physical movements which can then be discussed with others in a completely different location. Therefore, the piano-stairs truly act as other media do.
What's interesting is that many of the reports on this piano-stairs project and others frequently reference the 1983 film Big starring Tom Hanks. The famous piano scene from the movie is said to be at least a partial inspiration for projects like this. A media event, the film, is therefore incarnated in "real life" through the piano-stairs, gifting them with another tier of media to operate in beyond their physical presence mediating space. Not only is this a medium in which physical steps become musical, but also a medium in which cinematic moments of musical entertainment are called back to which further call back memories of actual pianos, yet another tool to create a media event: music.
While the point has been made that these stairs are truly one of many media in the modern world, there is sufficient opportunity for counter argument. These stairs can be seen as the opposite of a media, as something that slows our interaction with the world, our passage through space. Speaking in terms of efficiency, the piano-stairs require much more effort in order to travel from point A at the bottom, to point B at street level than using the escalator would. One might be able to get to the top faster than they would riding the escalator if they ran up the piano-stairs, but more energy would have to be expended. These piano-stairs, then, seem more like a hindrance than a media that facilitates quicker passage through space towards the pinnacle of its purpose. The recent trend in media, specifically in the digital medium of the Internet and high speed computers - both of which provide more efficient ways of recording, editing, and projecting cinema, an older media, than traditional, physical storage and editing practices - has seemed to streamline the user's ease and speed of access to the products of media in general. Film and music files can be remixed, edited, stored, and copied ad infinitum, ad nauseam. For the user, the advancement of media runs parallel with the desire to increase the speed of actually experiencing the fruits of the media. Therefore, digital media are embraced by the public and private sectors alike. How, then, can piano-stairs still be considered a media if they complicate and slow down, rather than expedite, one's progress towards the fruits of the stairs themselves (the top level) if they clash, apparently, with this trend? Though the piano-stairs may slow one's ascension to the street level, this essay contests that what they add outweighs what they subtract (energy and/or time). Just as the radio, a prime example of a media, presents entertainment and information at the cost of the time spent gathering the entertainment and information through the act of listening to it (participating in the media itself), so to do the piano-stairs present entertainment and health benefits at the cost of spent energy to walk (casually or whimsically) towards the upper landing. Though the piano-stairs come at a cost of efficiency, unlike more modern examples of media, they are most definitely a media to be experienced because all media come with a price. There's no such thing as a free lunch, or media, after all.
With the piano-stairs firmly entrenched in the definition of media, analysis of them can begin. As has been alluded previously, the piano-stairs act as an ambient media that allows for both active or passive interaction. Passive interaction arises from their status as physical stairs that just happen to play music. They are a means to an end, albeit a musical media event, in the sense that they can be climbed to the street level. Because an escalator is located directly adjacent to the stairs, and because the escalator provides a more efficient passive means of traversing the same space, most commuters tended to use it instead of the stairs (as seen in the YouTube video above). Time and exertion are saved using the escalator, thus it appears constantly clogged with travelers before the piano-stairs are installed. Active participants that use the piano-stairs prioritize the musical notion of the medium over the strict notion of the stairs as a physical means to an end. The piano-stairs become a toy, of sorts, that one can interact with and hear one's interaction with. The ambient nature of these piano-stairs is their strongest aspect. No one is pressured into interacting with them for musical ends, but the chance to hear one's motion through space in musical form is hard to pass up in a (global) society as molded by music as ours.
However, such noisy interaction in a public space can be troubling for shy individuals, so the active participation is something hard for public users to allow themselves to buy into. Note how hesitant people are, at first (which may, admittedly, be a contrived effect of the editing used by thefuntheory.com, though it remains relevant because a change was noted after the completion of the project), to use the piano-stairs. Since not everyone else is using them (due to the fact that few realize that there is a new media at work where once static stairs once resided), the crowd is hard pressed to join in. Once more individuals discover the unique musical media nature of the stairs, more users enter into the new mediated public space to hear the sound of their own footsteps Through the course of the project, the behavior of people, even the entire crowd of people as a whole, as a society, is changed through the mediated environment of this ambient media. Though the piano-stairs do not bring about sweeping changes in public/private space like McCarthy's ambient television, the media of the piano-stairs encourages interaction and grants impact in exchange just like the ambient televisions do.
What is this particular impact that people choosing to interact with the piano-stairs desire to have on themselves? If thefuntheory.com is to be believed, the answer is fun, or "change for the better." Entertainment. Rather than passively riding the escalator, the piano-stairs invite society into a medium where music accompanies physical exertion in the form of climbing to a different height with each step. Perhaps, then, this is a newly social space. The piano-stairs become a public musical space to extract private musical satisfaction from, if one chooses to interact with the stairs in such a way. Whether a user chooses to walk up without interacting much or whether they choose to "walk" a song in a private moment of interaction apart and distinct from the public space of the metro station, the result of the users interaction with the music, the physical space itself was mediated by the media nature of the piano-stairs themselves.
The physical placement of the piano-stairs is significant, along with the social spaces that result from the user's interaction, as well. Prior to the advent of the piano-stairs, passive users of the Stockholm metro system emerge to find a bottleneck where two choices are given to return to the street level: passive stairs and passive escalator. A very small population, as evidenced in the YouTube video above, make the social choice to use the stairs, perhaps for health reasons or because they feel that their journey can be completed faster under their own power. The overwhelming majority seem to patronize the escalator for efficiency reasons, or to simply follow the crowd. Once the piano-stairs are in place, the physical space is put into a state of conflict. The choice between the two options is no longer as straightforward. Now, there is a choice between a primarily passive object that exists more as a transportation mode rather than a media (that of the escalator), and a more "fun" option in the media event of the piano-stairs. The social intrigue of the musical stairs disrupts the social patterns at work in the prior physical space and transforms it into a more entertaining space that verges more on media than on transportation. The usage of the stairs went up 66%, according to thefuntheory.com, meaning the physical space was made more attractive to potential users, more "fun" for users to travel through. The physical space was mediated with a simple ambient change that added just enough to the experience of climbing the stairs for people to want to do so.
Even from the start, however, before anyone has the chance to utilize the piano-stairs and before the musical aspect of them comes into play, the stairs themsevlves are already a physical space distinct from that of the escalator. Unlike the escalator, the piano-stairs are not unidirectional. The escalator passively carries users upward while active users of the piano-stairs are not confined to traveling in one direction or another. Users may go down from the street level to "play" the piano-stairs despite the fact that the basic stairs were only meant to bridge the gap upwards. Users may, also, from whichever direction they begin their usage, "play" songs, which might require them to travel up or down the piano-stairs. This affront, in extreme terms, to the original social order, the intended usage of the physical space of the stairs as a means of allowing upward movement, is yet another aspect of how the piano-stairs make physical movement "fun" and entertaining. Could this be part of a larger issue in society where breaking social morays is considered to be a humorously entertaining endeavor? Perhaps, but the concept of civil disobedience seems a bit beyond the scope of this analytic inquiry since one wouldn't be incarcerated for walking down the stairs, let alone the escalator, against the flow of human traffic, unless it severely disturbed the peace.
All in all, the piano-stairs, as a media event, allow for users to be injected with a bit of whimsy in musical form. In a way, they almost encapsulate the adage that one should "stop and smell the roses" once in a while, which very well could be interpreted as advocating for pausing one's life to interact with media in order to differentiate one's life from passive monotony. The very act of transforming the stairs into piano-stairs did indeed make taking the stairs more fun, as well as, beyond what the creators may have intended, a more intriguing social and physical space to critique and analyze as an ambient media event.