The Imaginary Hotel , a networked installation

The Imaginary Hotel
An interactive Installation linked to the Internet.

By Andrea Zapp

Gallery visitors are invited to make up their own room.
Internet users are invited to take part online at www.azapp.de/hotel.

The Imaginary Hotel allows visitors to occupy and design their ideal room and fill it with personal content and inspiration. It will be set up in the Chapman Gallery in Salford, Greater Manchester, UK between October 9th and 31st, 2002. The installation architecture resembles a typical hotel room; yet choosing image, video and sound footage from the net via the room TV menu, can alter the standard interior and even hotel location. At the same time internet participants can interfere by modifying or uploading further material via the hotel website. They are also able to ring up the gallery visitors via a specially designed web-telephone interface. A web cam is streaming real time video from the hotel to the website to document the ongoing changes.

A hotel as such stands for an anonymous social melting pot in a constant state of flux