The very first idea of virtual Journeys started with an assignment in the mid nineties studying at the Willem de Kooning Academy in Rotterdam. The assignment was to create a monumental sculpture in the public space. A monumental sculpture differs from traditional sculpture in the senses that it has a direct link to the location. They are created for a specific space and place. For this I turned to the black stone colonnade of ‘de boompjes’ in Rotterdam, the Netherlands that became the origins of Virtual Journeys.

I submitted a plan to use the individual arches and give them an airport-like destination shield and the distance in light seconds. In doing so these arches were transformed into gateways to the cities that the port of Rotterdam connects to and for a brief moment in time transported the viewers thoughts to far away places. The distance in light seconds is a reference to the theoretical fasted possible transmission of information.

For the presentation I created a life size copy of one of the arches in the exposition space with a display that cycled through the cities and their projected travel time. The plan was greeted with much enthusiasm and it was one of my first that included technology.

Here the spark of what would become the virtual Journeys ignited. A fascination to connect places and people. This was also the starting point of World Communication as a project. The stone arches on ‘de Boompjes’ have been demolished early 2000s.