Roaming Tales

A modern art project links the Thames river front near Tower Bridge and the East River embankment under the Brooklyn Bridge via a video link.

Back in May I was walking from London Bridge to Tower Bridge with a group of friends.

We were off to see the the Ceremony of the Keys at the Tower of London - but that’s a story for another day.

We got as far as City Hall, which is this weird, squashed building here.

Then we saw a giant telescope on the public path beside the Thames. A sign identified it as the “Telectroscope“.

It cost £1 for a ticket from a dinky little machine and then we joined the small group gathering round at what would be the wrong end of the telescope were it actually a telescope. People were smiling and waving and writing messages on a small whiteboard - that’s me with the camera reflected in the glass and the girl in green is my friend Jess.

We peered closer and discovered that, as well as our own reflections, we could see another set of people in Brooklyn. We had tremendous fun writing messages to each other across the Atlantic.

I’m not sure how they did this. The Telectroscope website claims that a secret tunnel was dug across the Atlantic, but I suspect video technology was involved somehow.

I must admit I hoped it would become a permanent installation - much like the London Eye was erected for the Millennium but was so popular it stayed. Sadly, it was dismantled on June 15. I never did get a chance to email my friends in Brooklyn and arrange a virtual meetup via the Telectroscope.

It was an exceptionally cool project. What can’t more modern art be like this?