Moscow metro

Together with Rogier Brakshoofden, BA graduate Interaction Design, I explored the Moscow subway system and we experienced the overwhelming influence of the fast upcoming media that is changing the city to a society where extreme poverty meets wealth, where total freedom of choice is hard to deal with and where materialism grows in high contrast to the economic instability.

The Moscow subway station is used as a metafore for the one way trip from the old communism to the current Russian system. In an interactive application you will explore three stations build in a 3D environment and experience the atmosphere trough recorded audio and photographed elements.

The user will travel back some years in time and arrive at an old communistic station. You can look around and feel the atmosphere of anonymity, suppressed feelings, the regime, the hierarchy, feeling captured in the system. By recorded audio of shouting soldiers and visual support the user is forced in one direction and enters the metro to travel to the present. The second station thrives on commerce, the user is confused by an overkill of commercial elements. Both extreme poverty and wealth are presented. The station is a collection of the most extraordinary elements Jasper and Rogier captured during their stay in Moscow. The user notices he cannot get on the right-side future-heading metro because every time he tries to move his cursor towards the opened doors, commercial elements block the entrance. Capitalism isn’t the salvation and way to freedom: even the media influences ones direction. Eventually you can only get on the subway in the other direction, back to the past… This is where another statement is made. It is not possible to get back to the old ways of communism: things have changed too much. The user arrives at the 1st station, but everything looks damaged and dirty. The ideology is disappearing…