“Bridge”
Michael Cross’s meditative, yet playful, installation, “Bridge,” an abandoned church filled with 5ft of water and mechanical, “magically appearing” stepping stones, is like Alice in Wonderland-meets-a dream state-meets-those lily pad pools at water theme parks.
As you approach the water, one stepping stone emerges from the water in front of you, and another one doesn’t appear until you’ve stepped on the first one. The water is only five feet deep, so it’s not like you can drown, but that’s still deep enough to get totally soaked if you fall in! (The guy in the pictures looks so casual about it, like the stepping stones are just in a shallow puddle, but it’s five feet!).
Hence the water theme park reference– remember those pools at water parks with the shaky “lily pads” on springs that you would try to walk across? So I imagine it would actually be sort of stressful to get across, and yet also like some sort of zen-meditation exercise. The space certainly is beautiful and the whole experience must feel rather like you’ve fallen down the rabbit hole.
Check out the video below for what it actually looks like walking across it. About a third of the way through the video, the angle switches from first-person to panoramic so you see the whole space. Pretty beautiful.
