Dictionary of Imaginary Places – p.746 May, Karl Friedrich - 12.06.2006 01.15 (1 of 16) next >
2006
Brnik International Airport
Ljubljana, Slovenia
“Dictionary of Imaginary Places”composed of an insertion of a software for testing the capabilities of existing signaling systems within airport departure lounges and check-in desks. The destinations which appear on the system are automatically uploaded from A. Manguel’s and G. Guadalupi’s Dictionary of Imaginary Places and all other incoming data was overwritten. Below is the text which was supplementary to the realisation of the project and appeared inside in-flight magazines:
“Since Slovenian independence the number of aircraft movements* in the country grew from 16.253 (1990) to 37.767 (2005), with the number of passengers carried rapidly expanding from 765.033 (1990) to 1.218.896 (2005).
One result of the growing air traffic at Ljubljana airport and Slovenia's entry into the European Union, which requires the separation of traffic into Schengen and non-Schengen (domestic and foreign), is the construction of a new airport terminal.
The current terminal of 6.000 square meters will be expanded to 32.000 with the works being carried out in August 2006 whilst all the facilities are still fully operational. To ensure the normal functioning of the airport in the short term, the six line messaging service of the departure board has been modified to a twelve line, and a test program is being run every night to establish the capabilities of the old mechanical messaging service.
In order not to confuse the remaining night time passengers with recognizable destinations, the developed software was set to automatically upload names from A. Manguel's and G. Guadalupi's Dictionary of Imaginary places which cites over 1.200 entries of imaginary cities, islands, countries and continents restricted to: no heavens or hells, no places in the future, none outside the planet Earth and no pseudonymous places.”
* movement: landing or take-off