The elevator was created in response to the endless flights of stairs in the new Chicago high-rises at the end of the 19th century. Despite all its obvious advantages the elevator, embodying the very idea of convenience and comfort, has never been able to completely replace its primitive ancestor, the stairway. Of the various reasons the most significant one is perhaps the new danger created in the wake of the invention. So strong is the fear of being stuck in elevators that filmmakers build plots around it (L. Malle, L’ascenseur pour l'échafaud, 1958) and a new musical genre, elevator music, was created to help mitigate the new fear. Indeed, even today the elevator is not sanctioned as a legal means of egress in an emergency. And the emergency, the exception to the rule of organized civility keeps the backup plan, in sleep mode, as it were, active. Now, imagine a remix of the main system and its backup, the elevator and the stairwell, comfort and escape, to a new and strange joint

We have designed and are in the process of building an automated system to observe elevator traffic and to transport that traffic in a data-primitive form back to the stairwell. A digital video camera inside of the elevator watches people entering and exiting the elevator. In order to keep track of the trajectory of the elevator over time, each floor is marked with its own marker. The camera is installed a few inches above the ground such that it can view the elevator door, but nothing above knee height. The image data is sent to a computer program where it is parsed and interpreted. This program counts, every time the elevator door opens, shoes that pass by its limited field of vision. From these goings and comings of shoes the system tallies the daily elevator traffic. As opposed to collecting data where people are loaf to share it, we take it where most anyone gives it without a second thought. The culture of shoe wear and its public parading is the data feeding ground. You judge a person by his/her shoes, one saying goes.

The foot traffic collected in the elevator is sent via wireless network to the stairwell. There, 8 sandbags are continuously moved to new positions as the elevator rides in its shaft space. One might expect the motion of the dead weights to correspond directly to the motion of the elevator. This is not the case. The transfer function between the elevator and the stairwell is based on population modeling schema; its current state does not allow immediate deduction of its source. Still, anyone walking the stairwell will notice the sandbags being heaved up and down the stairwell according to unknown, but strict laws. Even the casual onlooker will notice that one of the bags is significantly heavier than its cohorts. It is an exception to the rule; it is so heavy that the robotic lift system can hardly lift it off the ground. The wire connecting it to the motor cracks with and squeaks under the futile tensile force.