Making sense of art and design industries

By sematikotemo

In 2009 Statens Vegvesen started a project to reduce the amount of traffic accidents on Riksvei 3 in Hedmark, Norway. Statistics showed that people perceived the road quite monotonic and boring, which led to drivers loosing concentration and falling asleep. Based on the high number of incidents the road was called “deathroad 3”. One of the biggest measures they did was to apply art along the road. The art appears in different colors and shapes, but all of them have the same motive; the moose.

If you drive from south to north the first thing you will pass is the “Stor Elgen” (Big Moose). It’s the biggest moose in the world stretching 10.3 meters tall. Earlier this year it reached international attention when Canada discovered that “Stor Elgen” is bigger than “Mac The Moose”. The artwork is made of polished steel that requires little to none maintenance. That means the art is friendly for the environment as well.

Further on there is around 50 antlers hanging in trees on specific selected places.   The antlers appears in different colors and some of them have colored lighting.

At last the railroad underpass at Atna is decorated in moose themed pop-art.

Why did they choose the moose? Well first of all its a lot of them in the area. Hedmark, especially Østerdalen, is well known for the huge amount of moose. Østerdalen is basically a huge spruce forest, which means that the moose theme belongs and fits perfect with the environment. One can almost say the art is in harmony with the environment. By choosing that specific animal the art creates both an aesthetic and social value that represents and strengthens the regional identity.

The choice of colors is however a theme on its own. Not everyone is happy about the unnatural colors of the artworks. As mentioned earlier the whole idea behind this is to reduce the amount of traffic accidents that happens in the area. By making the pieces in different and unnatural colors the artwork sticks out from everything else. Simply one can say the artwork easy to spot while driving. A huge amount of the accidents is regarding collisions with moose. One major idea behind the theme was to make the drivers attention towards the possibility of a moose to approach. Statistics from Statens Vegvesen shows that the number of accidents have fallen. This means that the artwork, besides other measures, makes the drivers more concentrated. I think it almost creates a symbolic value. When people see the art they get a reminder to stay concentrated and that the consequence to not do that may be fatal.