Denkmal 2051

A monument for future generations
2021

“Denkmal 2051. For future generations” is a cooperation project between the Generationenhaus Bern and robotlab. For seven months in 2021, visitors to the Generationenhaus were able to have a robot write down their wishes and promises for future generations.

In the exhibition space the messages were handed over by the audience to the robot via tablet computers. The robot typeset the texts in a specially developed Futura font variant and then wrote them on a roll of paper.

After seven months, the resulting scroll was preserved for 30 years in a sealed time capsule embedded in the ground for future generations. In 2051 will the monument be opened, the writings removed and the thoughts, wishes and promises of the ancestors read.

In “Denkmal 2051”, the robot plays a central role in the communication process between two generations separated in time, thus pointing to the fact that communication today is determined by human-machine processes.

As a scribe, he is thus part of a tradition of written culture that has existed since antiquity, which not only transmits texts orally, but also stores them in writing for longer periods of time, thus enabling them to be remembered even over spatial and temporal distances.

Memorial concept: Detlef Vögeli
Szenography: Frank Dittmann
Interface: Nikolaus Völzow