South Korean steel giant POSCO has unveiled last week an iconic Space Walk in Hwanho Park, which is a resting place for Pohang citizens where they can see the beautiful coastline, sunset, and a panoramic view of POSCO. Space Walk, which took two years and seven months from planning to completion, is an experiential artwork that visitors can walk on and appreciate the work and landscape. POSCO and Pohang City decided to build a work of art with steel to symbolize Pohang in April 2019 and selected German artists Heike Mutter and Ulrich Genth through a public contest in June 2019. With Space Walk, visitors can have the experience of walking in space with zero gravity or on a cloud. Space Walk is nicknamed cloud because it looks like a cloud that is gently falling. The total track length of Space Walk is 333 meters, and it is 60 meters wide, 57 meters long and 25 meters high and has a smooth and magnificent shape with varying curves.Heike Mutter (1969) and Ulrich Genth (1971), who designed Space Walk, are German artists who majored in pure fine arts and media art and are internationally renowned for viewer participation art works and architectural sculptures. The design of Space Walk is based on the concept of “Light” in the Sun and Moon Myth of Pohang, the “song of light and steel” based on iron, a driving force of economic growth in Korea and walk on the sky and art together slowly. This contradictory experience means the “relativity of time,” an important aesthetic concept of Space Walk, and an elegant curve drawn with steel and illumination embroidering the night sky symbolize steel and Pohang, the city of light. When people climb on the work of art and look at the landscape that is open on all sides, the panoramic view elicits exclamations from them.The biggest feature of Space Walk is that it is an experiential art work where visitors climb on the work and walk on the stairs, communing with and experiencing the work through touch and hearing beyond vision and becoming one with it. Public works of art usually focus on the relationship between visitors and the works of art, whereas experiential works of art focus on the experience of changing from a simple gallery to a cultural creator as visitors participate in and relate to the works of art.Space Walk was manufactured with 100% POSCO steel and the capabilities and technologies of POSCO were fully mobilized for it.Hwanho Park, where Space Walk is located, is the center of Yeongilman Bay Tourist Special Zone, and if Korea’s first and largest experiential sculpture becomes a representative landmark that symbolizes Pohang, it is expected to create synergy with a marine cable car project. In particular, it is expected to contribute to the vitalization of tourism in connection with new cultural contents in Pohang such as Park1538, a history museum, the night view of the steelworks, and Pohang Blast Furnace Museum 1.
South Korean steel giant POSCO has unveiled last week an iconic Space Walk in Hwanho Park, which is a resting place for Pohang citizens where they can see the beautiful coastline, sunset, and a panoramic view of POSCO. Space Walk, which took two years and seven months from planning to completion, is an experiential artwork that visitors can walk on and appreciate the work and landscape. POSCO and Pohang City decided to build a work of art with steel to symbolize Pohang in April 2019 and selected German artists Heike Mutter and Ulrich Genth through a public contest in June 2019. With Space Walk, visitors can have the experience of walking in space with zero gravity or on a cloud. Space Walk is nicknamed cloud because it looks like a cloud that is gently falling. The total track length of Space Walk is 333 meters, and it is 60 meters wide, 57 meters long and 25 meters high and has a smooth and magnificent shape with varying curves.Heike Mutter (1969) and Ulrich Genth (1971), who designed Space Walk, are German artists who majored in pure fine arts and media art and are internationally renowned for viewer participation art works and architectural sculptures. The design of Space Walk is based on the concept of “Light” in the Sun and Moon Myth of Pohang, the “song of light and steel” based on iron, a driving force of economic growth in Korea and walk on the sky and art together slowly. This contradictory experience means the “relativity of time,” an important aesthetic concept of Space Walk, and an elegant curve drawn with steel and illumination embroidering the night sky symbolize steel and Pohang, the city of light. When people climb on the work of art and look at the landscape that is open on all sides, the panoramic view elicits exclamations from them.The biggest feature of Space Walk is that it is an experiential art work where visitors climb on the work and walk on the stairs, communing with and experiencing the work through touch and hearing beyond vision and becoming one with it. Public works of art usually focus on the relationship between visitors and the works of art, whereas experiential works of art focus on the experience of changing from a simple gallery to a cultural creator as visitors participate in and relate to the works of art.Space Walk was manufactured with 100% POSCO steel and the capabilities and technologies of POSCO were fully mobilized for it.Hwanho Park, where Space Walk is located, is the center of Yeongilman Bay Tourist Special Zone, and if Korea’s first and largest experiential sculpture becomes a representative landmark that symbolizes Pohang, it is expected to create synergy with a marine cable car project. In particular, it is expected to contribute to the vitalization of tourism in connection with new cultural contents in Pohang such as Park1538, a history museum, the night view of the steelworks, and Pohang Blast Furnace Museum 1.
