Passers-by see themselves mirrored in the various panels in the subterranean passageway below the Karlsplatz in Vienna. While reading the up-to-date number on the digital counting device, they are – as readers – being linked to the number in a performative sense. In his work “Pi” for the Westpassage Karlsplatz Ken Lum calls his combination of text and statistical figures a “factoid”. “Factoids” can either be countable hard facts or trivial information translated into numbers. For the most part we deal with concisely surveyed and complex datasets where the difference between local and global references is brought into play. Above the entrance area adjacent to the main passageway there is a large-scale LED display which is mounted behind semi-mirrored glass. Prominently positioned, a fourteen-digit counter visualizes permanently new combinations of digits thus referring to the central theme of the entire installation.
Located in the central area of the pedestrian passageway and as a symbol for the world, there is the representation of the number Pi. This infinite decimal number is translated into the wide screen format with 478 decimal places, whereby the last currently calculated decimal places are visualized on an LED display with the help of a computer program. Moreover, an exhibition scenario featuring lexical and statistical handbooks dealing with issues such as population development or migration has been created in a free-standing and transparent showcase located right at the turnoff toward the Vienna Secession. In a similar way as in the so-called “factoids” the mathematical problem of attribution is addressed here, which in its political dimension corresponds to the global phenomenon of migration as presence, affiliation and exclusion in Ken Lum’s work.