Stockholm’s traffic lights now sing Eurovision songs at you
It’s been a year since Austria celebrated Eurovision with gay-friendly traffic lights, and they just got totally one-upped.
Ahead of the Eurovision Song Contest this week in Stockholm, Sweden, the city teamed up with sound artists Hakan Lidbo and Max Bjorverud to bring a very Eurovision twist to some of the city’s infrastructure.
The project was aimed at revamping “boring and dull places” to make them “musical and interactive” – with traffic lights the first order of business.
The artists targeted the ticker boxes that are already common at pedestrian crossings across the city. The pre-existing boxes emit a ticking sound to help visually-impaired people cross the road, with a slow-paced ticking when the lights are red and a fast-paced ticking when the lights are green.
But they now been given a Eurovision twist, celebrating the country’s most recent two winners.
They explained: “If you wait by the red light, Loreen’s ‘Euphoria’ (Eurovision winner 2012) is heard [alongside the ticker] to make you relax.
“When it’s green light and time to hurry over to the other side of the street, Mans Zelmerlow’s ‘Heroes’ (Eurovision winner 2015) in an upbeat arrangement will make you walk rapidly.”
When hosting Eurovision last year, the Austrian capital Vienna also installed special traffic lights.
Instead of featuring one man walking at pedestrian crossings, lights in the city featured dancing gay and lesbian couples holding hands, with hearts above them.
The lights were hugely popular and became a permanent fixture at some places in the city, though right-wingers have attacked them as a sign of the LGBT agenda.
The first Eurovision Song Contest semi-final takes place tonight at 8PM UK time.
The Grand Final airs on Saturday.
Remind yourself of Loreen’s 2012 winning track Euphoria below:
