Dezeen Magazine

A Sign in Space by Gunilla Klingberg

Stars are printed in the sand by a tractor as it drags a giant roller back and forth across the beach, then left to fade at the mercy of footsteps and the tide in this installation by Swedish artist Gunilla Klingberg.

A Sign in Space by Gunilla Klingberg

Called A Sign in Space, the project involved attaching a pattern made of tyre treads to a metal cylinder and mounting it on the tractor that cleans Laga beach in Spain each morning.

A Sign in Space by Gunilla Klingberg

There are thirteen performances over the course of the summer, every time the low tide and early shift of the beach-cleaners coincides.

A Sign in Space by Gunilla Klingberg

If you like this, check out a dance floor decorated with sieved icing sugar in our earlier story.

A Sign in Space by Gunilla Klingberg

Here's some more information from Klingberg:


Klingberg's work, A Sign In Space, is a graphic star-pattern composed of truck tires is printed as a relief on the sand at Laga beach during low tide. At high tide the pattern will slowly vanish as the tide rises.

The printed pattern is made with a mechanical device, a manufactured steel-cylinder, with the graphic pattern as a matrix relief made of truck tires. The cylinder is connected to the beach cleaner tractor which drives from side to side of the beach in the morning, creating the pattern covering the whole beach area.

A Sign in Space by Gunilla Klingberg

Following the lunar and tidal calendar, the pattern is remade again and again at all possible days at low tide. The work A Sign in Space is performed on dates when the tidal calender is synchronized with the the beach cleaners early morning working schedule- the pattern will be created on days when the low tide hour fits the labour working hours.

A Sign in Space by Gunilla Klingberg

Dates when A Sign in Space will be performed at Laga beach

On morning hours (9-12 am):
19th, 20th, 30th and 31st July.
1st, 2nd, 14th, 15th, 16th, 30th and 31st August.
14th and 15th September.