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Continuing with the escalator theme, here’s an installation by Irish artist Bryan McCormack that was at the Centre Pompidou in Paris a couple of months back. Preservation of Life: Les sons de la vie—as the sound and light installation was called—started at the museum’s façade and continued up its famous 6-floor escalator as part of the art center’s AIDS annual fundraising campaign. 80,000 condom covered light bulbs in different colors, with hues changing on every floor, were used to form a condom tapestry. Accompanying the dramatic tunnel visuals was audio of a human heartbeat, with the pulse changing along with the colors, starting at the base with the cardiac rhythm of a fetus in the womb and progressing at every level, to a newborn baby’s heartbeat and, finally, to the artist’s own heartbeat on the top floor.

Though I didn’t see it written anywhere, I’m pretty sure that the title is a pun. In French, and in Spanish, preservatif, and preservativo, mean condom.

You can buy one of the condom bulbs here.

Photos courtesy of the artist; Bertrand Guay/AFP; and Xinhua

via coolhunting via notcot