Where is my luggage?


Craig Miller and I have submitted a proposal for a lost luggage whirlwind for the SeaTac Airport luggage terminal.

Where Is My Luggage

Even if you fly a lot, the most likely scene that greets you at the terminus is that of your suitcase emerging from the mysterious automated innards of the airport. Along the interlocking conveyor it jumbles towards you, jockeying with all the others until you can reach out and snatch it back into your possession. Sometimes though, a rare time, you are forced to ask yourself an unsettling question: “Where is my luggage?” You wait and wait and the conveyor gets steadily more and more empty until you are forced to admit that your luggage decided to take a different journey than you have. How did it decide? Where did it go? Weren’t you on good terms? What about your socks? Did your luggage suffer some natural or unnatural disaster? Was it sucked into space? Just where is it?

Where Is My Luggage is a large kinetic sculpture suspended from the ceiling. Loosely concentric rings of vintage suitcases form an inverted whirlwind of luggage. The rings consist of aluminum armatures dotted with colorful suitcases. Electric motors slowly turn the rings in opposite directions. Each suitcase bears a label for its destination; places like Xanadu, El Dorado, the Moon or Atlantis. The entire sculpture forms a vortex of wayward luggage. While travelers are waiting for their luggage they look up and hope their suitcase is still happy with them and has not decided to join the whirlwind.

Paul Davies / Craig Miller
December 2003