The monument of keyboard in Yekaterinburg
One of the most original monuments of Yekaterinburg, of course, is the keyboard monument. It, as the world’s first monument to the keyboard, was created in 2005 according to the idea of the artist Anatoly Vyatkin within the framework of the Long Histories of Yekaterinburg festival. The opening took place on October 5, 2005.
The monument immediately fell in love with all Yekaterinburg residents. An unusual monument reproduces a computer keyboard at a scale of 30: 1. Since there is no such monument anywhere else in the world, this is the largest keyboard in the world!
The installation of the keyboard in the QWERTY layout consists of 86 concrete keys dug into the ground, was carried out using a special technique: the weight of the standard keys varied from 80 to 500 kg, and the space bar weighed no less than a car – 1.5 tons. The total area of the monument was 4×16 meters. An old brick house stands next to the keyboard. After the appearance of the monument, it was jokingly nicknamed the system unit.
Signs and beliefs arose around the monument soon after its opening. It is believed that if jumping from letter to letter, type your desire on the keyboard, and then press the Enter key with both feet, the desire will certainly come true. This is not as easy as it might seem. According to another belief, those who “press” successively the Cntr, Alt, and Delete keys will “reload” life and open a new, happy page in it. If this also turns out to be beyond the power of someone, you can simply press Delete – and delete from life all unnecessary, obsolete. True or not, it is difficult to judge, nevertheless, the townspeople are no longer surprised when they notice a person jumping on the keys.
The finished installation has gained unprecedented popularity among the townspeople and tourists, who have adapted the structural elements for benches for rest. Unfortunately, the keyboard did not escape the fate of most Russian monuments: vandals uprooted the F1, F2, F3, and Y keys from the ground and carried them away in an unknown direction, and the Apple logo was applied to the Windows key. In 2011, the monument was restored by enthusiasts. At present, the collection of signatures has been completed in favor of including the installation in the list of culturally significant objects of the city and region. The corresponding project was sent to the local authorities for consideration.
The concrete keyboard consists of 104 keys spaced 15 cm apart. Installation size 16×4 sq. m so organically blended into the surrounding landscape that the townspeople renamed nearby objects in the “computer key”: p. The Iset turned into an I-network, and the rectangular stone building on the side of the monument was called the “system block”.
Culturologists regard this monument as a symbolic combination of European and Asian values. In fact, it is not only a monument to the subject of technological culture that came from the West, but also a landscape composition, a kind of oriental rock garden.