Konstanz

I've just put online a batch of photos from my recent visit to Konstanz, Germany, where GD 2010 was held.

Konstanz is located in southern Germany, on the Swiss border, where the Rhine leaves the Bodensee.

For some reason they have chosen to make their most prominent city monument, in the mouth of the harbor, be a 10 meter tall statue of a fictional prostitute, Imperia. She holds both Emperor Sigismund and Pope Martin V in the palms of her hands, figuratively in the Balzac story and literally in the statue; Sigismund and Martin both visited Konstanz in 1414–1418 for a different international symposium, the Council of Constance.

The mesh in the GD2010 logo was made from a smaller model of the same statue in the artist's back yard, as the big one was too difficult to scan.

Konstanz is also home to some other whimsical public art. The market street has a fountain commemorating the 1192 imperial charter of the city, with rabbitfish, birds in pope hats, and the like:

A pedestrian walkway in a busy traffic artery a little outside the center of town has another fountain, a monument to the seven deadly sins. The naked men staring at the naked woman are lust and pride respectively, and sloth and gluttony are also not hard to guess, but I'm not sure what the steering-wheel people are supposed to represent.

One feature that I found charming was the many buildings with names and pictures of the names over their doors.

Finally, here's some more art, this time from a public square just around the corner from my hotel. The end of the conference was simultaneous with the start of a new wine festival in the square. The wine was served unfiltered, and the white tasted more like lemonade than wine, but it still had a bit of a kick. It went well with the onion bacon pizza things they were also serving.