Giant slides in the Tate Modern

I have a feeling this is going to be a very popular installation at the Tate Modern. Pixelsumo says:

German artist Carsten Höller has been commissioned to create this new work, entitled Test Site, for the Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall, part of the Unilever Series. Test Site consists of 5 giant spiralling slides, linking the upper galleries with the Hall!

More Images © Tate Photography

According to the Tate:

For Carsten Höller, the experience of sliding is best summed up in a phrase by the French writer Roger Caillois as a voluptuous panic upon an otherwise lucid mind’. The slides are impressive sculptures in their own right, and you don’t have to hurtle down them to appreciate this artwork. What interests Höller, however, is both the visual spectacle of watching people sliding and the inner spectacle’ experienced by the sliders themselves, the state of simultaneous delight and anxiety that you enter as you descend.

To date Höller has installed six smaller slides in other galleries and museums, but the cavernous space of the Turbine Hall offers a unique setting in which to extend his vision. Yet, as the title implies, he sees it as a prototype for an even larger enterprise, in which slides could be introduced across London, or indeed, in any city. How might a daily dose of sliding affect the way we perceive the world? Can slides become part of our experiential and architectural life?

The BBC has video, which is well worth the watch. The largest slide is 182ft long and has a 5 story drop. I wish I was going to London soon to see and experience this.