Installation Artist Turns Public Street Into Massive Water Slide

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I think I speak for everyone when I say that one of the best movie scenes of all time involves a college-aged Val Kilmer filling his residence hall with liquid nitrogen, effectively turning every surface into a giant slide. Although recreating anything like that iconic scene from Real Genius gets hinted at all the time, making massive, DIY waterslides never gets actualized. That is, until now:

On May 4, one UK-based installation and public artist channelled his inner Kilmer and turned Bristol's famed Park Street into a giant, soapy water slide, with help from the city's health and public safety officials. Luke Jerram, the artist behind this incredibly freaky sculpture of a pixellated child invited 370 lucky citizens of the South West England county to spend the day outside, cooling down on inflatable rafts pitched across 90 all meters (almost 300 feet) of the tarpaulin-sheet-and-hay bale DIY slide.

"Bristol was the perfect place to do it because it's big enough to make it work but it's not so big that arranging it becomes impossibly expensive or complicated," said Jerram. "We've managed to make this slide out of everyday items you would find on the shelf, so the plan is we set up instruction packs so cities all over the world can have their own go."

I don't know about you, but the thought of one day getting to slide down Broadway has my relational aesthetic senses tingling.

For more, check out the Telegraph's original feature on Jerram's slide, and visit Luke Jerram's website. 

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