The Broader Picture: In cyberspace, no one can hear you snore

Let's face it, who really feels happy about hopping on a plane these days? We all know that flying is statistically safer than walking down the road to catch the bus, but try telling that to your stomach in the departure lounge. Add the latest "check-in three hours prior to departure" rule and the purgatory of lugging baggage, and the idea of that quick, relaxing break abroad starts to lose its shine.

But there is one place where unlimited, low-cost, low- environmental-impact travel is on the up and up, and you don't have to reach it via an airport. In fact you don't even need to leave your home. Swiss artists Monica Studer and Christoph van den Berg have created a virtual holiday paradise on- line and called it the Hotel Vue des Alpes. This is no Nintendo Narnia with hidden assault courses inhabited by heavily armed furry things, but a beautifully rendered Alpine idyll.

Studer and van den Berg devised their quintessentially Swiss landscape from what they called their collective consciences. The hotel is an agreeable looking piece of 1960s architecture with a cheese plant in the foyer and terrazzo flooring. There is a bar with windows to enjoy the splendid view of the nearby snow-topped peaks. From the Maggi spice mix on the dining-room tables to the neatly made beds and the lovely lake, all is evocative and familiar. But nothing is real - it is just a digital product of the artists' minds and hours of clever computer work.

The Hotel Vue des Alpes is a study of the nature of "location" on the Internet. Can a Web address really be a place? Is this "place" private or public? Can you be alone in a "place" that could be occupied by millions at any one time? These are, of course, all questions that occupy the minds of most holidaymakers as they trawl their travel brochures.

The Swiss duo have allowed visitors to the site the opportunity to book a room in the hotel for seven-day "visits". The guest is provided with a log-in code for the room and, for the duration of their stay, no one else can visit their virtual space. You are guaranteed privacy, but you wouldn't know it. Wandering around the hotel and its surroundings, you won't encounter a single "living" thing, although thousands could be visiting the public areas of the site at the same time as you. It's perfect, in a Swiss kind of way, and like all good contemporary artworks it contains more than a whisper of who we are and where we might be going. Best of all, it doesn't cost a thing.

Hotel Vue des Alpes is at www.vuedesalpes.com

Images by Monica Studer & Christoph van den Berg

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