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Euthanasia Coaster

“Euthanasia Coaster” is a hypothetic euthanasia machine in the form of a roller coaster, engineered to humanely – with elegance and euphoria – take the life of a human being. Riding the coaster’s track, the rider is subjected to a series of intensive motion elements that induce various unique experiences: from euphoria to thrill, and from tunnel vision to loss of consciousness, and, eventually, death. Thanks to the marriage of the advanced cross-disciplinary research in space medicine, mechanical engineering, material technologies and, of course, gravity, the fatal journey is made pleasing, elegant and meaningful…

Julijonas Urbonas is a designer, artist, writer, engineer and PhD student in Design Interactions at the Royal College of Art.

Since childhood, I have worked in amusement park development. In 2004, I became a managing director of an amusement park in Klaipeda, Lithuania, and ran it for three years. Having worked in this field – as an architect and engineer but also in ways that are artistic and philosophical – I became fascinated by what in my research I am calling the bodily-perceived aesthetics of “gravitational theatre”…

More on the Euthanasia Coaster here.  Background on gravitational theatre and Gravitational Aesthetics here (and even more here).

As we buckle our seat belts, we might spare a memorial thought for Fifth-Century resister of the Roman Empire (and Caesaropapism) and reformer of the Catholic liturgy, Pope Hilarius; he died on this date in 468… presumably laughing.

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