On Thursday, New Yorkers and Londoners had a direct connection without benefit of cable TV or video conferencing, courtesy of an unusual live optical hookup created by a conceptual artist with a tale of a long-lost tunnel. The telectroscope is the invention of Paul St George, who instead of explaining the video conference technology involved in the project, prefers to stick to his story that the machine was started by his great-grandfather in Victorian times and transmits images via a tunnel under the ocean.

The “optical” device was placed at the Fulton Ferry Landing in Brooklyn and another one on the Thames River in London on Thursday. Passer-by’s on both sides of the Atlantic could see their trans-Atlantic counterparts, and many waved and wrote greetings to each other in real time on wipe-off message boards.

From St George’s website:

[He] has always been concerned with questioning the relationship between the viewer and what is viewed. His work is also often associated with different realities, spectacle and viewer participation.”

The telectroscope will remain operational and on display until June 15^th.