Viv Hardwick talks to Swiss artists Monica Studer and Christoph van den Berg about the Package Holiday they're offering at Gateshead's Baltic.

THOSE who love to go a-wandering along the mountain track need to trek no further than Gateshead's Baltic this summer thanks to an ingenious and amusing installation created by Swiss artists Monica Studer and Christoph van den Berg.

Level 2 of the building now boasts a massive Alps view entirely invented by the duo, called the Gleissenhorn range, complete with platform, yellow-planked bench and web-cam so that visitors become part of their Package Holiday exhibition.

"People can tell their friends what time they are arriving and then be seen seated on the bench on the web," explains the bearded van den Berg, adding: "We will be particularly delighted if someone brings up a picnic to eat on the platform."

Bizarrely, there is the second of two pretend picnics for the under fives tomorrow at 10.30am or 11.30am, at £2 per child. And it doesn't stop there. Not only do Tyneside virtual tourists join the alpine experience at www.vuedesalpes.com but there's also a chance to visit the nine-room fictional hotel they've created. But you'd better be quick, because five-day stays are booked up to February 2007.

It's so rare to see a major contemporary work with such a strong sense of humour - it's endorsed by the VTO (Virtual Tourism Organisation) - that you ultimately begin to suspect that the diminutive Studer and lofty van den Berg have some kind of Basil and Sybil Fawlty agenda.

Not so, they say, having just returned from creating a 3D mountain for the Swiss Pavilion at the 2005 World's Fair in Aichi, Japan.

"You'd have thought from the Japanese people's reaction that we'd only created the mountain so they could photograph each other in front of it," jokes van den Berg.

So the Baltic idea was born, and the artists have linked this to memories of their own childhood days - 44-year-old Studer is from Zurich and 42-year-old van den Berg originates from Basel - plus the long affair that the Brits have with the Alps, dating back to the mid-1800s Thomas Cook tours.

"I think we started creating all this about five years ago because we never seemed to take holidays ourselves," admits Struder.

The hotel was based on the styles they recall from the 1960s - although photographs are being sent to them of similar-looking places and views which exist today.

Van den Berg says: "We are figurative artists and there is a long tradition of landscape painting in our country and this was a way of linking this and the Internet together. This is very much about concepts and gives people who like looking at images some access as well, so it gives different levels of access to different people."

The pair have continued this debut UK exhibition at the Baltic with a realistic Gleissenhorn waterfall, which they modelled from 3D software packages.

Next door you can take a virtual tour of the hotel and check on the James Bond-like mountain top weather station - "I suspect it might always be sunny," admits van den Berg.

The exhibition runs until September 4 and is probably the only chance tourists have of seeing an unspoilt "Alps" panorama outside New Zealand, explains Sarah Cook, the Baltic's curator of new media who has helped the Swiss pair create this project.

The charming van den Berg only evades one question, that of his height. "If it's a cheeky question then I'll also be cheeky and decline to answer," he says... and it's only then you remember that Berg also means mountain in German (the twin language of the virtual hotel).

* Tonight, Dr Bob Gibson will give a free talk on the History Of Tourism in the Level 1 cinema.

* On Saturday, August 13: Package Holiday Video Games Drop-in, Drop in and play Travelogue, an online game created by Monica Studer and Christoph van den Berg, along with other video games. 11am-1pm, 2pm-4pm, free, Level 1, pre-booking not required.

* Summer Holiday Course for 11-13 year olds, August 15-17, 11am-4pm, £18 per participant. Work with an artist for three days to make artwork inspired by the Package Holiday exhibition. For more information, ring 0191-478 1810.