Hundreds go buck naked at Austrian stadium

About1,800people stripped bare on Sunday at a stadium in Austria set to host the Euro 2008 soccer final for American photographer Spencer Tunick.

It marks yet another mass nude event for the artist, who has staged his work in locales around the world including a glacier in Switzerland and Mexico City where a record 18,000 people turned up last May in the city's main square.

Called Artwork with 1,000 Balls, Tunick had about 3,000 people signed up for the task on Sunday at Vienna's Ernst-Happel stadium.Typically, not everyone shows up.

"Austria is very conservative. This might bring more openness," said Michael, a 20-year-old Austrian who drove for two hours to take part. Others came from Germany and elsewhere.

The stadium will be the site for seven matches of the championship, jointly hosted by Switzerland and Austria next month, with the final on June 29.

Participants were given free tickets to the games.

Tunick's event was actually sponsored by Austrian railways and an organization that promotes soccer.

"This very special ephemeral installation that we are inviting you to be part of is devised to capture and combine the spirit of sports, the grand sweeping waves of stadium architecture and the abstract relation of the human form to modern structures," Tunick said on his website.

The artist, who prefers to call his works living sculptures or body landscapes,has more mass exposures planned: June 17 in Cork, Ireland, and in Dublin on June 21.