UNIDENTIFIED OBJECTS
BAKLUSHAS
CROCODILE'S TEARS
SIMPLE PLEASURES
AMABIE
ARTIST UNION
HOOLIGANS
PECK OF SALT
POINT OF NO RETURN
LIVING TAPESTRY
BLIND SPOT
DISSIDENT
REFLECTION IN A SPACE
OPTIMIST
NARCISSUS
NO. 0
BLUEST OF THE SEAS
WASHERWOMEN
POSSESSIVE SHOEMAKER
STALE NEWS
UNDER THE WEATHER
INFORMER
CASTS
JOURNEY
LIVE CAM RENAISSANCE
DOLL HOUSE
PERSONAL SPACE
PERSONAL SPACE #2
THE PEST
TABLETOP MEMORIES
ANXIETY
WEATHER FORECAST
ON THE LOOKOUT
COLOURING SOUNDSCAPES
REFLECTION ON LIFE NO. 125082
WEATHER FORECAST - WINTER/SUMMER
CLOUD THAT SMELLED BLUE
SOCKS SNAPPER
VEXATION OF SPIRIT
STORM IN A TEA GLASS
SHADOWS
HOIST
CARDBOARD DRIPPINGS
ACROBATS
GRAVITATION
BREATHING IN THE AIR
WE ARE HERE
INFINITY
1928
WINDOW SASH
SNOWBALL FIGHT
TODDLER
STATICVIDEO
POLAR BEAR FODDER
TREMBLING CREATURES
LIFE IS STRUGGLE
MADE IN ANCIENT GREECE
JUMPING JACKS
FISH TALK
SPEEDLESS
IN THE SHADE OF AN OLIVE TREE
TOUCHMEWEB
FUR DIE STADT
THE ANGEL
DRUMPAINTING

THE STORY OF HEROIC PILOT

SARCOPHAGUS, Ghanaian Style, or the Funeral
A SYMPHONY for X Slide Projectors
BRIDE
work






PERSONAL SPACE


Series
Anna Frants and Media Lab Cyland
Video in real time, TV sets, old lamps,
video, motion sensors.

2015

The series Personal Space, a multimedia installation inspired by the author's own experience, was first showcased in 2015 at the State Hermitage Museum. The series consists of interactive works that create an illusion that it is possible for the individual to take a paradoxical and timeless sojourn in the ideal and entirely his own "personal" space made out of inanimate objects from the past. These objects preserve certain emotional and nostalgic information that, after being passed through webcams and sensors, appears in the form of magic memories in a real-time mode. Artworks that are included in the series become partly a fantasy and partly - an instinctive immersion woven by computer programming and robotics. 

The series is underlined by a really urgent problem of the modern person, of the artist - this is a problem of realization of his absolute right to the endless nostalgia and to the preservation of his personal cultural space and objects that are inherent in it. What's also innovative is the artist's suggestion of how to solve this problem - by way of collective reproduction of personal memories as well as that of collective recreation of this seemingly personal space. Works in this series are built on the virtuoso combination of computer interactivity and "objectification" of the exposition with a current problem of self-isolation of the human being who, under the hard circumstances of contemporary world order, yet again chooses love - of the irrational world of old objects. Each work of this series is, to a certain extent, a quotation from the classics of Russian culture. However, when the "little" man leaves - he also leaves a vast world of memories in his wake. 

Natalya Kamenetskaya
Translation by Irina Barskova

По-русски


PERSONAL SPACE #2

From series “Personal Space”
Anna Frants and Media Lab Cyland
Programming, video, audio, buffalo snow, fans, household items.
2015

Do you own the shadow cast by trees on a bench if you come to the park every day?  The paradox lies in that it seems your own; you got accustomed to it, became intimate with it and came to love it.  You involuntarily became the source that throws light.  Unlike the unemotional "cold" sun, a person that came to love the shadow radiates warmth - the warmth that is neither rational, nor practical, and it eludes accurate analyzing or computation.


In Speak, Memory, Nabokov called it an "individual mystery":

"[Through the train window,] I saw with inexplicable pang, a handful of fabulous lights that beckoned to me from a distant hillside, and then slipped into a pocket of black velvet:  diamonds that I later gave away to my characters to alleviate the burden of my wealth".




THE PEST


From series “Personal Space”
Anna Frants and Media Lab Cyland
Projector, video camera, robot Rumba, computer programming, video
Computer programming:  Aleksey Grachev
2015


From the Free Dictionary by Farlex: 

PEST /PESTERER/ n (colloq) a persistently annoying person.





TABLETOP MEMORIES


From series “Personal Space”
Anna Frants, CYLAND MediaLab
Programming and Robotics: Alexei Grachev
Old table lamps, nano projectors, video, motion sensors
Video Installation. Dimensions Variable
2015



On its face, the installation of a table with desk lamps on it has no artistic value.  However, as it is often the case with this artist's works, we should expect the unexpected.  The first surprise is that when we switch the lamps on, they pour out the sound and not just the light, and the second is that the light turns out to be moving pictures.  The tabletop comes alive with video-memories.  They seem to be countless - from a romantic poetry reading under the starry sky to a prosaic view of the rails seen through a gap between the cars of a moving train.  Each of us could identify with at least one such memory, but even if not, the tabletop memories will now become our own.  When we start interacting with this installation we expect to see some kind of lighting.  Instead, we get some kind of enlightening.  "Thanks for the memories…"