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
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…"
