Series
Anna Frants, CYLAND MediaArtLab, 2015
Video in real time, TV sets, old lamps, video, motion sensors
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
Personal Space Series