FALLCONTROL
An Installation by Albena Baeva
“Leander…, who was always thinking not of tomorrow, but of the day after tomorrow, was surprised to discover that his father would eat one spoon of beans, while he, Leander, would scoop and eat three of them.” M. Pavich “The inner side of the wind”
Fall Control by Albena Baeva is a partial fulfillment of the requirements for the MA degree in Digital Arts at the National Academy of Arts in Sofia, Bulgaria. The interactive instalation visually recreates meeting a past moment. Visitors are invited to jump on a metal framed bed. Across from the bed is a video projection. When a visitor gets on the bed and start jumping, she sees a projection of her own figure next to a recording of the figure of the person who jumped on the bed before her. When the current visitor jumps high, the visitor from the past slows down her pace of jumping and vice versa. When the visitor jumps to a certain height the two figures on the screen switch places, only to separate again when they meet.
According to Einstein, time takes a different course depending on your own position in space. Stanford scholar Ronald Gruber differentiated subjective time from objective. St. Augustine proved that the present moment does not exist, and Serbian writer Milorad Pavich described people as living at different paces.
The act of jumping puts the participant in a state of zero gravity, temporarily liberating her from the laws of time, and provides a chance to interact with the subjective time of others. Returning to a past moment, visitors get closer to the subjective present time of previous participants. A game of manipulation connects various audience members, placing them in one environment, though they might have never physically been in the same place.
In Fall Control, Baeva refuses to accepts that time is a constant. She layersmultiple flows of time , each of them is as real as the other. The piece reveals the social plan of time. It brings us together, allowing us to meet, but at the same time dooms us to constant separation.
Fall Control by Albena Baeva is a partial fulfillment of the requirements for the MA degree in Digital Arts at the National Academy of Arts in Sofia, Bulgaria. The interactive instalation visually recreates meeting a past moment. Visitors are invited to jump on a metal framed bed. Across from the bed is a video projection. When a visitor gets on the bed and start jumping, she sees a projection of her own figure next to a recording of the figure of the person who jumped on the bed before her. When the current visitor jumps high, the visitor from the past slows down her pace of jumping and vice versa. When the visitor jumps to a certain height the two figures on the screen switch places, only to separate again when they meet.
According to Einstein, time takes a different course depending on your own position in space. Stanford scholar Ronald Gruber differentiated subjective time from objective. St. Augustine proved that the present moment does not exist, and Serbian writer Milorad Pavich described people as living at different paces.
The act of jumping puts the participant in a state of zero gravity, temporarily liberating her from the laws of time, and provides a chance to interact with the subjective time of others. Returning to a past moment, visitors get closer to the subjective present time of previous participants. A game of manipulation connects various audience members, placing them in one environment, though they might have never physically been in the same place.
In Fall Control, Baeva refuses to accepts that time is a constant. She layersmultiple flows of time , each of them is as real as the other. The piece reveals the social plan of time. It brings us together, allowing us to meet, but at the same time dooms us to constant separation.
Albena Baeva works with interactive design, experimental video and performance. In her interactive installations for urban spaces and galleries she uses technology, creative programming and DIY practices. She has two MAs; in Restoration (2008) and in Digital Art (2010) from the National Academy of Art in Sofia where she specializes in art technology practices from 12th to 21st century. In 2011 she was awarded the international Essl Art Award for contemporary art and Vienna Insurance Group Special Invitation. She is co-founder of Runabout project, a platform for interdisciplinary performances and studio for interactive design Reaktiv. Within Runabout project she works with musicians, dancers, poets and engineers to create new interactive performance instruments. Her works have been shown in museums for contemporary art like Essl (Austria, 2011), EMMA (Finland, 2013), Museum for contemporary art Vojvodina (Serbia, 2015), at galleries and festivals for video and performance in Austria, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Cyprus, Denmark, France, Finland, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Lithuania, Switzerland, Serbia, Turkey, Ukraine and USA.
More information at albenabaeva.com and vimeo.com
25 June – 01 July 2010
The Fridge, Sofia, 122 Ovche Pole str.