METAKINETICS
Kinetic installation with video
Lucid Dream is inspired by key figures from the field of science and art: Nikola Tesla (1856−1943), Charlie Chaplin (1899–1976) and Vladimir Tatlin (1885−1953). The scientist, artist, silent film director, and star were bound to utopian poetic ideas. In contrast, as we will see below, their seemingly incredible ideas went down in the history of the unfeasible. Lucid Dream, a synonym for the state between the conscious and the unconscious, between dreams and reality, discusses the tension between a brilliant idea and truth, which often opposes the former. The artist opens a space for re-evaluating such visionary ideas in the field of art; a field that is aware of reality but not entirely subordinated to it.
Dream to Recall Forgotten Thoughts, video; 4 min 53 sec
The artist includes images of a very intimate mother-daughter relationship (played by the artist and her daughter), who experiment with magic tricks of appearing and disappearing, alongside the character of Chaplin’s charismatic role and emotional speech from the movie The Great Dictator (1940). In the video, the words “soldiers” were omitted from the speech of the Great Dictator, which transformed the original address to soldiers into an address to all of us about shared social responsibility to future generations.
Letatlin is a small kinetic model which flies with the help of threads attached to an old gramophone. The inspiration came from the Soviet machine for the flying proletariat created and produced by painter and architect Vladimir Tatlin in 1932, which would enable people to gain absolute freedom. The work symbolises the endless flight between brilliant ideas and harsh reality.
Levitation Machine: An electromagnetic field is created with electricity passing through the coil. A Hall effect sensor and electronic devices precisely control this field, allowing the cube to float in the air, defying gravity. This defiance of gravity becomes a metaphor for a liberated state of mind, enabling lucid dreaming and reshaping our perceptions of reality.
Credits:
Photo: Damjan Švar
Construction of individual elements (Letatlin): France Petač
Development and electrical engineering (Levitation Machine): Otto Urpelainen
Performance (Dream to Recall Forgotten Thoughts): Bela Mrevlje, Meta Grgurevič
Photography (Dream to Recall Forgotten Thoughts): JAŠA
Special thanks to: Kokeellisen Elektroniikan Seura