Remake city, dive into mind

BENGALURU: In a conversation with CE, artists Ria and Sofy speak about their project Spectra, and Jerome speaks about Psycho Rama, which will be displayed at BeFantastic, from December 15

Write a love letter to your city

Spectra is an ongoing international collaboration between Ria Rajan and Sofy Yuditskaya. Formed in 2013 in Nevada, as Spectra, their work centers around participatory and installation work, exploring the themes of light, visuals, colour, optics and sound.

Could you tell us about your project?
This project is our most recent collaboration that we began to develop this Fall in New York. It combines analog and digital imagery to create site specific visual experiences that bring together generated and pre-recorded sound layered with participatory art in the form of static and live imagery.

Could you tell me how it works?
A witch never reveals the secret of her spells

Can the visitor draw anything? What kind of animation does it do?
Yes, visitors are invited to draw whatever they would like to add to the urban landscape, reflecting their dreams and everyday experience in Bengaluru. “Altering Patterns” runs as a live and pre-programmed loop taking in the drawings, visitors do about their visions of the future, and integrating them into our video collage like a love letter to the city.

What inspired you to do this project?
Our combined love for imagery, technology, colour, the great outdoors and participatory experiences.

What materials did you use and how did you develop your project?
We use video that we shot around the city and poetry written in the honour of urban and natural environments everywhere. We process that through an overhead and digital projector using VDMX, and add audio composed in Pure Data.

Was it challenging? If so, how?
The project developed organically as a result of our individual art practices. There were no major challenges. The more we do it, the better we get at it.

Could you tell me about your research? How long did it take to develop the project?
The project grew out of common threads, we were both thinking about, individually and together such as representations of natural vs. urban environments and language vs. sound and imagery. These themes pretty much permeate all our work so you can say it was a natural evolution for the piece to occur.
We’ve been working on the project together since our spontaneous collaboration on it for Ab Uno Pluribus, an audio-visual improvisation show in New York City that happened in September. Since then the project also took on the form of a participatory installation open to the public on Governor’s Island, also in New York. For Bengaluru Fantastic, we are making a city specific version with video from Bengaluru and it’s environs that will combine the performance and installation aspects of the piece.

What UN Sustainable Development Goal does your project represent? How?
Our work is aligned closely with sustainable cities and communities and gender equality.

Accept disturbances and go on a psychedelic trip

Contemporary artist Jérôme Chazeix works with different media such as sculptures, videos and drawings, to create “a cosmos”.
He says his project Psychorama has been conceived as an extension of his entire work in  art installations. “I wanted the spectator to be part of the art work, to really dive into a parallel world, and to be installed inside a sculpture that will include a film projection,” he adds.
The name Psychorama refers to this immersive aspect, psycho because it refers to our inner life or mental life. Like in a diorama (a model representing a scene with 3D figures, either in miniature or as a large-scale museum exhibit), you will be invited to dive into a mental trip.

The starting point of this project was his experience with a grindberg practitioner, a body (and soul) therapist who helps you unblock certain traumatism or wound in you by touching your body.
“I was really enthusiastic about my first experience with it, connecting body and soul. As an artist, I felt a little jealous. I decided to recreate a similar experience in my art. The fact of an artwork touching you is I guess challenging. The seat created is completely part of the installation, you can see them as a sculpture that allows you to sit in,” he shares.  

A grindberg practitioner Anke Bruckner wrote the text of psychorama with him, which the spectator gets to read on the video clips. “A relaxed environment is first created (with mental body scan first), after which the spectator should focus on a disturbance in the seat (a ball) and open himself to overcome this disturbance.”

After the text (and the film scenario), he worked on an anime for six months. He drew approximately 5,000 drawings that he had put in the video to create a 10 minute image loop.
He worked with a musician to set some music supporting the images and the entire journey.
He adds that the German version of it has been produced first. The Indian version is in negative (black on white) of the German version (white on black).

He says that India and it´s music has been a great fascination for him. “India is often associated as a (mental, psychedelic) trip. So I worked with Nikhil Narendra, to have a classical Indian music grid on which he was able to develop electronic music.”He says his project is about “accepting disturbances, growing peacefully (the universe is on your side) and respectfully, developing the harmony with yourself and the universe”.

Other interesting artists

Lekha Washington: She explores notions of being through her conceptual work- strongly influenced by her interest in functional art.
Vasundhara Das: The singer-song writer is also the co-founder of Community DrumJam Foundation.