"URBAN CYCLES" 
Public Video Installation project


[real video] archive



Dates/Exhibition Hours: 15-24 September, 11-19 h
location: Central Foyer of the National Palace of Culture, Sofia
Openning: 15 September, 17.30 h

A collaborative project between InterSpace Media Arts Center, Sofia, 
BG and 
IDEA - Innovation in Digital and Electronic Arts, Manchester, UK 

With the kind support of British Council, Sofia; Soros Center for the 
Arts, Sofia; National Palace of Culture, Sofia; Irbis, 3M, Bulgaria, 
Huddersfield University, UK; Liverpool Arts School and Liverpool John 
Moores University,UK 

Curator: Galina Dimitrova /Interspace/ 

Participating Artists: 
Interspace - Krassimir Treziev, Petko Dourmana, Nikolay Chakarov, 
Maria Berova
IDEA - Jen Southern, Anneke Pettican, Adele Myers, Jenna Collins, 
Steve Symons, Gary Peploe


The project presents the artists with a common platform for creation 
and exposition of individual works Ð multiple-screen video 
installation, placed/ integrated within the urban environment. Art 
defined as artist-audience communication mediated by technology. 
Technology defined as humanized environment for artistic experiments 
and  freedom of expression.

Every artist shows his/her work, created for the project as a one-day 
show in the frame of public presentation. The target audience is the 
flow of people coming into the National Palace of Culture, Sofia 
during the run-time of the works.
 
The general idea of the project is to make artistic experiments 
happen in a public space, which create interactivity (or feedback) 
from the audience, changing their status from viewers to direct 
participants and creators of the work of art. In this way the artist 
explores and uses interactivity as a basic principle for the creation 
of the work. Interactivity is the means and the manner of 
presentation of the work in a non-linear chronology, through more 
complex stages of visualisation, manipulated by a navigation system. 

The real time and space interactivity, which the project is aiming 
at, starts with the viewer's entering in the public space occupied by 
the projection platforms. Thus the viewer is presented with the 
possibility to see and participate in the composing of the product. 
It changes by a navigation system, connected with sensors, reacting 
to the visitor's behaviour in this environment. All this renders
an 
unexpected aspect to the contact artist/audience.

The interface is made up by four projections on the floor, on which 
multiplied, simultaneously happening events are projected, and which 
shape the entire event. This is the way this work gets its form of a 
composition of fragments, scenes, moments constructing its reality, 
not necessarily telling a smooth running story based on a brilliant 
cause-and-effect logic. In this case a more complex visual mechanism 
of conveying the author's message is sought. 

Taking the building of the NPC as a well-known public space, the 
visitor is drawn into a changed environment, which provokes his/her 
interest, creates different emotions and sensations, and also 
confusion in his/her notions for presence in real/illusionary 
environment, time and history.
The participation of artists from different countries, each one 
having his/her own artistic identity, certainly contribute to the 
variety of messages and the intensive use of the public space where 
the project will take place. 

Exhibition program:

15.09./ Friday Ð Jen Southern "BENEATH THE MARBLE, THE SHOPING CENTRE"
16.09./ Saturday Ð Nikolay Chakarov  "A COLONY"
17.09./Sunday Ð Anneke Pettican "LOOK EAST LOOK WEST"
18.09./Monday Ð Krassimir Terziev "RE-CYCLING STORIES"
19.09./Tuesday Ð Maria Berova "CLEAN UP"
20.09. /Wenday Ð Jenna Collins "HOME"
21.09./Thursday Ð Steve Symons "URBAN GENOME"
22.09./Friday Ð Gary Peploe "HOLD/NUDGE"
23.09./Saturday Ð Petko Dourmana "TURNING ON"
24.09./Sunday Ð Adelle Myers "ESC TO A CITY"