Anna Koleichuk

The Virtual Corridor for Feet and Eyes. Art-Side-Show.

The project "The Virtual Corridor for Feet and Eyes" by Moscow artist Anna Koleichuk, as well as the majority of her works, is based on the artistic and scientific ideas and principles developed since early 1960-s by her father Viacheslav Koleichuk - one of the leaders of constructivist art in Russia. The author's artistic platform was based on Russian advant-guard art from 20-s: Tatlin, Rodchenko, Malevitch, Ioganson - the cultural environment that introduced the new comprehension of the artistic idea as a structure organizing space.

The installation project "The Virtual Corridor for Feet and Eyes" is based on a material of the performance MATER-I-A by Anna Koleichuk, one of the parts of the multimedia spectacle "The Spatial Collage" of the Viacheslav Koleichuk' Total Theatre, created by Anna and Viacheslav Koleichuk in 1998.

The Total Theatre is an environment created by the artist and aimed at the development of classic vanguard traditions, production of a new visual reality, conceptual and formal component, opening a capability of the flexible conduction of the structures and images of theatrical space, light and colour design, usage of a kinetic and sounding theatrical costume, selfbuilding and transforming compositions and designs, computer-generated image and electronic art. This approach starts the Total Game, opens the new interplay and intercouplings between the sound and actors, the game elements and scenography.

The visual part of installation "The Virtual Corridor for Feet and Eyes" is based on the work by Viacheslav Koleichuk "The Grey Square " (1976). In this work the author investigates some phenomena and paradoxes of our visual perception:
- The grid built from black and white squares will be visually perceived as a grey field of equal saturation if we will observe it from the big enough distance;
- If the piece of larger grid will be incorporated inside the old one, it will be perceived as the new shape;
- The contour of the new shape (background - figure), arises due to a difference of the sizes of grids and depends on the distance from the spectator and his(her) point of view.

With the help of computer programs specially written by the Moscow programmer Andrei Topunov, the work "The Grey Square" was animated and transferred into a video form. By means of the video projection, it was utilised as a flexible, moving fabric stretched on translucent screens - objects of the different shape and design, lined in a sort of corridor, creating illusion of the live space. The image consisting of black and white squares, increasing, decreasing, reverting and changing the speed of the motion, being projected on the screens, reshaping the new space. The spectator can be displaced inside this space, becoming a part of installation or to watch for happening from the outside.