Extreme points

2015 29.06 – 05.07 Artplay, Moscow

Interactive installation
Light objects: 50 x 50 x 50 cm
Photography series: 60 x 80 cm
Single channel video
Production: 2015

Centralization of resources in big cities for a general benefit in the industrial period provided the extended reproduction of manufacturing, later turned into a giant magnet taking up neighbor towns and settlements, their population and working places.

The Moscow region has mental and economic boundaries rather than geographical ones: it is entirely reasonable to discern it from the rest of Russia by financial indexes, transport accessibility, and infrastructure availability. Geographical borders are slightly inaccurate on maps, and it is hard to find them on the ground.

On the extreme points, the northern, southern, western and eastern, cube beacons with LED lights, batteries and light sensors were installed. They turned on at night automatically, worked until dawn, serving as frontier signs someway, and periodically sent geocoordinates to the exhibition place via a mobile internet connection.

After carrying out the accurate localization, the next quite logical idea was to define a center of the region geometrically, finding out the place where south-north and east-west lines crossed.

Despite the high population density in Moscow suburbs, the center was found in a rural area without any constructions or buildings around.

The installation consisted of four light panels with the extreme points beacons photographed and placed according to their cardinal directions and one-channel video of the geometrical center with real-time GPS coordinates transmitted by the cubes.