CORPUS:
the pit and the pendulum
../Related Objects

KEYWORD:
#environmental_installation #light_system #anamorphosis #phosphorescent_painting

CULTURAL DEFINITION:
../Edition: 3+1

TECHNICAL DATA:
../Object: reactivable
../Matter and technique: Interactive site-specific installation: interactive light system light system, anamorphic wall phosphorescent painting, metal bed frame.

DESCRIPTION: "The Pit and the Pendulum," the title, borrowed from a genius of mystery like Edgar Allan Poe, already stirs a healthy doubt about the type of experience we are about to live through. To begin, one must enter a room, but first, as a sort of welcome, there is a series of incomprehensible pencil sketches and a poster that cryptically hints at what awaits us, all of which helps to ease the anticipation. You pass through a heavy black curtain, then a half-open door from which a strong yellow light escapes. The door seems stuck, hitting against an iron cot that barely fits in the small room. The light is intense, and the cot, though shabby, instinctively invites you to lie down on it, but not before putting on a pair of improvised glasses, with the right lens obscured by masking tape. Once this natural action is completed, just as your head touches the pillow, the light begins to dim, but slowly, with a few seconds of waiting. And in that imminent twilight, the left eye starts to perceive something: three lines meeting at a vertex, and a circle above the head. The light has vanished, and it feels like you're lying under a triangular pyramid with glowing lines; this mysterious architecture wasn't there before—it appeared out of nowhere. You feel like staying there, thinking, leaving everything else outside of that personal, intimate moment. But just as you're lost in thought, the sudden reappearance of the light pulls you back to the real world, perhaps just by raising your head slightly. Just a few moments to dream, to escape, and then back out to live the rest. [Antonio Guiotto]

THEMES:
../#specificity: temporal geographical
../#body: interaction
../#identity: pseudoscience

SOURCES AND DOCUMENTS:
../Images:
../Information card [pdf]: The pit and the pendulum.pdf

../Exhibition:

Superfluo#0,  a project by Superfluo Antonio Guiotto, Nicola Genovese, Alex Bellan, Padova. 2011

../Collection: artist archive