“Menazh Square: 1:20 pm, September 16, 1990” by Ken Kobland

Photo from kenkoblandfilms.com

Title:

Menazh Square: 1:20 pm, September 16, 1990

Artist(s) and People Involved:

Exhibiting Artist(s):

Ken Kobland

Symposium:

ISEA97: Eighth International Symposium on Electronic Art
More artworks from ISEA97:

Artist Statement:

Moscow in Sept. 1990 was a city on the edge of historic change; hovering somewhere between perostroika and collapse, between reform and disintegration. Manzeh Squat is the recording of a mas, pro-democracy demonstration held in the gigantic traffic plaza just outside the Kremlin walls. It is a kind of audio advent calendar of the last days of the Soviet Union. Manzeh Square is a 3-D photo-composite made from Hi-8mm video stills that scrolls in a 360° Quicktime VR panorama, controlled by the viewer. As the image revolves, a general audio ambiance track of crowd and broadcast speeches plays. Of special interest is that one can select particular individual faces within the crowd, and by clicking the cursor, activate the ‘interior monologue’ of the person (voice-over in Russian with English subtitles). The site also allows the viewers to write their own thoughts into a read-only archive. This is the premiere of this work in this form. The original images come from a videotape, MOSCOWX, which first was shown as a video diary of Moscow 1990 as a video selection in the New York Film Festival.