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"A mouse vision" - the Chinese saying that means "narrow, limited view"
Animal experimentation is a common practice for people. We have used the standard metaphor of a mouse in a labyrinth to study the mechanics of how reality of shaped. The mouse is rigidly influenced by its own unrealized reality. We observe how it acts under such conditions.
While moving through the labyrinth, at each junction the mouse chooses only one of several options, the other ones remain unrealized. However, we see not only its actual route, but also all of its unrealized options in the form of virtual mice on the screen projection. The virtual mice behave independently and unpredictably. At each junction, the mouse multiplies virtual entities. When a virtual mouse moves on a collision course with the real mouse, a partition slides out between them. The virtual mice can fill almost the entire labyrinth, thus severely restricting the real mouse’s space. Being locked between partitions, the mouse stops creating its own virtual copies.
A mouse that is blocked at the crossroads cannot realize any single route.
Even if it begins to rush around in between the barriers - in the logic of self-realization - it is immobility.
At this moment the mouse stops creating its virtual copies.
Being without choice, the mouse is not without options.
In the meanwhile, active life of the virtual mice is not constrained by anything and they can move around freely.
At some point, the corridors that lead to the blocked intersection get empty, the door opens up, and the mouse can extend its life-space.
For a modern human, "to look ahead" means "to look into the future", while for the Sumerians or Babylonians looking ahead meant to see the past: the future was lying behind their backs. In Accadian the past is "days of faces, of fronts".
The word "future" is formed from the root that means "to be behind".
Events happening to the real mouse unfold in the plane of the labyrinth.
The events that take place with the virtual mice branch off the initial plane and spread around different directions. They are simultaneously past and future events for our mouse.
We cannot model the phase space of the mice, all the endless variants of their future.
Yet, if we limit the movements of the mouse mechanically, with the help of a labyrinth, it reduces the amount of possible states and allows to model the unrealized options of the future.
The barriers in the labyrinth, in a sense, serve as a prohibition of annihilation between the future and the present.
Perhaps, the reality of the present and how we understand it is a plane that moves in a three-dimensional structure past-future, and we can investigate only those cause-effect connections that are located either close to this plane or in the past.
The events that seem strange to us, and the reasons that we do not understand may be linked to the past and present through the future.
We only have a mouse vision and see only one step ahead.
The project was produced at the Ural Branch of the NCCA
with the help of the Center for Support and Development
of Contemporary Art ZAART, and financed by the grant
for realization of innovative projects in the sphere of contemporary art
of the Federal focus-program "Russian Culture (2012-2018)",
Ministry of Culture, Russian Federation.
curator
Svetlana Usoltseva
coordinator
Kseniya Zhideleva
creating code installation 144MLN, NEXUS
Where Dogs Run
2013 - 2014
фото: Роман Мокров
Мы используем привычную метафору мыши в лабиринте для изучения механизмов формирования реальности. Мышь подвергается жесткому воздействию своей собственной нереализованной реальности. Мы наблюдаем, как именно, она строит свою действительность в этих условиях.
Мышь, проходя по лабиринту , на каждом перекрестке выбирает лишь один из вариантов, все остальные остаются нереализованными. Мы видим не только реализованный путь, но и упущенные возможности в виде виртуальных мышей на проекции. Виртуальные мыши действуют самостоятельно и непредсказуемо. На каждом перекрестке мышь плодит виртуальные сущности. В момент, когда виртуальная мышь направляется на встречу реальной, - в лабиринте между ними выдвигается стенка. Виртуальные мыши могут заполнить почти весь лабиринт и ограничить пространство реальной мыши до предельного минимума. Мышь, запертая между стенками, перестает создавать свои виртуальные копии. Не имея выбора -она не теряет возможностей.
Таким образом, нереализованные возможности мыши, формируют траекторию и объем ее жизненного пространства. События, происходящие с реальной мышью, разворачиваются в плоскости лабиринта. События, происходящие с виртуальными мышами, разворачиваются во всех направлениях. Они одновременно и прошедшие и будущие события для нашей мыши.
Простая структура лабиринта сокращает количество возможных состояний мыши, что позволяет нам моделировать нереализованные варианты ее будущего и влиять на ее настоящее.