If <then> else
if < then > else exhibition of interactive art 13 — 15 may, 2025 | Si19
artists: Anastasia Indeykina, Maria Knyazeva, Elizaveta Maiboroda, Adelina Fishova, Anna Chekushkina, Anastasia Chernenko, Stepan Shechkov design: Anna Chekushkina curators: Kate Umnova, Adelina Fishova
Pathways Adelina Fishova
If birds fly low, it will rain. Gravity is constant, otherwise objects lose their balance. If we observe a cloud for a long time, we will see its shape changing. Conditions define expectations, but do not convey the nuances of the emerging experience. Between a directing condition and the result, a gap arises that eludes linear logic. If < then > else is a search for new forms of description that can preserve the complexity of the initial message.
The exhibition explores nature, communication, time, emotions, the rhythm of habits. Proposing new systems of 'condition — response' relationships, the authors discover connections existed previously only as a forefeeling. Visitors' behavior influences weather, dance generates space, the movement of invisible wind flows becomes writing, attention gives birth to poetry.
Works
Sorites paradox, installation Focus, Gravity, Pathways, series of poetic installations People Gathering Around —Rain Is Breathing On the Ground, installation Why Does a Door Creak Sound Like a Kiss, animation Questions for the Clouds, two-channel installation Pressure Points, video Feedback Loop, video Unhappy Farm, game
if — attention, emergence of possible, invitation to that, which is not yet defined.
Sorites paradox Anna Chekushkina, Stepan Shechkov
Sorites Paradox, interactive installation Anna Chekushkina, Stepan Shechkov, 2025
If you add one grain of sand to another, at what point does a heap form? Reacting to the sound of space, the installation forms a sand landscape — the geological layers of the exhibition time.
Sorites paradox Anna Chekushkina, Stepan Shechkov
People Gathering Around — Rain Is Breathing On the Ground, interactive installation Stepan Shechkov, Anna Chekushkina, 2025
The installation reverses the tradition of people viewing the world through the prism of function — looking for weather predictions in atmospheric phenomena and animal behavior. Now the viewers themselves are offered the role of a meteorological instrument, equality with other forms of life. The machine translates viewers' data into weather signs, making a person part of the environment that he is used to measuring.
People Gathering Around — Rain Is Breathing On the Ground Stepan Shechkov, Anna Chekushkina, 2025
Focus —How long can you hold a word at your fingertips? , interactive installation Adelina Fishova, 2025
Letters exist in disorder until the viewer creates a point of focus by bringing together their thumb and index finger. Around this point, the symbols begin to gather into words. This gesture becomes a metaphor for concentration: as soon as attention fades, the text falls apart once again.
Focus Adelina Fishova
< then > — a temporary structure in which assumptions take shape and one can follow where the guess leads.
Gravity —How do you know when a word has found its place? interactive installation Adelina Fishova, 2025
Words exist as physical objects. Intersecting, colliding, and drawing each other in, they reshape poetic connections. The viewer becomes part of the system: by shifting their device and changing the viewing angle through the phone’s gyroscope, they reveal new structures and witness the formation of meaning.
Gravity Adelina Fishova
Feedback Loop video, 5’ Anastasia Chernenko, 2025
In the video, strangers tune in through the language of contact improvisation. The process of such cognition is similar to the slow development of an image. Starting from one point, partners move according to internal impulses, creating new branches of non-verbal dialogue. The machine’s attention follows the point of connection, holding the possibilities of all positions, touches and balance changes.
Feedback Loop Anastasia Chernenko
Pressure Points, video, 1’ Maria Knyazeva, 2025
Open displays of female rage are often called irrational and indecent. Clothing has historically played a role in suppressing emotion — suffocating collars, multi-layered skirts, and rigid corsets restrict movement and dictate ideals of submission. Six virtual costumes explore the possibility of transforming instruments of control into symbols of power and liberation.
Pressure Points Maria Knyazeva
Unhappy Farm, game Elizaveta Mayboroda, 2025
A life simulator of a hero obsessed with a farmer simulator. Day after day, you wake up and fall asleep, move from room to room and grow a virtual crop.
Unhappy Farm Elizaveta Mayboroda
else — flickering of the possible, a deviation, in which the meaning may not take place, {or take place otherwise}.
Pathways —Where do birds fly when the sky runs out? — How much time does a snail carry on its back? —What do fish stay silent about when their eyes meet?, video 3’ Adelina Fishova, 2025
The flight of birds, the drift of insects, the invisible currents of wind — their paths become writing. Words emerge at the intersection of motion and code, forming fleeting, unstable structures. Using object recognition and motion tracking, the installation translates these trajectories into text.
Pathways Adelina Fishova
Questions for the Clouds, two-channel video installation [1] 26’15’’ [2] weather camera broadcast Anna Chekushkina, Stepan Shechkov, 2025 [1] The heroes of the video sit in a field and observe the sky. They take turns choosing clouds and telling each other about them. In search of a language to describe changeable distant forms, the heroes explore the (im)possibility of human comprehension of phenomena that are many times larger than them.
Вопросы облакам Анна Чекушкина, Степан Шечков
[2] The video contains a grid of weather cameras from different corners of the earth. Viewers are offered a contemplative game of guessing the clouds.
Questions for the Clouds Anna Chekushkina, Stepan Shechkov
Why does a door creak sound like a kiss, animated film, 4’15’’ Anastasia Indeykina, 2025
The harmony of protagonists is disrupted when an unknown man falls in love with their door. A story about home invasion, fear from inside and outside.
Why does a door creak sound like a kiss Anastasia Indeykina
photo: Evgenia Senina, Anna Chekushkina video: Alena Saakian
. . . . . . . The project was held as part of the HSE School of Design Diploma25 Festival of Diploma Projects.
