Projects
poseidonspullrevisited

Poseidon’s Pull (Revisited, 2018): “Part 1: Channeling the gestures of a god”, Ionian Center For the Arts, Kefalonia, Greece, 2018 - Reza Safavi and Max Kazemzadeh

"Poseidon's Pull (Revisited): Part 1: Channeling the gestures of a god” is a continuation of the 2012 project by Max Kazemzadeh & Reza Safavi that intends to identify connections between Greek myth, "actual" place, and the phenomena of apophenia in identifying significant messages from Poseidon that are communicated through his gesture, aka. the control of the sea currents. These gestures were tracked via GPS by the artists as they floated/drifted in a raft in the Ionion Sea off the coast of Kefalonia. The artists created a system that used EEG headsets to identify if they were in a meditative state. GPS tracking would only record while the artists were in that meditative state, and once they dropped out of that state, the GPS track would end. The artists are investigating these GPS tracks (each track as a letter with a point A to B) as a kind of typographic divine mythology, which function as encoded messages to Grecians and humankind. Both artists stayed out at sea to get a number of GPS tracks, which were then studied for significance. In the installation, visitors are invited to enter a raft and put on the EEG headset, where they will notice a red screen with an expanding sphere. which represents the meditative level of the visitor. Once achieving an 80% meditative state, the screen turns green and one GPS track (in the sequence it was recorded by the artists in the sea) is printed at the boat’s stern. The shapes generated by the GPS tracks that were recorded while drifting the sea were then compared to Greek letters, imagery, and land forms that followed a similar contour, in order to decode messages from Poseidon via his gestures, aka. controlling the sea currents. “Poseidon’s Pull (Revisited): Part 1: Channeling the gestures of a god" exhibited in the Ionion Center for Arts & Culture in Kefalonia, Greece in June, 2018 and again as part of the SEA(S) Exhibition in August, 2018. Also, thanks to artist Nils Chertier for assisting with the documentation of the installation.