Sitraka Rakotoniaina
www.sitraka.co.uk / www.studiogoodone.com
Time Conditionning: “Enter the bullet-time” (2010)
perspex, rubber, steel, glass
“Man who catch fly with chopstick accomplish anything.” Miyagi-Karate Kid (1984)
The way we perceive time is intimately linked to the situation within which we experience it, as time flies when watching an action film and slows down when staring at a clock, waiting. This distortion of time can be observed when facing a highly stressful situation, too. People who have been involved in car accidents have often experienced the few seconds before the crash in slow-motion. As if their brain had taken more shots of the event, similar to a high-speed camera. Professor David Eagleman explains that in a situation of intense stress and when experiencing things for the first time, the brain creates much denser and richer memories, giving the feeling that an event lasted longer than it has. This project aims at providing an experience close to experiencing ‘bullet-time’, allowing enthusiasts to catch flies with chopsticks. It is composed of a training prosthesis slowing down the moves of the user’s arm, as if under water. After a period of adaptation, the training device is taken off. Once freed of the prosthesis, the user has potentially increased his anticipation skills.
