Caitlin & Misha

Caitlin & Misha create artworks which play with culturally relevant, yet sometimes utopic examples of sharing communities, livable ecologies, and the transmutation of waste. They employ traditional drawing, design, and sculptural techniques within a contemporary framework of interactive media and participatory installation. Among other things they create installations, games, and happenings where audience participation is a key component of the work and its message.  Their work has been exhibited in the US, Canada, and Europe at such venues as EFA Project Space (NYC), the New Museum’s Ideas City Festival (NYC), the Torrance Art Museum in (LA), the Everson Museum of Art (Syracuse, NY), SIGGRAPH, Mint Museum (Charlotte), and High Desert Test Sites HQ (Joshua Tree). They were recently awarded the Andrew W. Mellon Immersive Scholar Fellowship and will be traveling to work at NCSU in February 2019. They are also working on an exhibition at the Science Gallery at King’s College of London, UK for this Spring. Caitlin Foley is an artist and curator and Misha Rabinovich is an Assistant Professor of Interactive Media at UMass Lowell.

Total Jump — training people for a coordinated worldwide jump
Installation

This arcade style jumping game trains people for a coordinated worldwide jump where everyone jumps and lands at exactly the same time. The extreme difficulty of accomplishing a Total Jump combined with the ease and fun of training for it invites the audience to bridge the gap between a pluralistic world and the necessity for globally coordinated solutions to immense problems facing the human race.

Participants stand on floor mats with electronic sensors and prompted by a countdown attempt to jump and land on zero. When players successfully land in unison a photo of them midair appears on the screen. The game was inspired by various examples of social synchronization such as the Estonian singing revolution, Christoph Schlingensief’s anti-chancellor swim, and the swaying of the Millennium bridge in London. Would a Total Jump where everyone jumps up and lands at exactly the same time precipitate an earthquake or unite humanity and transcend our divisions?