Meditation Station is an installation that fits one room and one person. It’s located in my house in Buffalo Grove, IL. The size of the piece is determined by the size of a human body, specifically, my own body. It is too big or too small for anyone who is not my heights and weight. The sculpture is a symmetrical cross in its plan. It’s made of black glossy polyester spandex fabric, black plexiglass and aluminum assembled over a wooden framework. Sides of the cross are tied to the center of the station with quarter-inch steel metal cables, outlining invisible vertical planes.

The design of the piece echoes the architecture of the place – an unfinished basement with studs running along walls. The renovation project has been long abandoned. It smells with old damp wood. The studs are connected by nails, which makes the demolition process excessively difficult. The basement was flooded at least once. Marks on the floor map the location of furniture and objects before it went under water. The random pattern of rust stains and peeling off greenish paint contrasts the clean geometry and rationality of the installation.

The project creates an environment for a personalized experience. Four 22” black displays are suspended on the sides of the cross. They are connected to a splitter with 6 ft. HDMI to DVI cables. The power is supplied by 25 ft. indoor medium-duty extension cords. Steel and video cables together with power cords create an intricate three-dimensional line drawing eliminating the boundaries between the sculpture and its surrounding. A laptop connected to the displays through the splitter plays a pre-recorded video synchronously on all four screens.

The looped video features a sequence of visual stimulus – from the lightest to the heaviest – rolling on a clear glass. The objects appear in the following order: feathers, gillyflowers, squishies, water beads, fruit-flavored candies, natural polished black pebbles, precision steel balls, and 9x19 mm Parabellum brass shells. The video is turned 90 degree clockwise, creating an impression that the falling objects are gradually filling the displays. A still image of a filled screen remains while the sound keeps moving forward. Eventually, the image gets dissolved in its dominant color and clears the way for the next visual set.

The sculpture is meant to be experience for an extended time. I conducted an experiment staying with it for 11 hours 50 minutes. I sent my children to bed and went downstairs. The first six hours were gain. I could appreciate the time of solitude. The hours after the dawn were waste. The focus moved on staying awake. The house seemed to be breathing. When the air plenum moved to accommodate the thermal expansion, it sounded like steps. The experiment resulted in 73 pages of writing, mostly in English, but closer to the end in Russian. At 11:30 am I stopped the 30x lapse video recording and went on cooking late breakfast.