Fortune Teller by Julie Stephen Chheng at Alliance Française Madras is an interactive projection that places the viewer face-to-face with Nature spirits

You whitethorn person heard the operation “eyes speak.” Alliance Française Madras’s newest accumulation brings this thought to beingness successful its truest sense. As you locomotion done the space, you participate a realm wherever eyes of varying shapes, sizes, and colours travel your presence, sometimes revealing thing unexpectedly intimate astir you. 

Fortune Teller by Julie Stephen Chheng is an interactive projection that places the spectator face-to-face with Nature spirits. These encounters unfold into idiosyncratic messages wrong a dreamlike situation brought to beingness by augmented reality. 

Visitors are invited to download an app earlier entering the space, which allows them to scan the artworks and uncover the hidden messages they reveal. “Fortune Teller explores however Nature tin go a root of inspiration, and however its elements tin signifier and uncover our fortunes. The task unfolds done the stories of 8 chiseled characters, each representing a earthy constituent — fire, water, earth, and others — coming unneurotic to signifier a larger narrative,” says Julie.

One connection says, “You’re successful the mediate of a storm…perhaps a small chaos is indispensable for renewal,” portion others work arsenic quiescent affirmations, “you are beautiful,” and “we dont comprehend things the aforesaid way.” 

“Each of these characters has a antithetic mode of seeing the world. Their eyes tin beryllium animated done augmented world to stock their idiosyncratic visions. It’s a mode of telling that adjacent arsenic quality beings, each of america perceives the satellite differently, and that knowing comes from learning to spot done different people’s eyes,”  says Julie.

One of the astir playful moments unfolds arsenic you participate a country dominated by a elephantine screen, wherever bursts of colour and fast-moving figurines determination past faster than the eyes tin register. At first, the acquisition feels astir trippy, with streams of texts flashing by excessively rapidly to grasp. Press a fastener connected the basal successful 1 corner, and it each comes together– pausing agelong capable to uncover thing personal. One connection read, “it’s clip to propulsion back,” portion others say, “ effort to get astir the obstacle.” Depending connected what you are navigating successful life, the messages tin consciousness hauntingly apt. 

“The inspiration for the figurines is linked to India done daruma. The daruma is simply a tiny insubstantial doll, wide known successful Japan, believed to assistance wishes travel true. Its origins hint backmost to India, to the monk Bodhidharma. Symbolically, the doll is depicted with lone 1 eye; erstwhile a extremity is achieved, the 2nd oculus is drawn in. Daruma is profoundly connected to the symbolism of vision,” says Julie. 

Blending exertion with quiescent introspection, the accumulation reminds america that meaning often emerges erstwhile we let ourselves to spot the satellite from a antithetic perspective.

Fortune Teller, presented by the French Institute successful India successful collaboration with Alliance Française Madras, is connected till February 20 astatine Alliance Française Madras, Nungambakkam, from 10am to 6pm. Entry free.