Yelena Isinbayeva Fly Away Via Satellite Broadcast is a gaming system that includes a custom open world / high jump 3d video game and a pair of custom game mat controllers.
The controllers, constructed like exercise mats, are designed to hold the player’s body in one specific position, mimicking famous eastern european female athletes at the height of their jumps. To play, two players control the movement and sight lines of one player-character. The concept of the game is that you play as a hybrid russian female athlete running from the ghost of infamous filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl as represented by german shepherds riding drones. The track and field environment is littered with potholes dug by Leni so she could photograph you, but you keep falling into them. You are constantly looking for sources of protein and attempting to avoid an airplane crash that keeps reoccuring in the space.
This game system was featured in a solo show called PLAY DEAD
@ Three Four Three Four Gallery in Brooklyn, NY.
The show featured 2 other works: Technical Knockout, an electronic kinetic sculpture to automate a never-ending game of wii boxing; and Spacebags, two sculptures made by vacuum storing custom-made motion capture suits.
check it out on ThreeFourThreeFour's website
Also check out this article about the show by Jae Wook Lee in TK-21
The last three steps before a Vaulter’s “Swing and Row” (which consists of the tail leg being swung forward and the pole rowed) are referred to as the “turn over.” The goal of this phase is to efficiently translate the kinetic energy accumulated from the approach into potential energy stored by the elasticity of the pole, and to gain as much initial vertical height as possible by jumping off the ground. The term “Fly-Away” is used in pole vaulting to refer to the moment the vaulter pushes off the pole and releases it so that it falls away from the bar. The Pole Vault World Championships held in 2013 in August at Luzhniki Stadium in Moscow was sponsored by Canon, TDK, Seiko, Toyota, and VTB, and streamed live in over 200 countries, as covered by 3,000 photographic journalists . Pole Vaulting has been a full medal event for Women in the Olymic Games since the year 2000.
Though the final version of this game system was completed in 2016, the first game mat was built in 2013 for a game built with processing. In this game, you are Yelena Isinbayeva, Russian, world, and olympic record holder and current world champion in Pole Vault. Your exercise mat, designed to hold the body in one specific position, doubles as game controller for a semi-narrative space-fighter game, the rules and goals of which are nonexistent.
