3 minutes2 is an installation mixing space and image, real and virtual, and presents a hybrid habitat metamorphosing endlessly around its inhabitant. A hybrid of space and image, a fusion of the material with the immaterial, the architecture of memory and information design, the habitat is not only measured by its surface but by the sum of its potential dimensions. Parallel realities melt in one space-time, 3 minutes are a space, 10 square meters are a space. 3 minutes2 is a surface-time, a hybrid space existing as a consequence of its inhabitant’s rhythm and trace: the inhabitant’s electronic shadow.

3 minutes2 is an installation presenting an extremely small living unit. This space is unique in that it extends beyond its physical borders via the image, the space being its own projection surface. The volume of the space is divided into as many functions as dictated by the various usage scenarios of this living space. The inhabitant is contained in the image, represented as a silhouette. The shadow, which represents the projection of a neutral individual in this habitat, is the installation’s neuralgic centre, the habitat constructing itself around it like a cocoon; more a cultural than a natural extension; the habitat adopts a character. The presented functions correspond to vital needs and also to more complex behaviors. 3 minutes2 does not try to characterize the habitat’s functions but to draw the shape of a daily life deeply modified by technologies and the presence of the virtual, or the materialization of the immaterial. Beyond the traditional functions adapted to this type of habitat, some activities are directly linked to this conception of space and inevitably induce radical changes in its political, economical and social organization. The status of the image compared to the space is permanently ambiguous. Is it an individual’s memory expressed in their habitat? Is it the virtual reflection of a real life?

Or is it the life-size model of a future space previewing the use of technologies (such as nanotechnologies) in development? 3 minutes2 will not answer these questions but will influence the traditional debate opposing the real and the virtual. Here, the hybridization of the real and the virtual is ficticiously carried out and becomes the basis for the presentation of a habitat which anticipates the technological and social modifications making it possible. No screens, no visible interfaces, the two characters touch the walls, make movements; the habitat responds to them. The technology has become totally invisible and the effect of technology becomes magic.

Founded in Paris in 2000 by the Belgian architect Naziha Mestaoui and the French director and graphic designer Yacine Aďt Kaci, Electronic Shadow works with its hybrid design at the crossroads between space, image and time. In the last four years Electronic Shadow has participated at numerous exhibitions (MomA, NYC; Centre Pompidou, Paris Museum of Modern Art, la Villette, the Looshaus) and realizations (the French cultural center of Palermo, the Arsenal Pavilion,…) to make unique propositions using technologies tangible to all audiences.