The Neo Moscow studio is a graphic journey into a parallel reality where the world’s history has gone a completely different way. Here the familiar landscape outside the window is complemented with black and white portals that connect to another world where actual Moscow is built up with striking skyscrapers and indented by aerial highways and the Kremlin seems to be a toy in the background of many gigantic buildings on the horizon. We have tried to imagine in detail all the ways history led Moscow to have such a future.
“Moscow Speaking”
In the early morning the radio muttered in the “Moskvitch” of a young genius and theoretical physicist Andrei Sakharov: “Moscow speaking” – a deep almost infrasound voice read out a brief summary of the news: “Today, July 19th, 1952, the first controlled interplanetary spacecraft will be launched from the «Arbatskiy» spaceport; the grand opening of the first «thousander», a high-rise-building champion, will take place in the capital in the Neskuchny Garden; The first supersonic train will leave from the Moscow Oktyabrskaya Station to St. Petersburg; An important cooperation agreement between Russia, the USA and Japan in the field of nuclear energy was signed in Tokyo; The authorities of the United Europe tabled the possibility of merging its own energy projects with the newly formed Union in Tokyo, and now the details…”
Sakharov happily smirked at what he’d just heard and switched the radio off. He already knew all that would be told by the speaker because he was directly involved in the development of the power system for the “thousanders”, he was a member of the initiative group for the signing of the US-Japan agreement, and he personally recommended to the President of United Europe to join the new energy projects as soon as possible…
1952 Is Passing Quite Differently Somewhere Else…
According to the modern physical theories, our world is just one of thousands probabilities of itself, that is, it is possible that in the same moment there are parallel realities quite unlike each other.
We rarely ever wonder if there is an idea behind each piece of technology, and the idea in its turn is the quintessence of a crazy amount of information, mixed, cooked, broken, split and reassembled, inverted upside down and set into place again, an accident that is as two peas in a pod similar to the one which started the history of life on our planet. Dreamers move the world forward without being afraid to mix math formulas with contemplating the sunset. They draw ideas from the cracks in the wall and they know that God knows where else they can find sources of “mental energy”. Some people even believe that genius is nothing more than an opportunity, unconscious, of course, but still, that penetrates with the help of mind into parallel worlds and spy new and unexpected things.
City of the Future
1953, summer was in full swing, it had been only a year since the day that dramatically affected the development of the world science and technology, but the world had already changed. Our hero admired the city from a height of 1907 meters. He simply got up on one of those skyscrapers that designed the world’s first architect-cosmonaut Konstantin Melnikov, whose dreams of space had been moving him up since childhood, and technological and engineering principles that he had created a long time before the flight, already then allowed him to plunge into the sky…
The city below resembled an old motion picture where everything is slightly accelerated: “the flying cars” were carrying on like swarms to their masters, to their destinations, needle-like silvery silhouettes that were barely distinguished due to their incredible speeds seemed to knock down the invisible canvas of aerial highways by the fancy stitches of their turns.
The janitor, panting and wiping large hailstones of sweat from his forehead, looks smilingly at the just swept street, focused his eyes like a sailor in search of land, he briefly inspects the work and then exhales like he the end to a long story after not having found any new cigarette stub on the horizon. He simultaneously updates the stock of his forces and reassures his heart, he is again ready to do his favorite work, and more than ever eager to do it well. Sakharov felt exactly the same way. A rapidly growing city stretched out in front of him. He needed only one glance to notice everything he had created over the years and everything that now was working for the benefit of millions after “having stepped down” from being the creator. Just literally fastening his eyes upon the playful horizon assembled of skyscrapers, his mind filled with new thoughts and ideas, he saw all that he had done and knew exactly how these things can be improved, and, in addition to the new improved, create even more effective and useful things!
“The future will come to this city!” – this dream appeared in front of his eyes as a huge and bright banner having covered and combined all he thought about before. “This city will be the future” – said Sakharov aloud when moving away from the observation point …
“The city of the future!” – cried the young artist observing the city from the 62nd floor observation deck of Moscow-City. It was her first time in the capital in the early summer of 2016. This, a quite a normal observation from somebody who saw the metropolis the first time, should have gone into obscurity, but this phrase breached a connection between the two worlds …
While the modern physical theories refute each other in an attempt to clearly at maximum and effectively visualize the heterogeneity of space-time, we have all definitely experienced deja vu: an absolutely inexplicable confidence that you have already seen in the past an event that takes place in the present, that you had been before in the place or even the city where you have just arrived and you literally knew what would be around the corner, or, something absolutely fantastic, we had already the idea that someone else had realized. Who knows, maybe deja vu is an attempt of consciousness to travel through space-time?
Having literally “overeaten” the visual images in the “City of the Future”, the artist decided to share her impressions with her mother. The call that was initially supposed to be short turned into a very long and detailed story about the one-day trip. “Unconscious art of an expectation”: such a description appeared in the artist’s head in an attempt to understand what a person draws when talking on the phone. And it’s true. A conversation on the phone while drawing is one of the few things where the consciousness is released: hands do something on their own and mouth together with tongue and vocal cords on their own. Three short beeps turned the artist into reality, thoughts got structured, and the eyesight sharpened: an amusing schematic picture lined up on a sheet with the unconscious drawing. This was something that could be interpreted as a city of skyscrapers with a clear line of land and countless-storey cellars under it: “What a stupid thing”- thought the artist and started trying to call her mother again…
Stolen Dream
Sakharov was awakened by a bright light in the window and an anxious feeling. He dreamt something very important and necessary, but he couldn’t remember what it was. The image that a moment ago was clear as a reality, faded and left no hope of being seen again.
The artist tried desperately to struggle with sleep, but the even rocking, the darkness outside the window and an obvious lack of oxygen in the train (due to of a crazy heat) had left no chance of keeping awake. Her eyes closed and the sun started shining at the same moment, there was no more train and the air was kind of electrified. The artist found herself on the deck of an airship, hovering over the city that looked like Moscow but in the future. The skyscrapers on the horizon went into the clouds, and the swarms of silver on sun flying cars were scurrying just below the airship… The artist came to the edge of the deck to observe in detail the fantastic landscape. It really was Moscow. She was floating somewhere in the area of Chistye Prudy, she was able to recognize the building of Corbusier overlooking the Academician Sakharov Prospect and Myasnitskaya street the same time, “the house of the Russian Insurance Company” also was there, the Kremlin at a distance, the Children’s World…all in its places but surrounded by incredible buildings. She was particularly surprised by the glass-like roads. It was difficult to understand where exactly the ground level was because of the buildings were visible through their crystal-clear surface receding into the distance, and a bright and very warm light was penetrating from the depths like the setting sun!
The train braked suddenly. The stop was approaching, the sharp jerk cut the dream, but didn’t draw away the seen images …
The remaining few hours spent on the tracks the artist spent painting. She wanted to save on paper as much as possible of what he had seen in a dream: flying cars, glass roads, giant airships and the underground city with its own sun…
Return
For two long and painful days Sakharov was held by the idea of the importance of the dream he had had and forgotten. He canceled all appointments in order to try to remember, he walked the entire city with the hope that his favorite places would give a hint, but all in vain. By the end of the second day his body and mind were overcome by fatigue. Sakharov, sitting in his old seat, unconsciously fell asleep and found himself above Moscow just as he had closed his eyes. He was on the deck of an airship he had never seen surrounded by strangely dressed people. Looking around, Sakharov was trying to find a familiar piece of landscape, when suddenly his attention was drawn to a silhouette of a girl who was standing near the edge of the deck and eagerly looking down. Sakharov was taken by a curiosity, he also rushed to the edge of the deck and he saw the brightest light, as if it gushing out from the earth penetrating hundreds of floors of the underground city and coming out through the glass surface of the roads. He had everything in front of his eyes that he had been trying so hard to remember for two days: the idea from the lost dream!
Sakharov jumped into his “Moskvich” without changing his shirt and slippers. He went straight to the Energy Institute. Fifteen minutes before, having finished his notes, he phoned the secretary and told her to call all his colleagues in the energy projects as soon as possible. He flew into the room and literally sang: “The future has come! The fu-tu-re is here! The sun is inside! “- with these words he struck the table with a stack of papers and began to talk about his idea…
Clarity
After several months and hundreds of debates, the physicist came to the final version of what he had seen in a dream. The idea of controlled thermonuclear fusion was born. Perhaps with the help of the energy from the Earth’s core or, to put it simply, Sakharov was able to come up with how to create a second sun inside the planet. Years had passed since the efficiency of the theory was proven. Sakharov devoted all his life to the realization of the idea and he saw the day when the first “groundscrapers” (he decided to name the buildings that were going deep down into the earth and designed them to work on an energy from controlled thermonuclear fusion) literally Moscow “came alive” from the underground Sun! “Moscow – the City of the Future” – was in the newspapers, on the radio they talked about the launch of the phenomenal technology that would forever change the world, and on television they showed a remarkable moment of the start of the underground Sun systems accompanied by a bright flash from the ground …
Sakharov, being an old man, was still happily smirking when heard the news which he had a direct relation to…
After several months and hundreds of sketches, the artist came to the final version of what she had seen in a dream. Two illustrations of Neo Moscow were born (this is how she decided to call the fantastic city), in which she portrayed her brightest impression, the very moment among the glass abundance and strange buildings, flying cars and people with jetpacks behind them she recognized the city which she had first fallen in love with – Moscow!
Instead of an Epilogue
Neo Moscow, November 14th, 2016, the world with three luminaries, the sun, the moon and the underground sun as an inexhaustible source of energy. The idea peeped by a genius in his dream has become the basis of all the world’s progress, it has «raised» underground cities, opened up inaccessible space and just made a dream come true.
Moscow, November 14th, 2016, our city is still on the ground, the progress is just starting to speed, the alternative energy sources and “incredible” space electromagnetic wave engines are created, the world is excited by the political news and rumors about new versions of smartphones.
The new Mama Ro studio, “Neo Moscow”, is opening in the house on Academician Sakharov Prospect. The walls of the studio are decorated with drawings of the already-familiar-to-you artist. They tell you about the amazing world of the future Moscow: here skyscrapers actually are hidden in the clouds, the cars hover over the city flashing their graceful bodies and the underground city can be seen under the glass of roads and sidewalks fed by an underground solar energy… Neo Moscow cautiously begins its story here, drawn but at the same time no less real, a truly inspiring place with big ideas and dreams! Who knows, maybe there will be a dreamer who will get inspired by the drawn Neo Moscow and will be capable to open the door to the future in our reality?
Dreams are the way to communicate with distant worlds, the real way to see what is happening around the corner…
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