“E.X.T.R.E.M.E.” TV Series

Soon, Ivan Kristoff will present the ultimate challenge for the world of rope access and air rescue: M.A.R.S. He started filming the development of this concept and how emergency responders will train to achieve their goal. Phase 1:  filming 16 episodes of extreme and trailblazing training. Each episode will include 5-minute segments called “Extreme with friends”. The first episode will be an introduction to the series. The next episodes will be divided into three categories:  Sea – Air – Land.

At the VR FORUM we plan to interview pilots for the Mid Air Rope access reSponse (M.A.R.S.). Some of the concepts for this project were presented in the nearly 12-minute Prime Time News on New7 TV. The preferred time and date when you can see our presentation will be announced in the first episode of   Ivan Kristoff’s pilot project ” Extreme with friends” TV series.

The “Vertical Rescue” Forum

In the Vertical Rescue website, the Canadian Spiderman will showcase his “Introduction of Inspiring Innovation” for the world of helicopter operations. His name is embedded in the word InnoVAtioN. Come to his presentation at the Intersec Fire Conference and see what that means. Following Ivan’s successful presence at the Dubai HeliShow 2010, he will present the concept of “Creating a Highrise Emergency Aerial Rescue Team” at Forum 1.

E.X.T.R.E.M.E. Magazine

Ivan Kristoff has created CLUB EXTREME ( E.X.T.R.E.M.E. – studEnt’s eXtreme Team for Rescue, aErial and Maritime Emergеncy) – a new way to participate in extreme rope access and motor sports. He sponsors and supports the initiatives of young and prominent students, who dare to enter the vertical world. The Club develops specialized training for aerial and vertical operations, work at extreme heights and sports.

ROPE ACCESS PHOTOGRAPHY: Altitude with Attitude

This collection of photos and essay represents the scope of work in the artistic and professional endeavor of Ivan Kristoff in the period of 2002-2005. As Prof. Pascal Michelucci of the University of Toronto wrote, Ivan’s amazing photographic work has found a great historic venue where it will be showcased in the national capital of his own native country. In his letter addressed to the opening of Ivan’s exhibition in the Bulgarian

Aerial stunts for the music

Music is the best way to promote a message. That is why Ivan Kristoff experimented with young and talented musicians Kristo and Svetlio Kuslev to produce the rap hit “Fire off“. Through it Ivan showcased the light features of his client a Swiss-made watch manufacturer. The helicopter stunts were performed by Spider-Man Ivan Kristoff. They were the pinnacle element in the subject line of the video. It is entirely captured at “Riu Pravets Resort” on the lake in the town of Pravec.

Brand Enhancement through the music

Music, sports and art are associated with the source of energy that stimulates us to be active. This combination brought together Ivan and Kiril Milchev, who aim to attract younger audiences, showing them, through inspiring and motivating ways, how to use energy in a positive and useful direction.

“Mentors and Apprentices” Program

This Arts Initiative brings experienced pilots, rope access technicians, artists, musicians, and aerial photographers together with highly promising young artists to collaborate in a one-to-one mentoring relationship. The program will start in 2019, and we hope to initiate enriching dialogue between artists of different generations and cultures, fulfilling its aim to make a significant contribution to the visual presentation of the helicopter industry. This project is initiated by Ivan Kristoff.

Limited Edition Art for Innovation in Aviation

Mid-air rescue is a field where many ideas cannot be built before they are shown. Conceptual art gives our mentors and apprentices a way to visualise rescue scenarios, such as rope access in mid-air, helicopter and drone operations and high-rise emergency response, so that pilots, rescuers and engineers can discuss, question and refine them before anything is tested in the real world. In Mentors and Apprentices, young artists and photographers work one-to-one with aviation and rescue professionals to turn ideas into clear images, storyboards and visual concepts, always with respect for safety and regulations.

This project is the result of such a necessary quest for perfection that threatens never to be completed. A concept for a new aerial rescue operation that costs over a million dollars will be presented by Ivan Kristoff.

According to Leonardo Da Vinci, art and science should go hand in hand. Ivan Kristoff possesses an extreme passion for technology, and he is not a man who lives only on his laurels. He is a man who gathers together a team of jet and helicopter pilots to do something so serious that it will become a new hit in the aviation. He lives with this idea day and night. In 2012, amid economic uncertainty and challenges across parts of the helicopter and defence sectors, Ivan Kristoff presented the M.A.R.S. concept at the Helishow, introducing a new vision for mid-air rope access and aerial rescue. 

The idea is so ambitious that it will test his reputation and the future of his projects and career. Ivan began to plan the new presentation of visual concepts for a new type of rescue in the air.

“Ideas alone can be works of art; they are in a chain of development that may eventually find some form. All ideas need not be made physical”
Sol LeWitt

The main core of this idea is to explore new ways in communicating ideas of Conceptual and Abstract Art that transcend into Land Art, watch it grow as Performance Art, pass through the Neo-Expressionism stage, emerge through Hyperrealism and Photorealism and exploit New Media Art before it forms a shape and becomes reality. As the Samurai, who perfects his skills with the sword and control of the mind by training in calligraphy, poetry, and other forms of art, Ivan has taken the initiative to write his own stories by becoming a freelance editor and photographer for BBC Top Gear Magazine.

Mentors and Apprentices is built on a simple idea: art helps people see a rescue before it exists and understand it after it happens. Théodore Géricault’s The Raft of the Medusa turned a shipwreck and its badly managed rescue, which ended in a court-martial of the captain in 1817, into one of the most famous images in Western art. Winslow Homer’s The Life Line (1884) showed the public a new rescue technology, the breeches buoy, a rope-and-pulley traverse between a wrecked ship and the shore, before it was widely known. The same chain still works today: ideas begin as concepts, enter real space through performance and land art, gain emotional force, are shown with photographic precision and reach audiences through film, digital media and “making-of” books such as David James’s Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol: Shooting Diary. Ivan Kristoff’s own view was shaped by his media and technology studies at the University of Toronto, including Marshall McLuhan’s Understanding Media, and by the years he lived in Rosedale with his relative, the Van Gogh authority Prof. Bogomila Welsh-Ovcharov, and her husband, Prof. Robert Welsh. Her reading of Van Gogh’s The Good Samaritan gave him a rule he applies to volunteer rescue: to help others, you must first be prepared and equipped yourself. His grandfather’s 1919 notebook, filled with drawings by Bulgarian artists, showed him how a name and an image carry a story across generations. Launched in 2018 and now being relaunched, the programme brings pilots, rope access technicians and rescue professionals together with young artists, photographers, musicians and designers to visualise aerial and vertical rescue concepts, document them, test them safely and share what is learned. The result is not a patented product but a useful method of action, and in the digital era it gives a little-communicated field a form that can be seen, discussed and improved.

As an experienced rope access professional, Ivan taught several younger artists to work on ropes on high rock faces, a few hundred feet (roughly 60–100 metres) above the ground, so that they could experience vertical work from the inside and photograph it. For him, a modern vision of conceptual ideas means combining art with technology, and this is the challenge the programme takes up. Ivan has collaborated with technology partners in IT communications, mobile computing, advanced photography and visual technology, and apprentices learn to use such tools to capture, visualise and share rescue concepts. Because work at height is dangerous, the relaunched programme keeps art and risk apart: any rope work is done only by qualified professionals, with certified equipment, supervision and written parental consent for minors, while apprentices start on the ground and in simulated settings.

“My strong side is to see behind the corners and predict the future in my field of work. What I am  looking for as a result of a partnership with the world’s top minds and technological leaders, is to showcase in a documentary film and my book how we can shape a new trend in the aviation through Art and Technology.

For years I had to build a team of reliable and experienced people. Now what is left to count is on an abstract and creative thinking.”
Ivan Kristoff

This is Ivan’s philosophy, the fruit of a long admiration for Leonardo da Vinci. “In an article about Leonardo, I met his assertion that art and science should go hand in hand. When I read this, I thought I saw an open window. It is like I saw the direction in which I must go and I wanted to follow.”, says Ivan. He asks his team and friends to design and visualise new concepts for saving lives, and the concepts are revised many times until they are right. For Ivan, an idea should sound advanced, but it must also be functional and pragmatic.

The son of a diplomat who spent much of his career in Libya, Ivan has dreamed of working in the Arab world since childhood. At the Dubai HeliShow he presented part of the M.A.R.S. concept to H.H. Sheikh Majid bin Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum and H.H. Sheikh Mansoor bin Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, H.E. Sultan Bin Saeed Al Mansoori, the UAE Minister of Economy at that time and discussed the possibility of a one-of-a-kind aerial rescue demonstration in the UAE.

Institutions that take part in M.A.R.S. pilot projects, such as government bodies, air forces, airlines and helicopter operators, can gain safer procedures, shared know-how, training experience and a visible example of innovation in aviation and rescue. The first institution to support a safe, authorised pilot could help set a new standard for aerial rescue. These meetings were discussions of ideas; they do not imply endorsement, and the concepts shown here are not yet tested operations. 

Art for the M.A.R.S. Project

Through Conceptual art, sometimes simply called Conceptualism, Ivan Kristoff’s concept for Mid Air Rope Assess can be presented at the Innovation Forum. Through Conceptual Photography, he will showcase his idea to pilots and emergency services personnel, who are invited to this project, and develop the methodology of a new way of vertical and aerial rescue. This work will take precedence over traditional aesthetic and material concerns. As with many works of conceptual art, sometimes called installations, this idea will be presented to our Creative Team of artists and technology partners, who can visualize the M.A.R.S. concept to the public.

Photo exhibition “Driven by Heights”

This exhibition is not just portraying the visible world of vertical access and helicopter rappelling operations at extreme heights. Rather, it depicts the hidden areas of extremely tall buildings, not accessible to the general public. Some of the designated areas for remote photography, where few of the photos were taken, are accessible only to a few men and the best professional rope access experts. Ivan Kristoff  a Canadian artist, presented his unique images of his work at extreme heights. These photos captured the element of danger of a series of innovative projects in Canada, USA, and Bulgaria. Some of them show the first rope access work in the inaccessible areas of the tallest building in the world. They give us a “bird’s-eye view” of these operations. This perspective gives the observer a unique view from an angle that captures a stunning picture of the vertical environment.

Ivan Kristoff’s Arts Award

От Дубай Хелишоy в 2010 Иван Кристоф е почитал изключителни и смели хора, които поемат големи предизвикателства. Всяка награда за изкуство на Иван Кристоф е дадена за подпомагане на визуализирането на нови проекти за индустрията на хеликоптерите, които могат да спасят живота. Тези проекти ще бъдат разработени като работни групи от експерти в авиационната индустрия, авиационни медицински / аварийни служби и комуникации, които могат да работят за подобряване на процедурите за безопасност и практики за въздушни операции. Още по темата…