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Artworks

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Vasilii Bakanov and Andrew Strokov

Slow burning. Still Life

Installation, 2020 (edition of 2021)

 

OpenCV, Python, Arduino; 3x black box (thermally insulated), heaters, temperature and humidity sensor, HD webcam, flood light, DIN rail, microcontroller modules, Raspberry PI, Korg Monotron Delay, fruits

Engineers Andrew Strokov, Alexey Grachev, Alexander Bochkov; 3D modeling Alexander Bochkov; Python programming Andrew Strokov

Supported by CYLAND Media Art Lab

 

Three fruits on pedestals are contained inside a black box. In artificially created and regularly maintained conditions, the fruits pass through three chemical reactions — caramelization, the Maillard reaction and enzymatic browning. Usually, these processes take place within minutes in cooking. Here they are intentionally prolonged in time. Inside the box constant humidity and a temperature of 60 degrees Celsius are maintained, thus killing bacteria which cause decay. In ideal and constantly controlled conditions, the fruits preserve their form, and burn up inside from day to day at the lowest possible speed.

 

Visitors can observe the slowly burning still life by watching it in real-time on the video panel placed on the boxes. But the main activity remains hidden and takes place at the molecular level. Its tangible manifestation is a monotonous soundtrack performed by the fruits themselves. Information about the external appearance of each fruit is converted into sound waves. The processes inside the box are analyzed and sonified by an analog synthesizer. The sound pitch and timbre depend on temperature, humidity, fruit size and color. As the fruit burns up, the sound “burns up” as well and becomes increasingly dull and quiet.

 

The process is an artificially prolonged borderline state of “in between”. The metamorphosis is too slow to perceive by the naked eye. Because of the unnatural maximum delay, all differences vanish in the abyss of time to the accompaniment of a droning trio. However, it is still an open question as to whether the process will proceed in the way that was intended. Every effort has been made, all we can do is to wait and see what will happen next.

 

Alexandra Dementieva

Sleeper

Interactive sound installation; Tapestry, AR, 2015–2017

Courtesy of the Kolodzei Art Foundation
 

A series of tapestries together forms an installation that presents a sequence of film frames from the movie “Sleeper” by Woody Allen. The movie has been glitched and accidentally "edited" by the artist's crashed computer, becoming completely transformed and practically unrecognizable. The order of narrative development has been rigorously preserved: the still images are arranged in the same sequence as they appear in the film. The tapestries convey the movie’s plot, but in their own way, where some parts have been lost and others have remained. The size of each tapestry is 58x77 cm, which corresponds to the television and film format (4x3) of the 20th century. The artist uses an old visual technique: the art of weaving. Even if contemporary digital media were destroyed, this technique would be preserved.   

 

By pointing a tablet with an AR application at a tapestry, visitors can watch a video which gives an explanation for each tapestry. The video is made from the perspective of human descendants / space travelers, who have found the tapestries 2000 years later. Their conclusion is that the tapestry is a way to archive film and video from the 20th-21st centuries. The film they find is Sleeper, a science fiction movie about a dystopian world.

 

Anna Frants

Artist Union. Still life

From the series “Matter of Chance”

Media installation, 2019

In collaboration with CYLAND Media Art Lab

Courtesy of the Kolodzei Art Foundation
 

“Artist Union. Still life” is a reflection on the law of large numbers. Is it applicable in visual arts — to colors in painting, lines in graphics, forms in sculpture, and the image integrity in installations? The law of large numbers is a principle that describes the completion of the same experiment many times. According to this law, the joint action of a large number of random factors leads to a result almost independent of the chance. For example, in the XVI century the length of the English foot was defined, by a royal order, as the arithmetic average length of the foot of the first 16 people leaving the church on Sunday matins. Although the law of large numbers was not yet defined, it serves as the basis for the principle of arithmetic mean used in determining the length of a foot.

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Elena Gubanova & Ivan Govorkov

Life as Life. STYX

Installation, 2016 

Courtesy of the Kolodzei Art Foundation

 

Usually, Time is regarded as a line (theoretically, a line of endless length), on which the present moment is a point in constant motion. But this line may also be regarded as a succession of points in different positions, so that any moving or changing object may be interpreted as a number of motionless versions of “shots” of oneself. The artists observe the serene flow of life, but at the same time disrupt the “arrow of time”. Life consists of repetitions which seem to combine to form a single “river”. The video of people floating serenely along the river from one screen to another actually shows the same moment, which is multiplied and repeated, devoid of past and future, and joined into a cycle.

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Ivan Karpov

ˈkʌr(ə)nt

two-part installation; solar powered model and fermented herbal tea sets, 2022

components: 8 solar panels, 4 electric pumps, 100m of 6mm plastic tube, herbal tea sets 

 

A solar panel powers up a small pump that runs water particles within plastic tube circuit. The speed of water movement depends on the intensity of the Sun, visualizes and thus represents the energy flow.

 

If you think about it, every form of life, every living being could be seen as a matter transformation process driven by our suns energy. Every process has its own time period and frequency. Some of them last for ages, other finish within seconds. On the other hand, it is hard to say where one starts and the other ends, everything is connected in this planetary scale fermentation process. Only one remains the same, the Sun, the catalyst doing its job.

Each plant is a perfect illustration of this concept, especially since they transform sunlight directly. Edible plants make it even better, because when we consume them we convert further.

I welcome every visitor of the Summer house. Here you will find herbal tea leaves that I've collected and processed during this summer in my native forest in Russia. I kindly offer you to brew a hot cup of tea and review a short story of each herb with a glimpse of the idea of global transformation.

We all are a part of one chain. We have to care for each other and everything around us.

Please, have a good time.

 

Katran

Thousand handshakes

Objects; ceramics, glaze, 2022

 

The project builds upon Sergey Katran’s years of research exploring the ways in which the biocentric concept impacts ethical ties and building of special society networks. That said, we register a certain correlation between grassroots initiatives of artistic communities’ networks, and mycelia. Both are based on thin, interlaced fibres of daily existence.

Various forms of cooperation and mutual assistance act as a binding principle in all this. Altruism viewed as an inalienable component of the biocenosis and aided by the ethical element in anarchist ideas, are two permanent constituents present in the life of animal communities, plants and fungi, and occur in natural environments, as well as in human society. Self-organization as grassroots, independent initiative, confirms the viability of its alternative ethical practices and behaviours that radically differ from those adopted by capitalist societies, geared for profit, and based on manipulation to achieve the higher standards of living. Mutual communal support is a vital component of artistic practices. By self-organising as groups, artists find optimal ways of existence steeped in equality and mutual responsibility. The first handshake upon a meeting becomes the metaphor for an encounter of kindred artistic souls.

The mushroom anarchy, as a metaphor for grassroots symbiotic artistic communities, establishes the hubs of respect for those living entities that are prone to empathetic behaviours and for the interspecies altruism in their joint search for the way out of the environmental and cognitive impasse. 

 

— Katran, Natasha Timofeeva

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Alexandra Lerman

Swipe Swipe Swipe

Installation, 2017–2022

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This work explores the invisible abstraction of contract law that exists between the movement of human fingers and the backlit glass of the smartphone screen. The copyrighted, choreographed gestures of the “swipe,” “slide to unlock” and “pinch-to-zoom” are performed by millions each day and are owned by Apple, Inc. A series of clay smartphones are imprinted with indexical “portraits” of these ephemeral and often unconsciously executed touch screen gestures. These sculptures are installed on a wall painted Rose Gold — a color invented in the nineteenth century by Carl Faberge as a new chromatic alloy of gold and copper. In 2015, Apple released the Rose Gold version of the iPhone and consequently the color was named one of the top trends of 2016 by Pantone. Today Rose Gold is routinely referred to as the “millennial pink” or the “Russian gold.”

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Oleg Malenok, Vasily Bakanov, Alexey Grachev, Andrew Strokov, Alexander Bochkov
BPM — Blobs Per Minute
Sound installation, 2021

Glass carboys, water, malt, hop, yeast, custom made circuit boards, speakers, blob counters, heaters, microcontrollers, LEDs, LCD screens, cameras, Raspberry Pi, drum kit, stepper motors, robotics

Engineers Andrew Strokov, Alexey Grachev, Alexander Bochkov; 3D modeling Alexander Bochkov; Python, Arduino programming Andrew Strokov

Supported by CYLAND Media Art Lab

 

Beats Per Minute (BPM) is an essential concept in music denoting the rhythm and speed of a track in quarter notes. Blobs Per Minute (BPM) is the essential parameter which denotes the intensity of the fermentation. 

 

The basis of the installation is a drum kit and alcohol fermentation system. Together, they form a closed system in which the fermentation process is the source and initiator of sound. The sound in the installation is completely analogue and is formed in real time. The rhythm that the drum sticks beat out depends on the fermentation process. Carbon dioxide is released, and a blob is formed and becomes an impulse for the drum stick movement.

 

In each vessel, the process takes place with differing intensity. The combination of the ingredients, the temperature, the properties of the drum kit and the fermentation system — all of these things determine the process and nature of fermentation, as well as the rhythmical pattern of the music created. The resulting soundtrack is additional data, an analysis of which helps to gain a better understanding of the fermentation process. 

 

The working principle of the installation resembles a creative process with the need to present the result to the world. In the installation, sound is a sign of life, just as artistic projects are a sign of life in art. A sense of timeliness is useful in both cases — whether  the process is complete, or more time is needed for the idea to reach maturity. If it is kept too long or stopped prematurely, the process may end in failure, becoming incomprehensible or incomplete. Or it may ferment excessively and deteriorate.

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