The Béton Center of Visual Culture on Yakimanskaya Embankment opened the exhibition "Future Dwelling". The exhibition includes digital easel works by the creative group GrOM, as well as art objects by artists Aristarkh Chernyshev and Alexei Shulgin. "Future Dwelling" is an exhibition-fantasy, an exhibition-reflection on how islands of civilization may look like, which mankind will create in unexplored worlds and spaces. The large-size digital works show the viewers the interiors of rooms of various functional purposes - library, kitchen, medical office - made in accordance with the established traditions and styles of the most widespread cultures. But through this familiar appearance of earthly interiors, the spaces of other worlds sprout up, eventually forming a unified whole - a new ecosystem...
A closer look reveals the same object on each of these compositions - the famous "Tatlin's Tower". It should be reminded that this amazing tower, designed in 1919 by Soviet avant-garde artist Vladimir Tatlin, was supposed to become a monument to the III Communist International and a symbol of the bright future of all mankind. As you know, the monumental structure made of steel and glass should, according to the author's plan, have a height of 400 meters and consist of several geometric structures capable of rotating around its axis. And the angle of inclination of the mast, equal to the angle of inclination of the Earth's axis, and the speed of rotation of the various parts of the structure, and the spiral shape - everything in this large-scale project was filled with deep symbolic meaning. And although this unique project remained unrealized, it has forever become one of the most recognizable symbols of constructivism and kinetic architecture, continuing to inspire architects around the world with its boldness and aspiration for the future.
"We started working on the "Future Dwelling" project in 2020 - this year marks the 100th anniversary of Vladimir Tatlin's demonstration of his model of the III International Tower. It was, and still is today, a vivid example of the Soviet avant-garde and a symbol of workers' unification. Sharing the idea that in the future mankind will inevitably have to unite in order to continue to exist, develop and explore new spaces, we created a model of this tower in a slightly modernized form - adding the Earth globe around which space debris is circling... The debris is made of microchips, and the tower itself is an important connecting element of our project and appears in one form or another on each work" - shared with us Alexey Loginov, art director of the Béton Center of Visual Culture, photography historian and member of the creative group GrOM.
We were interested in the technical part of the realization of this impressive project and Alexey Loginov told us: "First of all, we photographed the interior - with a high degree of resolution, so that small details could be clearly seen on such large-scale works. And then the received images were transformed taking into account our tasks, sometimes almost beyond recognition. An artist was employed to carefully draw the objects we had conceived on the photo. In some cases, the role of such an artist was played by artificial intelligence, which both simplified and complicated our work - in fact, in order to get the image of the desired object with the help of AI, we had to generate from 100 to 200 different objects, changing the initial data and gradually achieving the needed result. Can the AI be considered an artist? Of course not. Artificial intelligence is a tool used by the artist, who sets the necessary characteristics and controls the final result".
By the way, if before the use of AI the work on one such image took from one and a half to three months, depending on the complexity, then with the involvement of AI very technically complex work became possible to do within a month.
All digital easel works presented at the exposition are made according to museum standards and are plasticized - covered with a layer of acrylic varnish. Plastification serves as protection against dust, moisture, ultraviolet light and significantly prolongs the life of photographic color prints, preventing them from "fading" over time. At the same time, it not only preserves but also intensifies the visual perception of the image: the thickness of acrylic adds visual volume and stereoscopic depth to the picture, the colors seem brighter, more saturated, and due to internal reflections in the acrylic layer, a sense of internal glow is created - you will definitely notice this amazing effect when you visit the exhibition, just like us.
The exhibition "Future Dwelling" at the Béton Center of Visual Culture located at Yakimanskaya Embankment, 2, b. 1., will run until November 19.
OLGA KURSAKOVA
