24 large-scale works, which the authors - the art group "GrOM" (Olga Michi, Alexei and Artem Loginov) defined as digital paintings. The project, which has been created for three years, is not about architecture and not even about what awaits us. It is about the present through the eyes of artists thinking about the future.

Already strict halls of the third floor of the Marble Palace are decorated in even light gray tones, so that nothing distracts viewers from looking at... paintings? Photographs? Digital prints? High resolution allows you to look at small details, and it is immediately noticeable that one image can combine fantastic spaces filled with robots and ordinary office chairs, "gardens of paradise" and shelves from an average supermarket. 

- Objects, books, chairs, dishes are from our time. Even robots have anthropomorphic forms, as they often look now. They will surely look different in the future. This project is not about the triumph of urban technologies, but about the new optics of an artist working in the 21st century,- explains Alexander Borovsky, Head of the Department of New Currents at the State Russian Museum of Modern Art and author of the introductory article in the exhibition catalog.

According to Olga Michi, the project was inspired, on the one hand, by the works of international photographers who shoot crowds of people in large spaces, as well as photographing industrial landscapes - factory pipes, container terminals. And on the other hand - computer games and sci-fi blockbuster movies.

As Alexey Loginov told our newspaper, the artists first formulated for themselves a range of topics that concern them: freedom and order, computerization and the dictate of machines, the need to preserve interest in knowledge and the psychology of rampant consumerism... Then they chose places where they took the initial shots using a sketchbook that gives a 360-degree view in all directions. These locations ranged from atomic bunkers and data centers, inaccessible to outsiders, to libraries, gyms and canteens, which many people visit on a daily basis.

Once the 24 images were captured, the artists worked with each one, using computerized image processing and enlisting the help of artificial intelligence to make "comments and suggestions." For example, for the painting "The Treasury of Human Knowledge," the artists asked the machine mind to think about what a desk lamp resembling a jellyfish might look like. It began to show variants, they looked at them, rejected, refined the task, requested a new image and so on until they got a result that suited the whole trio. Other objects and spaces were treated similarly. Each work shown in the Future Dwelling project required several hundred consecutive steps.

In all the works - sometimes in the foreground, sometimes almost imperceptibly - there is an image of Vladimir Tatlin's project "Monument to the III International". The group "GrOM" placed on the top of the tower a globe around which many artificial satellites revolve. When I asked why this was done, Alexey Loginov explained that Tatlin's Tower project, created in 1919, was and still is a symbol of uniting nations. "For humanity to exist in the future, people must unite," the artist emphasized. 

"Where are your people?" - the first visitors of the exhibition asked the artists. "Our next project will be about them," replied Olga Michi.

The material was published in the newspaper "St. Petersburg Vedomosti" № 201 (7530) dated 25.10.2023 under the title "Life on Planet Earth".