CYFEST and CYLAND Artists Receive the Kuryokhin Contemporary Art Award

St. Petersburg Improvisers Orchestra (Russia)
Gadgetophonia
Concert
Conductor: Dmitry Shubin. Project’s concept: Antonina Pozdnyakova

The orchestrated improvisation, whose pioneers are Walter Thompson and William Morris, has become widespread just recently. Improvisers orchestras exist in London, New York, Berlin, Glasgow, Amsterdam and many other cities. Conductors of such groups differ from classical conductors, and they use a special system of signs and gestures. The only improvisers orchestra in Russia, that was created in 2012 at the base of GES-21, unites around 30 musicians. “Gadgetophonia” is the project that experiments with the conventional sound of smartphone and pad synthesizers and samples of MP3 players that uses from the start the non-individual sound material. In the process of playing, a field with “floating” semantics is created, a field, in which the sound, as if on a swing, moves from the known to the unknown, form the associable to the non-associative.

Alexander Shishkin-Hokusai (Russia)
Bath of Marat
Kinetic installation, 2016
Supported by CYLAND MediaArtLab
Engineer: Alexey Grachev

Simulated wings are immersed in tubs filled with black paint and they flap, bringing to mind birds soiled by oil spills at sea. The work refers to the subject of Icarus: the aspiration towards beautiful ideas followed by a fall into the depths of crap. On the other hand, the wings function as the giant brushes of an artist. The customary artisanal world of a creator can also be interpreted as an endless immersion in light and darkness.

Anna Frants (Russia-USA): exhibition project “Participation Effect”, Museum of Applied Arts at the St. Petersburg Stieglitz State Academy of Art and Design; Education Program, Stieglitz Academy

Elena Gubanova (Russia): exhibition project “Interpretations”, Research Museum at the Russian Academy of Arts

Sofia Kudryavtseva (Russia): Education Program, Youth Education Center at the State Hermitage

Victoria Ilyushkina (Russia): Retrospective of video programs of CYLAND MediaArtLab, Youth Education Center at the State Hermitage

Leah Stuhltrager (USA-Germany): Digital media program “Digital Revolution”, “Taiga” Creative Space

Sergey Komarov (Russia): program of sound art; Museum of Applied Arts at the Stieglitz Academy, “Taiga” Creative Space, St. Petersburg Museum of Sound

Varvara Egorova (Russia): exhibition project “Participation Effect”, Museum of Applied Arts at St. Petersburg Stieglitz State Academy of Art and Design

Lizaveta Matveeva (Russia): exhibition project “Mechanisms of Emergence”, “Luda” Gallery

Anna Frants (Russia-USA)
Explosion of a Can of Condensed Milk after the Water Has Evaporated
Media installation, version №2, 2016
Supported by CYLAND MediaArtLab

Conceptually referencing a computer grid and visually reflecting the infrastructure of a building without walls, Anna Frants builds an open framework room. Comprised of raw polypropylene cubes, the exposed framework houses objects, videos, and movements. The interior (unlived-in lived-in) space is empty for viewers to navigate the visuals, sounds, words, and virtual actions of the exterior matrix and formulate their own story. Birds chirp, recorded faces communicate, playful toys whiz and whirl, the seas ebb and flow — each with brand names that they are sold as or known by as characters in Frants’ theatrically staged workand beyond. At first glance reminiscent of “The End” or “Mad Max”, this multimedia environment is less а scene from a dismal future and more so an intimate setting presented for a poetic contemplation of the sense of self. The installation is flexible, varying from site to site and country to country, with local materials utilized each time.

Ludmila Belova (Russia)
Pastorale
Project
Supported by CYLAND MediaArtLab
Engineer: Alexey Grachev

Digital world is everywhere now: we are surrounded by innumerable gadgets, robots, computers. When we go on the internet, we accept existence of another virtual world, where – unlike the real one – everything is splendid. There is no time there: it can be stopped by pressing «pause» button. In that world we stay forever young, one can be easily transformed into a hero or a criminal, there is no day or night, no gravitation. Digital world is benevolent, always ready to help, show the way, find the medicine, feed, console and entertain. It is a new pastoral, counterposed to harsh reality. The main image of pastoral – sunny summer day – is transformed here into a blue light of computer screen, that allures us into the virtual reality with its original pastoral eternity.

Project «Pastoral» is a reflection on smooth merging of world of humans and world of numeric. Previous works of Liudmila Belova are engaged here in a dialog with new works. Audio-installation «Archive» plunges the viewer into a humdrum. Interactive audio-installation «Time Capsule» stores sounds of our time. Decoration of porcelain plates «Soon Will Be» tells about the history of media. In a series of photo collages «Smooth Transit» landscapes, shot in the dusk, convey transitional states of nature and invisible techno-ether. Panel «Numeric and Gadget» depicts new pastoral 3D space: the main character of the project, a Numeric Girl, walks around this world, holding in her hands a selfie stick, while her numerous copies, printed on 3D printer, dance on a digital grass to the sounds of pastoral music and twitter of electronic birds.

And over all of it reigns «The Free Wi-Fi», which is a series of interactive objects.

Elena Gubanova, Ivan Govorkov (Russia)
Time Keeping
Installation, 2016
Supported by CYLAND MediaArtLab
Engineer: Alexey Grachev

When the viewer’s shadow is cast on a wall of cardboard boxes for storing things, it turns on the sounds of a ticking clock. The more shadows, the louder and more varied the ticking; the personal time of each one flows into one sound stream. When all the visitors leave together with their shadows, the universe falls silent and time stops… Time exists because of us; it is but a shadow of what we are…