CYFEST-14: Ferment, Dartington

Glass carboy, custom made circuit boards, speakers, blob counter, heater, microcontroller, LEDs, camera, Raspberry Pi, drum kit, robotics

*Photo: FB The Dartington Hall Trust

BPM (Beats Per Minute) — an essential concept in music denoting the rhythm and speed of a track in quarter notes.

BPM (Blobs Per Minute) — the essential metrical parameter which shows the number of blobs per time unit. It denotes the intensity of the fermentation. The process is determined by the number of blobs: whether it is taking place, has stopped or has yet to begin.

The basis of the installation is a drum kit and beer brewing 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 — the carbon dioxide released in the fermentation process initiates the mechanical beating of the drum. The stick beat in time to each blob that forms.

Local ingredients are used for fermentation. In each vessel, different sorts of yeasts and ingredients are combined, so the process takes place with differing intensity. The biological rhythms of the ingredients, the temperature, the properties of the drum kit and the fermentation system — all of this determines the process and nature of fermentation, and also the rhythmical pattern of the music created.

As the fermentation takes place, polyrhythmic structures are created (which can be found in Afrobeat) — several different rhythms are heard at once, which combine to form a single musical composition after a certain time (the point of perception of rhythm and the human inclination to form connections). It is difficult to predict what the sound pattern of the fermentation will be. The resulting soundtrack is additional data, an analysis of which helps to gain a better understanding of the fermentation process. The study and observation of complex processes through sonification may provide a new understanding of how they take place.

The abstract drummer can keep playing as long as it is fed by yeast consuming sugar, and as long as blobs continue to form. The working principle of the installation resembles a creative process and the presentation of its results to the world. As long as there are thoughts and ideas, possibilities and resources, we carry out actions in this process. If the sound of the drum is a sign of life in the installation, in the art system which welcomes any sort of effervescent activity, the signs of life are artistic projects and new points on one’s résumé. A feeling of timeliness is important here, an understanding when the project is ready, and when one needs to give oneself more time 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.

*Photo by Alexandra Dementieva

Fermentation is the transformation of one substance, image, notion, state, symbol, behaviour and such into another state, image and so forth.

Our project is dedicated to the fermentation of sensations that we evoke by the transformation of an image.

In this project, this is an image of “light”.

In 55 BC, Roman author Lucretius, who continued ideas of the early Greek atomist philosophers, wrote in his poem “On Nature of Things” that light and warmth of the sun consist of the tiniest moving particles.

A large lampshade (much larger than an ordinary one) hangs on a tree branch in a glade. The lightbulb in the lampshade does not shine. People usually associate a lampshade as a sign of inner space, comfort and light, like a symbol of the sun in the home. We shift it into an open space and thus change the sensation of the boundaries of the space. This is the first transformation. Under the lampshade is a pyramid of fallen leaves. Here we present the metaphor of light as particles, as a fragment of substance and material. Light is materialized, and its weight, materiality and mundanity is felt. This is the second “fermentation” of sensations. Inside these leaves we install piezoelectric speakers from which the soft crackle of incandescent lamps emanates, and sound is born from decay, the “death of light”.

Analogue tape recorder with loop, computer based counter, dimensions variable 

*Photo by Alexandra Dementieva

One of the directions in the collaboration of Aleksey Grachev and Sergey Komarov is the study of noises of the animate and inanimate nature. In this work, the artists conduct an analysis of time-space. 

Using scientific instruments, they register the noise of sand that trickles in an hourglass recorded on the magnetic tape. Then this sound is analyzed using the regenerating-computing system, accurate to grain, and the “quanta” of time get recounted. Due to the property of magnetic tape, it goes worn during exhibition and quantity of counted grains is increasing; however, time of recording is always still constant. All changes are noted on each cycle using the statistics printer. 

The work is stereophonic: sound reflects time and, in effect, it is time departing from one headphone channel and arriving in the opposite one, having flown through the space-listener. This installation is simultaneously a vocalization of time and an attempt to quantize and recount it.

This installation is part of exploration for CYLAND Audio Archive:

https://cyland.bandcamp.com/album/caa-35-quantum

Three fruits are contained inside a white cube. In artificially created and regularly maintained conditions, the fruits pass through three chemical reactions — caramelization, the Maillard reaction and the enzymatic browning. Usually, these processes take place within minutes in cooking. Here they are intentionally prolonged in time. Inside the brightly lit thermally insulated box, constant humidity and a temperature of 60°С are maintained, thus killing bacteria which cause decay. In the ideal and constantly controlled conditions, the fruits preserve their form, and burn up inside from day to day.

The process is shown in real-time on YouTube. The picture looks static. At first and second glance, nothing is changing. The slowly burning still life is online all the time and displayed for public view, but the essence of the process remains hidden. The main activity 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 an RGB parameter, which is then transformed into an audio track.

The process — neither death nor life — is an artificially prolonged borderline state of “in between”. The fruits have already been plucked from the tree, and formally their end is predetermined and known. The experimental laboratory still life with an artificial “quiet life” shows the borderline state of transition from one death to another. The process is under the constant close observation of the camera, the creator of the work and viewers. The process of change vanishes in the abyss of time to the accompaniment of a droning trio. The moment when one thing ends and a completely different thing begins eludes our view once more because of the unnatural maximum delay.

It is an open question as to whether everything will go according to plan, and the process will end in the way it was intended to. Every effort has been made to achieve this — all we can do is to wait and see what will happen next. 

Programming:

1. Max msp — synthesis of sound waves using RGB data: Apple — sine wave range 50—200 Hz; Pear — saw wave range 125—350 Hz; Banana — tri wave range 100—250 Hz.

2. Touchdesigner — analysis of shifting color spectrum, live streaming, data output.

3. Arduino — temp. and humidity monitoring.

Hardware:

Airtight and thermally insulated box, heating set, temp. and humidity sensor, HD webcam, LED light 2000K, arduino controller, mac mini.

This is a light sculpture with the shape of a glucose molecule. Inside each ball are fixed LEDs matching the established standard colours of elements: Hydrogen, Carbon, Oxygen. The sculpture is connected to a jar with SCOBY (Symbiotic Culture of Bacteria and Yeast) producing kombucha. During this process, an acid detector monitors the changes in the process of beverage production. It increases the brightness of the molecules in the sculpture — the more acid produced by SCOBY, the brighter the sculpture becomes. 

Kombucha SCOBY is an incredible creature surrounded by varied myths and legends about it. There is even an assumption about its extraterrestrial origin. Kombucha’s uniqueness is also in that it cannot be accurately attributed to any biological kingdom. The bacteria present in it works in tandem with the body of the fungus only at the initial stage. Over time, it spliced its genome with the genome of the plant part. As a result, kombucha presumably initially functions as a symbiosis between a bacteria and a fungus but after that becomes a whole unity with a unique genetic structure of a fungus and bacteria. 

But, back to Earth — adding the kombucha’s culture in a sweet tea broth allows bacteria to grow there. Sucrose, appearing in the process, is converted, biochemically, to fructose and glucose (which are in turn — to gluconic acid and acetic acid). Where the latter — is one of the most common sources of energy in living organisms on the planet. 

Kombucha produced during the work of this sculpture will be shared among the first visitors on opening days.

Sound by Wouter Van Veldhoven

Video shoot in 2012

*Photo by Alexandra Dementieva

Video documentation of the process of making black bread production, its maturation, dough fermentation at one of the oldest bakeries in St. Petersburg, “Darnitsa”, which fed residents during the Siege of the city 1941—1945. As a result of gentrification, the old plant was closed in 2012 and Darnitsa has moved to a new building due and is fully computerized now.

It consists of 3 parts:

Part 1 (18 min) — The processes: mixing, kneading, molding, baking and unique mechanisms in action.

Part 2 (5 min) — The processes of fermentation

and Part 3 (11 min) — Darnitsa factory: architecture & mechanisms 

“Darnitsa” is a unique factory for the production of bread, a monument of constructivist architecture. The round shape corresponded to its content. All production processes moved along a circular conveyor. The installation provides an opportunity to view the old process of the unique production of black bread (all its technological stages)

This plant operated during the Siege of Leningrad and saved the lives of many people. Engineer Georgy Marsakov, in the late 1920s, developed a new type of mechanized bakery following the concept of production on the principle of a circular conveyor stage. The whole process of baking bread moved in a spiral of a circular constructivist building. Flour raised to the top was kneaded into dough, then baked in ring ovens, and the finished bread was unloaded along inclined slopes into the bakery. Electro-mechanical machines have now been entirely replaced by computer production.

Now the Darnitsa plant has moved to a new building due to gentrification and is fully computerized. Documentary filming was made in 2012. The dynamics of the processes of fermentation and kneading of the dough, baking bread, the operation of the mechanisms of the circular conveyor is enhanced by the sound compositions of sampled magnetic tapes (one of the first ways to work with sound in electronic music) by the composer Wouter van Veldhoven.

2 bicycles, 2 bike trainers, synthesizers, max/MSP, microcontroller

Performance duration — ongoing, during the exhibition hours.

Cadence is the rotation speed of pedals by the cyclist. This parameter depends on the will and intentions of the cyclist, and the features of the bike and riding surface. In this project, cadence becomes a source of sound and rhythm. The rotation speed of the back wheel depends on the cadence and ratio of the sizes of the front chainring and rear sprocket. You can select them by using the mechanical shifters on the handlebars. The ratio of these two values is the basis of the musical composition created.

The main note \ carrier frequency is set by the front chainring, and the selected rear sprocket directly depends on it. This function is alike to the dependence of pitch of musical instruments, but it is not tempered acoustically, but mechanically depending on the teeth on both chainrings. The rotation of the wheel also acts as a rigger for the synthesizer.

The bikes are not synchronized together and work autonomously. The combinations of cadences and rotation speeds of the back wheels of each bike are analyzed and synthesized into a general four-voice atonal polyphony, where the cadence is initially transposed into audible range.

How the “symphony” is performed depends on who is turning the pedals. Two people on the bikes regulate the sound by their pedaling, and together create the final work. The bikes are facing each other. The visible contact allows the cyclists to see each other and choose how to interact — to be a partner or rival. They may become synchronized, and try to turn the pedals in the same rhythm, to be in harmony. Or they may intentionally disturb this and cause harmonic fluctuations, creating complex combinations of sounds that arise when movements are not synchronized. The project creates the model of a collective orchestrated action, in which the intentions and aspirations of the participant acquire sonic expression.

By this installation, the artists continue the search to reveal rhythms and connections in space. Potentially, they may be produced from any object and manifested in sound. In this project, the source of sound is the “bicycle-human” techno-assemblage.

The engineer/artist observes what an object is capable of besides its original purpose, where its limit is and how this limit can be reached. Sound and its features are determined by the medium itself. The function of a technological object here is important not for its useful effect, but for the distinguishing feature which determines what sound will be created.

In this method of observation, the environment is perceived as simultaneous coexistence of complex systems of sound formation, which are created by the natural and technological worlds. The abstract sound of a bicycle in this project refers to all the “wordless” processes and objects which elude direct observation, but still play an important role determining the sort of world that we live in.

Performance: Humans and Robots do the plain-air. From the series “Matter of Chance”, 2021

Duration — ongoing, during the exhibition hours

*Photo by Alexandra Dementieva

Collaboration effort by robots and humans working together to make watercolor paintings based on horticulture at Dartington Estate. 

“Artist Union” 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.

*Photo: instagram @emilyhoare

Duration — 90 min

*Photo by Alexandra Dementieva

There are two technologies of sound synthesis: digital and analog. If we are to forego serial solutions for any given synthesizer, we can find an infinite number of options for creation of sound forms, from simple oscillators to complex generative algorithms. The path of the authors is the ambition to achieve a sound minimalism and a continuity of creative process during the creation of musical compositions and forms where the choice comes down to the subjective tendency of each one to a certain sounding.

“Nestlings of the Sea” is a plotless film that uses drawing and scratching on 35mm film. The artist uses old archive films in a new way. The original material is documentary films produced by amateur Soviet studios in the 1970s.

This art is a kind of delayed social art, continuing the tradition of an ironic interpretation of Soviet culture. Many methods bring it close to the aesthetics of the “parallel cinema” of the 1980s. The aggressive “battle for peace” is only the outer layer of the work. Its true meaning is the absolute absurdity of everything that official ideology offers.

Boris Kazakov was born in 1964 in St. Petersburg. 1989 – graduated from The Institute of Machine-Building (LMZ-VTUZ). In 1988–1990, he started painting and participating in exhibitions with the Old City group. 1990-1993 – a member of the artistic group “Engineers of Arts.” Since 1994 – a member of the creative association “Village of Artists”. In 1995 made his first film, Nestlings of the Sea, in the traditional parallel cinema technique of drawing on film. He experimented with different animation methods without the camera and invented a way to shoot movies with the photo camera. In 1999 took part in Berlinale with his film Stakes. He also does traditional animation.

An eccentric and absurd comedy with endless non-stop fighting, chasing, murders, and suicides which are intercut with Soviet symbols of peace and freedom – white doves flying away from the hands of ‘pioneers’ – and documentary footage of the pioneers’ everyday lives.

Evgeny Yufit (1961, Leningrad, USSR — 2016, St. Petersburg, Russia) — artist, photographer, film director. In the early 1980-s, Evgeny Yufit began working as a painter and art photographer. In 1985 he set up the first independent film studio in Russia, MZHALALA FILM, which brought together artists, writers, directors, and others sympathetic to radical aesthetic experimentation.

“Crafting fairytale fiction from documentary-style late-Soviet propaganda, All Other Things Equal is a hypnotic and sensual work of detournement with construction atypical of compilation films. Resisting essayistic meaning, the film instead presents a series of stacked moments that are elliptical, sensory, and quietly subversive in picturing a world populated wholly by women. The polar opposite of didactic, All Other Things Equal instead embraces the extra-symbolic and extra-textual elements of these images and the spectral montage of their arrangement, constructing a world which does not map easily onto the contemporary notions and stakes of Western feminism.” — Herb Shellenberger

Anya Tsyrlina is a Siberia-born visual artist with a background in electronic music and new media, whose current collaborative projects combine the structural and material concerns of experimental cinema with documentary and archival practices. Their moving image work has been screened at film festivals and venues, including International Film Festival Rotterdam (Netherlands), Viennale (Austria), Berwick Film & Media Arts Festival (UK), European Media Art Festival (Germany), VIDEOEX (Switzerland), Bildrausch (Switzerland), Moscow International Experimental Film Festival (Russia), and others. Anya Tsyrlina lives and works in Basel, Switzerland.

Wickedly absurdist video novella takes on the space of the bathtub of a communal apartment in St. Petersburg city as the metaphor for the symbolic connections we make, miss, and struggle through. The work is made in a creative tandem with Maya Popova, who plays the lead role and performs the acrobatic solo in the bathroom. The artist was interested in a performing component of the project and its transformation through editing.

Victoria Ilyushkina — artist, curator, born in Leningrad, based in St. Petersburg. In 2001, she graduated from the Russian Academy of Art (Ilya Repin State Academy of Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture) in St. Petersburg; in 2005, she completed the “New Technologies in Contemporary Art Program” at the St. Petersburg Art and Culture Foundation, PRO ARTE. Her works exhibited at The State Russian Museum (St. Petersburg, Russia); Hermitage Youth Education Centre, Anna Akhmatova Museum (St. Petersburg, Russia); Art reFlex gallery (St. Petersburg, Russia); Al gallery (St. Petersburg, Russia); Iragi Gallery (Moscow), Gislaved Kunsthalle (Sweden).

«When I was a child, I was afraid of clouds. I felt as if our house had simply own off into space. I found this vicious and white infinity all around intimidating due to its emptiness… Years later, I can still see my house in the dream; I am running, trying to get inside, and getting into my room, but the staircases have already disappeared» (Tanya Akhmetgalieva, Trialog.)

In the playhouse on the seashore, we meet young Tanya again and again with images from her childhood. We once again return to the island in our memories. The external world, with all its coarseness and cruelty, once again emphasizes and accentuates the fragility of our inner world. The boundaries of all concepts are eroded. The waves erase the outlines of our internal integrity only after we have protected our own tiny island within ourselves that we continue to fantasize about the bliss in the palaces of the One State.

Tanya Akhmetgalieva born in 1983 in Kemerovo, USSR. Graduated from the Stieglitz State Academy of Art and Design (St. Petersburg, Russia) and Pro Arte Institute (St. Petersburg, Russia). She works in painting, installation, makes objects, videos, likes to combine media. Her works were exhibited at major Russian and foreign venues, including Russian Museum (St. Petersburg, Russia), Moscow Museum of Modern Art (Russia), Winzavod Contemporary Art Center (Moscow, Russia), Calvert 22 Foundation (London, UK), Galerie Forsblom (Helsinki, Finland), Triumph Gallery (Moscow, Russia). She is a Sergey Kuryokhin Award winner in the “Best project of visual art” (Russia, 2015). She lives and works in Moscow and St. Petersburg, Russia.

This work was conceived during an artist residency in the Everglades National Park.

The remains of a European explorer’s studio is staged submerged in the swamp in the Everglades. Antique artifacts: a desk, bookshelves, maps, collected shells and skulls, and a globe, all appear semi submerged in the mosquito infested swamp. The fate of explorer is left a mystery. The video and photos were shot by the artist sitting in a canoe in the swamp. In the video a snake slithers across the table.

Dana Levy was born in Israel to Egyptian and German parents, she was raised in the U.S, Israel and the U.K. Today she lives and works in New York City. She earned her MA in Electronic Imaging at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art Dundee, Scotland and her BA from University of the Arts London: Camberwell college of Arts.

Written, directed and animated by Francesca Fini, music by Pandacetamol (freemusicarchive.com)

A Dadaist collage that plays on the concept of identity, elaborated through impossible selfies taken by the protagonists of famous masterpieces in the history of portraiture and self-portrait. What is hidden under the skin, skinned by the toxic radiation of mobile phones? What would Leonardo da Vinci or Andy Warhol have done with this evil device?

Francesca Fini is an interdisciplinary artist working with experimental cinema, digital animation, new media, installation and performance art. Her live projects, often addressing issues related to femininity, the distortions in the perception of beauty, the influences of society on gender and women’s issues, are a mix of traditional media, lo-fi technology, homemade interaction design devices, live audio and video. Primarily interested in video and live art, she also creates artworks assembling performance art relics and video stills. With deep training as a digital artist, she worked for fifteen years in digital media and television.

The video takes its inspiration from the song “The Return of the Giant Hogweed”, released by the British rock group Genesis in 1971. The song warns of the apocalyptic spread of the poisonous plant Heracleum mantegazzianum (giant hogweed) after it was “captured” in the hills of the Russian Empire and brought to Britain by Victorian botanists. The lyrics of the songs are filled with ironic humor and describe an anthropomorphized plant that is on a mission to destroy the human race. The video “The Return of the Return of the Giant Hogweed” is an updated version of the story told in the Russian language, looking at the Cold War era half a century later from the viewpoint of the giant hogweed itself, telling the story of its fall.

Alexandra Lerman was born in 1980 in Leningrad, Russia. Artist. She holds a BFA from the Cooper Union School of Art (New York, USA) and an MFA from Columbia University (New York, USA). In her “projects-investigations,” Lerman researches how human beings are affected by systems and ideologies that control the post-industrial world of immaterial labor and the human’s influence on the planet’s ecology. Her projects have been shown at Artists Space (New York, USA), Queens Museum (New York, USA), Whitney Museum of American Art (New York, USA), Signal Center (Malmö, Sweden), Manege Exhibition Hall (St. Petersburg, Russia) and “Contemporary Art in the Traditional Museum” festival by ProArte Foundation (St. Petersburg, Russia). She lives and works in New York, USA.

The field (video 9’10” and four author’s albums with A4 graphic artworks)

This work represents a hand-drawn animation piece, or a kind of succession of drawings (about 1 thousand A4, calking paper) depicting body positions (standing, sitting and lying), available for direct vision, i.e., without the use of mirrors other reflecting means. Painting from life was another condition to create an additional frame that made the result vivid, existing in space and time, and subordinate to body accommodation, capacities of vision and perception, and definite time frame.

Within this project, my interest is drawn to the integration of view, belonging to the body (produced by the body), to the body as a thing. I outline my borders in the situation of limited view and the difficulty of seeing the entire space, compiling all the parts in one point, and finding this point of meeting with the body (its border, its contour) assemblage point. In this case, a spectator can use the video to feel temporality, slipping away time and inability to catch the moment when glance and body meet. I look from there, where I am, that way where I am, but I am not there, and I assemble myself — the body is object and subject. We get our perception and experience through our body, but if we get the idea of the existence of things due to the body, how can it be objectified

Alena Tereshko, born in 1986 in Ishim (Russia), lives and works in St. Petersburg. She graduated from Saint Petersburg State Art and Industry Academy, named after Stieglitz (2013) and school for young artists at PRO ARTE Foundation (2013). A member of the art group “Parazit” (since 2012).