“Weather Station 1” at St. Petersburg Stieglitz State Academy of Art and Design, CYFEST11, 2018
Photography by Yury Goryanoy
Not many people know what the famous scientist Lev Termen, author of the electro-musical instrument Theremin and many other inventions, was doing during the years of his imprisonment at the design bureau TKB-29 NKVD. However, during 8 years of his being at that bureau, the Soviet science made a giant step forward in the development of electrical engineering. It is possible that that was precisely the time when Termen developed the concept of transmitting information by means of tonal-rhythmic musical drawings. After all, being a prisoner, he understood the importance for a person to have a connection with the outside world in the conditions when the world is invisible and imperceptible… Weather Station 1 is a reflection of Aleksey Grachev on how a portable atmospheric-acoustic transducer would have looked if it were created by him as an engineer. The instrument’s purpose is to observe the state of atmosphere by transforming data from the sensors into a melody.
Sound artist, engineer, computer programmer. Born in 1983 in Kaluga, USSR. Graduated from the Bauman Moscow State Technical University (Russia). Completed the program “School for Young Artists” at the Pro Arte Foundation (St. Petersburg, Russia). Artist, technical director and chief engineer of CYLAND MediaArtLab. Participant of the World Event Young Artists Festival (Nottingham, Great Britain, 2012), Cyfest Festivals, special project Urbi et Orbi at the 6th Moscow Biennale (Russia, 2015), The Creative Machine 2 (Goldsmiths, Great Britain, 2018). Participant of The Arts Work of the Future (Tate Exchange, UK, 2018). Since 2015, together with Sergey Komarov, he has developed the sound project Subjectivization of Sound whose basis is the interaction with space and spectators. Lives and works in St. Petersburg, Russia.