ARTOMAT

Electroboutique (Aristarkh Chernyshev and Alexey Shulgin) and Elena Artemenko

November 30 — December 12, 2012
Triumph gallery

ARTOMAT is an automated art production system. Select an object, apply several techniques to it, connect it to another object and place it in a suitable space, and your unique piece is ready!

Nowadays, more and more products, both tangible and virtual- are being created partially or fully automated. Art is the last bastion where a piece-by-piece, unique product is produced, moreover, it is directly related to the myth of the individual "inner world of the artist". Nevertheless, if you carefully follow the processes taking place in the art of recent decades, you can find that behind the apparent variety of emerging works there is often a rather limited set of algorithms for their creation.

Untitled
2012
Digital printing, plasticization
120 × 90 cm

Nowadays, more and more products, both tangible and virtual- are being created partially or fully automated. Art is the last bastion where a piece-by-piece, unique product is produced, moreover, it is directly related to the myth of the individual "inner world of the artist". Nevertheless, if you carefully follow the processes taking place in the art of recent decades, you can find that behind the apparent variety of emerging works there is often a rather limited set of algorithms for their creation.

Three years ago, to designate such art, the Electroboutique art group proposed the concept of "artoc" (or light art, the term is formed by analogy with the word "jazz" - light jazz), the main techniques in the production of which are recombination, combining incompatible, placing objects in a paradoxical context. In the production of artka, readymades or three-dimensional models of objects, people, and animals are mainly used. The intervention of the artist is minimal here — and there is no emphasis on craft skills, and if such skills are required, then the hired labor of professionals is used.

An important distinguishing feature of Artka’s works is that almost a complete picture of them can be obtained from their photo or video documentation. Artok uses a universal symbolic language that is understandable all over the world, which allows it to spread like a virus through the Internet, marching from one blog to another. The first version of ARTOMAT, called Instant Artlet Maker, was shown at the Electroboutique Pop-up in Science Museum (London) in November 2011 — February 2012. Electroboutique and the Triumph Gallery would like to express their special thanks to XL Gallery and personally to Elena Selina.