G8 2018 / Natalia Alfutova and Yaroslav Kravtsov — Being a Media Artist
Automatic translation of the archived Russian text. Recordings and text within images remain in their original language. Read the Russian original
About this material
A joint G8 2018 talk with Natalia Alfutova on media art, presenting interdisciplinary science-art projects as collaborative experiments between specialists from different fields.
Key points
In this G8 2018 presentation, Natalia Alfutova and Yaroslav explain their collaboration through artworks about digital identity, bodies and automated relationships. The talk combines an introduction to media art with project demonstrations and an audience activity.
- The same technology can serve different purposes. Their comparison of two apparent mind-reading installations distinguishes a demonstration of technical capability from an artwork reflecting on privacy, technological desire and fear.
- The collaboration joins artistic intention with development expertise. Programming and implementation do not replace the concept, while the concept has to be translated into a working experience.
- Rabbit Heart turns visitors into autonomous digital rabbits. Watching a recognizable double act without its owner’s control raises questions about social identity, delegated relationships and attachment to a digital self.
- The Thousand-Faced Hero uses a selfie, a generated head model and augmented-reality tattoos to make online identities appear on the physical body. Audience participation is part of the work’s meaning.
- The demonstrations reveal practical constraints: network connections, recognition, marker detail and print quality all affect whether the experience works. The speakers also discuss further experiments with digital doubles and collaboration between artists and technologists.
Based on automatically generated Russian captions, with possible recognition errors. Ideas about digital immortality are artistic questions and speculative project intentions, not demonstrated scientific capabilities.