Aiolos
Andriy Linik is one of the most interesting and most talented media artists, curators and theorists in Ukraine these days. Since there is no systematic state education in this area, Andriy is – just like everybody else – an autodidact. However, all of his artworks involve exhaustive research utilized in a high artistic manner.
Aiolos, his work, created in 2011, is once again up-to-date regarding the current situation in Ukraine. As we know, in the Greek mythology Aiolos (Aeolus) was the king of Aeolis and the ruler of winds. He has sent the Zephyr, a favorable wind to aid Ulysses on his return home, and gave him also a bag of unfavorable winds opened up by Ulysses‘ curious sailors. In new media, we can find today similarities with a wind of such a nature that depends on a direction we follow. “The new media wind,” which has been only recently liberated, carries us away in the opposite direction, away from our goals. Andriy’s artwork personifies Internet as a rhizomatic medium, which sometimes confuses us rather than informs us. Our current new media are often rather an intermediary of enmity, aggression and absurdity, than an endeavor to understand each other.
Ianina Prudenko
- The Aiolos show is an exhibition of one artwork00:00:13.857
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- by quite a young Ukrainian media artist, Andriy Linik.00:00:17.648
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- It was produced as the first show in this space,00:00:24.884
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- where we move to from the previous one.00:00:31.623
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- We have found this artwork perfectly fitting00:00:35.308
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- the concept of the festival, the part of which the show is.00:00:39.293
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- It is the Multiplace festival, which was held for a few days at the end of May,00:00:43.614
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- though the show is open till the middle of June.00:00:48.436
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- This year's topic of the Multiplace festival is presented00:00:51.801
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- with a subtitle "a festival for the digital survivors."00:00:57.609
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- And at this very theme aims also the Andriy Linik's artwork.00:01:04.219
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- It works with a very simple search engine,00:01:08.866
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- that can be used by the visitors of the exhibition.00:01:13.314
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- Using the words entered by the visitors00:01:17.491
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- and certain generative principle00:01:21.203
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- the search engine looks on Internet for texts and images00:01:25.049
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- associated with the submitted expression00:01:29.456
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- and compiles them in generative compositions.00:01:31.756
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- Viewer can then trace in these compositions the submitted words.00:01:37.122
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- The title refers to Aeolus, the god of antic mythology,00:01:44.497
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- who is, I believe, mentioned mostly in Homer's Odyssey.00:01:48.891
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- This god, the Keeper of the Winds, gave Odysseus00:01:55.367
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- a wind, Zephyrus, to help him sail back to Ithaca.00:02:00.629
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- The multitude of data can be seen as such a wind,00:02:10.105
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- which, if used often and properly, can be of help.00:02:14.777
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- But if it is too big a chaos of data,00:02:18.913
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- then it is dysfunctional and useless, congesting everything.00:02:22.358
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- And that's the metaphor of the artwork.00:02:28.453
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- Though created in 2011, when there wasn't still so much data as there is today,00:02:31.854
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- the metaphor works perfectly.00:02:38.170
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- This artwork works with visuality,00:02:42.349
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- that is, to a certain extent, spectacular,00:02:45.901
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- concerning the new visuality it offers.00:02:49.322
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- It works with sound, or libraries of simple sounds,00:02:53.082
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- that are generatively added to the texts appearing on the screen,00:02:58.397
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- creating thus an environment,00:03:04.708
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- which is, on one hand, beautiful, but, on the other hand,00:03:10.481
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- it inspires thinking about the metaphor.00:03:15.392