When we survey the objects randomly floating in our various drawers, bags or pockets, we don't typically process the wayward eye glasses, cell phones, lip balms or tubes of toothpaste as potential raw material for an experimental art project. That is, until now. Cue Moscow-based multimedia artist Dmitry Morozov -- also known as ::vtol::.
Morozov's newest interactive installation "oil" turns your humdrum belongings into an experimental soundscape, fusing the phenomena of creation and destruction. The piece features five hydraulic presses, all possessing the strength to crush virtually any object that may be on your person. "Oil" Participants are invited to place a rogue belonging of their choice atop the press, and as said belonging is mutilated and deformed, a microphone records the entire process. A computer algorithm then processes the recording and spits it back in the form of a 20-minute album.
Voila! Just like that, you're an ambient musician and, like, so unattached to material things.
"The project is intended to provoke visitors into spontaneously ridding themselves of material consumer objects for the sake of creating their own individual work of art via deprivation, divestment and destruction," explains the project description.
"Sound has been taken as the chief medium here with good reason, since sound art is perhaps the least material and most abstract of all genres in art. The technological aesthetic involved constitutes an ironic attempt to make the process of art production into a technological process, but the result, unlike that of mass production, demonstrates a contrary phenomenon –- this is a work involving programming and code in the context of generative art, with the potential to broaden the range of instruments at art’s disposal."
If you're familiar with Morozov's work, you know he has a knack for turning seemingly banal images into the stuff of mind-blowing artistic weirdness. In the past he's transformed barcodes into glitchy abstract artworks and created tattoos capable of producing music when scanned with an instrument of his design.
Listen to one of Morozov's object-made melodies here and visit his website for more information on his past work.
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