Oleksandr Sirous. I Am Your Amplifier exhibition, 2024. Photo: Lelde Gūtmane
The artist developed the I Am Your Amplifier artwork exhibited at the RIXC Gallery, featuring the Ukrainian artist and researcher opening program.
Oleksandr Sirous is a sound and media artist who works with big data sets and the principles of interaction and communication in web environments. He also creates complex simulation environments using AI. His background in animation and comics has influenced his practice, leading him to constantly seek a non-trivial approach to storytelling and composition in media works. Recently, due to his work with game engines, he has turned more and more to the culture of video games and various game mechanics and new rules of interaction, thus finding new approaches at the intersection of the already established approaches in media art and video games.
I Am Your Amplifier. Exhibition and Ukrainian Artist and Researcher Opening Program
at the RIXC Gallery, 2024
I Am Your Amplifier exhibition by Ukrainian
RIXC residency new media artist Oleksandr Sirous opened with a special programme at the RIXC Gallery, Lencu iela 2, on Friday, September 13, 2024, exploring the complex networks of interaction between natural and technological actors in the ecosystem forming around the Kakhovka Reservoir after the dam collapse. Until its explosion on June 6, 2023, the Kakhovka reservoir was the main source of water supply for southern Ukraine – the second largest and the sixth and final link in the Dnipro hydroelectric cascade.
The programme began with guest lectures by Ukrainian artists and researchers on the ecological state of the Dnipro River, the Ro3kvit project’s initiative to rebuild the areas destroyed by military aggression, as well as panel discussions on the artistic practise of the Ukrainian new media artists’ collective Photinus during the war. The lectures were followed by the exhibition opening featuring the presentation by Oleksandr Sirous, and the evening concluded with an audiovisual TER.RAIN performance by Ujif_notfound and Oleksandr Sirus.
During the opening programme, in a panel discussion, researcher and artist Svitlana Usychenko and researcher Antoine Korchagin presented the Ro3kvit project, which brings together professionals from Ukraine and abroad to revitalise urban and rural areas in Ukraine and, in a joint initiative with Greenpeace, to reveal the challenges and ecological potential of the Dnipro river.
Artist Oleksandr Sirous talked about the Ukrainian artists’ collective Photinus Studio and the activities of its members during the invasion, when its members are scattered in different countries and behind front lines. The talk was joined online from Ukraine by Max Robotov, co-founder of the collective, as well as artist Ujif_notfound, who presented his unorthodox artistic work, also affected by the brutal politics of the aggressors.
The programme continued with the exhibition opening, when the artist Oleksandr Sirous presented the artwork created during the RIXC residency. In Spring, 2024, part of the project was presented at the MEET Digital Culture Center in Milan, where the public could see the prototype and the stages of its development.
The evening programme continued by an audiovisual performance TER.RAIN by artist Ujif_notfound and Oleksandr Sirous, specially adapted for RIXC space. The performance is a tribute to the Ukrainian cities that have been destroyed by the Russian invasion and have become symbols of harsh loss, despair and injustice.
I Am Your Amplifier exhibition investigates modern robotic systems, such as swarms of drones and other autonomous technologies that have been introduced in Ukraine since the start of the full-scale invasion. They become part of a new symbiosis between natural and man-made actors, creating new types of communication and interaction within this system. This installation focuses on how modern technologies can become part of a new type of ecosystem, fostering collective thinking and organic evolution.
PHOTO ALBUM >>>> I Am Your Amplifier Exhibition Opening. Photos: Lelde Gūtmane
Oleksandr Sirous. I Am Your Amplifier exhibition, 2024. Photo: Lelde Gūtmane
Top: Opening lecture by Svitlana Usychenko and Antoine Korchagin. Bottom: opening presentation by Max Robotov. Photo: Lelde Gūtmane
Ujif_notfound and Oleksandr Sirus’ opening performance TER.RAIN. Photo: Lelde Gūtmane