DECENTRALAND

During the fellowship hosted by the RIXC Center for New Media Culture, Riga, Latvia, the Ukrainian artists Oleksandr Sirous, Dmytro Tentiuk, Danil Siabro will create Decentraland media installation seeking to challenge the centralized systems that suppress individuality and create a monopolistic system of information dissemination through neural networks, discovering the problems of the arrangement of resource and exchange systems and the imperfection of centralization and dependence on one resource or another showed by the full-scale invasion in Ukraine.

Title: “Decentraland: Unraveling Invasions: A Tri-Stage Odyssey”

Stage One: The Simulation of Societal Personification

At the heart of this immersive new media artwork lies a dynamic simulation representing Ukrainian society, constructed from extensive data collected during the Decentralization project in Kyiv. This simulated world is managed by a supercomputer, a fusion of intellects from various eminent figures, symbolizing key contemporary issues. Chief among these is the relentless, overwhelming reproduction of information and goods, leading to a world increasingly hospitable to AI, yet alien to human necessity. Additionally, it explores the failure in moderating social, political, and environmental limits, coupled with a crisis in future vision and faith, eroding the foundations of proactive capitalism. Participants engage by dismantling this metaphoric creature, symbolizing a liberation from its perpetual torment and misalignment. Each fragment of the creature, equipped with a sensor and a miniature cognitive unit, empowers viewers to interactively engage with and analyze their environment.

Stage Two: Exploration and Creation of New Realities

In the second phase, participants venture into the world, armed with their segment of the dismantled entity. These pieces serve as exploratory tools, enabling users to perceive and interact with their surroundings in novel ways. This active engagement is pivotal in shaping new boundaries and realities, fostering a collective effort in world-building.

Stage Three: Reassembly and New Reality Formation

The final stage involves the reintegration of these individual experiences and discoveries into a collective entity. This process symbolizes the formation of a new, shared reality, sculpted by the diverse interactions and explorations of the participants.

Thematic short exploration: The Hidden Invasion

The project delves into the theme of ‘hidden invasion’ by amalgamating data from various sources, including global databases and maps. This research focuses on cultural, ecological, and economic incursions in regions like Latvia, Ukraine, and broader Europe, highlighting the invasive nature of human interaction facilitated by technology. The concept poses the question of whether an omnipresent guardian could predict and defend against such invasions. As global invasion levels fluctuate, so does the behavior of the ‘mega-mind,’ the supercomputer, altering the reality it seeks to generate.

Interactive Component: Decentralized Creature and Responsibility

Central to the experience is a large creature, representing different aspects of hidden invasions. Each part of this creature is cognizant of specific invasion types. The interactive element involves participants disassembling this creature in a game-like format, symbolizing the freeing of the entity and the decentralization of control. This act is a metaphor for the transfer of responsibility from automated systems back to individuals, emphasizing the importance of personal accountability in preserving diversity.

Speculative Diversity and Cross-Border Indicators

The artwork speculates on the creation of new, diverse entities capable of detecting cross-border transgressions, be they cultural, ecological, or emotional. These could be represented by unique cells, microorganisms, or underwater creatures, each sensitive to different kinds of invisible boundaries. The work questions the ethical implications of aggressive population invasions and the loss of environmental and cultural diversity, proposing the evolution of species capable of recognizing and resisting these covert incursions.

Global Movements and Protective Mechanisms

The project also examines global movements and the varying pace of progress across different regions. It seeks to identify protective mechanisms against hidden invasions by studying various entities’ strategies to safeguard themselves, utilizing statistical data, maps, structural changes, and other forms of representation. The focus is on geographical and cultural invasions in Ukraine, Latvia, and France, ecological challenges facing air and sea life, and the contrasting invasions of the future and past in different world areas.

“Unraveling Invasions” is not just an art installation; it’s a journey through societal challenges, technological impacts, and the quest for balance in a rapidly evolving world. It invites participants to reflect, interact, and contribute to the ongoing dialogue about our collective future.

Focusing on Cultural Invasion

The project will especially look at how Russian culture and language have affected Ukraine and Latvia. We’ll see this by looking at how many people use russian language and connect to russian culture. I’ll also explore air pollution and how the sea in Liepaja and the steppe in Ukraine have been dealing with invasions since Soviet times.

Using Personal Data

I’ll collect sounds, videos, and interviews, plus data from sensors that check air, water, ground, and noise. This will help show different kinds of invasions. I’ll also use online sources to see how AI is changing our world.

This art project is a journey through past and present challenges, showing how our world changes and how we can think and act to shape our future.

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.

Dmytro Tentiuk is a multidisciplinary artist, musician and designer living in Kyiv. His work takes the shape of videos, installations, and audiovisual performances. By making use o new media and technology, his work investigates the border between the digital world and reality. He was born in 1997 in Kyiv, Ukraine. In 2018 he created the project “OTY.10”, focusing on the synthesis of visual and sound practices, the creation of audiovisual installations and audio performance. Has been an active sound artist since 2019. In 2019 he graduated from the National Academy of Fine Arts and Architecture (easel graphics department), Kyiv. Now he is a postgraduate student of the theory and history of art department of the National Academy of Fine Arts and Architecture. Since 2020 – Member of the formation ‘Photinus studio’. Since 2020 – Co-founder and member of the ‘_mediaklub’ formation. Lives and works in Kyiv.Danil Siabro is an interdisciplinary artist, programmer and educator from Mykolaiv (Ukraine) living in Kyiv, Ukraine. He’s fascinated by technology’s historical, filmic, fictional, gamified, decentralized. He often examines ‘tools’ from different perspectives and feels the joy of exploring them in connection to a larger context, often with humor. Often in collaborations, his work takes the forms of videos, installations, and audiovisual performances experimenting with a variety of new media and technology, investigating connection with the digital world and reality which is getting thinner every day. He helped with the technical development of such artists as Ivan Svitlichniy, SVITER art-group, Olexandr Sirous, Evgeniy Arlov, Igor Sokolov, Georgy Potopalskiy. He has exhibited and performed at media art festivals, cultural venues and including for example Kyiv Academy of Media Arts (UA), DNIPROPOP Festival (UA), etc. Until 2021, he worked in the field of cinema, has a lot of experience in film production, and has worked on a large number of non-trivial creative projects in administrative and other departments.As a child, he studied to be a theater actor and has experience in filming and acting in theater. In 2020, he received a master’s degree from the Kyiv National University of Film, Television and Theater (production department). In 2018, he also graduated from the Kyiv Computer Academy “Step” (developer). Danil also  writes various audio works and has experience with a number of programs for creating and working with audio. Since 2021 – Member of the formation ‘Photinus