On Friday, 8th of October 2021 the exhibition “Digit” by Vygandas Šimbelis / Das Vegas (Lithuania / Sweden) opened at the Exhibition Hall of Klaipėda Culture Communication Center (KCCC) (Didžioji Vandens St. 2, Klaipėda).
“Digit” is an exhibition-project of Lithuanian artist Vygandas Šimbelis, better known in the international art space as Das Vegas, looking for points of contact between a man and a machine. The exposition includes various numerical interpretations: from visual art to economics, computers and machines, and the presentation via numbers of pieces created by the author.
The interaction of technology and man has always been a challenge for different generations of people and they have explored it in different ways. The project seeks to reveal the relationship between a machine and a man and vice versa from an artistic and scientific perspective. The artist raises the question of what it means to be human and what it means for a machine to take over creative processes, as well as analyzes the issues of authorship, art value, digital property, art economy.
In the exhibition digit manifests itself in various forms – both numerical abstraction and visual art or computer algorithm, which helps visitors to create or evaluate works of art. The “Art Value” project is revealed in the exhibition through the content of the works, which are essentially created from the price of the same works. To buy such a work, you pay its price, and that price is written in the work itself. This way you can directly or indirectly exhibit your investment in your home.
Another piece in the exhibition “Stratic” dynamically synchronizes sound and image in the visual narrative. It is an audiovisual project and a performance that conveys the phenomenon of a directly filmed LED light bulb. The author questions the feasable possibilities of inclusive experiences and raises the relevance of the phenomenon of synesthesia in visual art.
The “Metaphone” project is an interactive process based on computer models that allows the machine to create works from visitor data. The metaphone consists of an interactive apparatus, painting and sound media used in a versatile installation. The device acts as an electromechanical drawing and sound machine and creates works of art by interacting with the audience through sensors, engaging exhibition visitors in interactive games. In the context of this project, the artist questions the role of the author and tries to raise doubts about the fundamental question of who the artist is: the artist, the machine that created the work interactively, or the exhibitors who spontaneously provide input to the machine.
The digits highlighted in the exhibition become a key component of the world, which, creatively played with by the artist Das Vegas, is conveyed through multi-layered numerical perceptions. Visitors are invited to feel the involvement of the modern world in digitalisation, computing or data, art values or the prices of works.
About the artist
Vygandas “Vegas” Šimbelis, artist name – Das Vegas (Lithuania/Sweden), is a contemporary (media) artist and researcher. With degrees in art and design from art academies, the highest attainment in the field is a PhD degree and Vegas holds a second PhD (doctorate) from the KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, Sweden. Having extensive experience in fine art and design, Vegas critically examines new territories and conducts research questioning the role of art (and artist) in relation to our contemporary society and with its socio-political implications.
Interdisciplinarity is an overarching approach to Vegas work and it implies various significant artistic, scientific and technological resources. Decolonizing is the major theoretical and political framework of his work, in particular, in regard to technology with its failure processes, hacking, acceleration and disruption. Converging art and technology, eradicating the divisions between contemporary art and media arts, merging digital with analog, Vegas reflects the implications of the colonial exertion of rights and seeks for the humanization of technology.
With a major focus and regard to the post-digital, the artist is particularly interested in harnessing the hacking for humanizing of technology in its contiguity with and of its positioning in the real world. In the following, Vegas explores norm-critical perspectives, conceptual ecosystem and design ideas to increase the perceived humanization of technology and re-examine the societal, political, and cultural discourses.
The exhibition will run until November 7, 2021.
Photography: Ingrida Mockutė-Pocienė, Rosana Lukauskaitė
