digitonica  interview

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Interview with digitonica  musician, designer and artist at the intersection of russia, asia, glitch and shimmering metamodern

A (Alkali) - Music or graphic design, we still do not fully understand what you do?

D (digitonica ) - In general, I am engaged in embroidering images of the future with threads of the collective unconscious on the gray canvas of the present. Whether with sounds, colors, or copy-paste.

A - What programs do you use?

D - The first program in which I started working was the graphics editor Paint, but very soon it became clear that its capabilities are extremely limited, although it is ideal for primitivism and abstract geometry. I had to switch to Zbrush. For some reason, it is considered difficult, but to me, on the contrary, it seemed easy. I was attracted by this program, of course, with its ample opportunities for sculpting and creating all kinds of organic shapes and glitch effects. I also use Cinema 4d, Photoshop (of course) for collages and color grading.

A - Describe your style

D - I think that various critics and people of other near-creative professions usually deal with the description of styles and directions, so I find it difficult to answer this question, but, most likely, something at the intersection of Russia, Asia, glitch and shimmering metamodern.

A - Tell us about yourself, where did you grow up, what motivated you to do what you are doing now?

D - I was born and raised in the very heart of the Great Russian Plain, on the banks of the Great Russian River, since ancient times known as Ra, Itil and Volga, in the old district town of Samara, which is notable not only for being the birthplace of the famous Zhigulevsky beer, but also the fact that it was a reserve capital city during the Second World War, and to this day there is a functioning underground bunker in the city, popularly known as "Stalin's bunker. By the way, in honor of this most interesting place, was called my abandoned music side project - BNKR Stalina." I am inspired by the conflict between the reality surrounding me and the impending future.

A - What did you dream of becoming in childhood?

D - I had no time to dream, in general. Now the piano, then the dance, then the drawing in the notebook.

A - What is your favorite color and the most vivid memory with it?

D - I have two favorite colors: LightSteelBlue # B0C4DE 176, 196, 222 and CornflowerBlue # 6495ED 100, 149, 237

They work very well as backgrounds for my work.

A - What would you change in the past if you had the opportunity?

D - I would change the number of keys on the piano. I understand that this is justified from the point of view of the perception of frequencies by the human ear, but, in general, in most works the edges are not used, and the piano would take up less space.

A - what inspires you to be creative?

D - Beautiful nature, great music and news on Lentach.

A - What content is more important that relies on the question "what"? Or to the question "how"? Let me explain that the first type of content provides an opportunity to distract yourself, the second, on the contrary, to think.

D - Russian poet Konstantin Nikolaevich Batyushkov said: “Live as you write, and write as you live: otherwise all the echoes of your lyre will be false.” The main thing is truth. There are different tasks. And there is design and there is art. Design should, but art shouldn't. The design, in this regard, is stricter. That is, you cannot make a design that no one reacts to, throw up your hands and say, "Well, apparently people are not ready for this yet. The average cultural level is very low, education reform is needed." It should also be remembered that the word "content" in Runet is often offensive and condescending. The phrase "You have good content" is not a compliment, but rather passive aggression.

A - drawing or painting, what do you want

Nearer? AND! Watermelon or Melon?

D - Swimming and tangerines are closer to me.

A ⁃ Do you earn enough in design / music for not to do others for living?

D - I think that the concept of earnings is now generally vague. And in general, as the "Kirpichi" group sang - "It's easier to sell drugs than to play the drum, I'm an honest man, i need some fuckin money!"

A - Where do you like to hang out and be distracted from work?

D - I mostly hang out in Cinema 4d. But in general, I like to go on long night walks listening to Mahler, and sometimes I go out to some strange concerts, for example, noise. These are such psychedelic events, almost like in Silencio from Mullholland drive, where 6 people are sitting in the hall, 2 of whom leave in the first compartment, another in the second (perhaps obscenely speaking), no one dies on stage, but at the end there is no applause ... A couple of times I was also on some listings, one was dispersed by cops, the second I didn't understand what was happening.

A - What other serious hobbies do you have besides music and design?

D - All my hobbies are not serious. One of them is the study of ancient Russian painting and monsters. For example, I really like such pictures as "The Fool and the Dog" and "Nikita Besogon". And of the monsters, the favorite is the mravol, this is such a creature with the head of a lion and the body of an ant. I would have done it in 3d.

A - If you were on a desert island, what 3 aesthetically beautiful things would you take with you?

D - Censer, lollipop and mp3 player with Schnittke recordings (in glitch processing, of course).

A-Who would you like to try to work with if you could choose any job for one day?

D - I would work as a snake skin remover or penguin flipper.

A - What superpower would you like?

D - Well, one could become a metamorphmagus or master the art of Legilimency.

A - Who would you like to collab?

D - I have an idea for a track called "Vossetenenie", and I would work on this topic with SOPHIE and the Sretensky Monastery Men's Choir.

A ⁃ Omnivorous sister of bad taste, do you agree with the statement?

D - Probably one of the tasks of the creator is to be able to choose "the same" from a variety of options. This is, in fact, professionalism. However, snobbery is also nearby, so I probably disagree.

A ⁃ Post modern or meta, why?

D - Here I want to say, by the way, that when my album "Trauma. Metaretta" was posted in one of the VK publics, someone, looking at the names of the tracks, noticed that it was "postirany", thinking that since it was postmodern. But the bottom line is that postirany is exactly the same as metamodern. Postmodernity is clear to me, but I never wanted to immerse myself in it, it is not particularly close to my personality. In general, it seems to me that creativity should be freer, and not try to fall into any category. If scientists from art want to figure out which direction this or that picture belongs to, let them figure it out. And the same person can draw black crosses at different periods of his life, and then pink wildflowers. And, personally, I do not see anything strange in this.

A - "steal or create" two sides of the same coin? Or is any creativity this "creative" stealing from the past generations?

D - I believe that, in principle, any creativity at any time is the generation of the new from the old. The question is how it will be reworked. Direct copying, of course, is always "fu". But any self-respecting artist will not do this. However, it seems to me equally sad both attempts to copy all fashionable novelties, and gloomy traditionalism, a la "we don't need anything, we already have everything." I don't see anything wrong with borrowings if they are somehow talentedly rethought. Although, maybe it is worth going back to the past, and slapping on the hands of the accursed Russian academic composers, who were not enough of folk lyric draws, but needed to borrow the Western harmonic system, and start writing some kind of symphonies, romances?

A - Wats going to be next viral thing in design?

D - The Lord blessed us on the Chrome type until the end of time. Amen.