David Datuna and Google Glass™: Artist of Gallery SHCHUKIN at Lincoln Center
In December, Lincoln Center visitors received an opportunity to communicate with a huge flag of the United States. Gallery SHCHUKIN artist David Datuna presented an interactive installation of his at New York’s (USA) largest cultural center.
Datuna’s new work, “The Viewpoint of Billions”, which was presented by Gallery SHCHUKIN December 5 through December 8, 2013 at the Art Basel Miami Beach art fair, became the clou of the international convention’s program back then in Miami. A few days later, a 3.5-meter US flag was put out on display at Lincoln Center. The flag was executed in the artist’s author’s technique – it is composed of newspaper clippings, portraits of characters that have gone down in history, and movie clips, with the collage covered with tens of convex lenses making the image mobile and multidimensional. Each viewer can comprehend the work in one’s own way by having “communicated” with it, among other things. David Datuna put “The Viewpoint of Billions” together in association with Google Glass TM with the support of Gallery SHCHUKIN. This product by Google TM, a new generation smartphone, which works with no touch, is a device that looks like glasses, its transparent display with a built-in camera positioned right opposite the viewer’s eye. Several cameras are also hidden among the lenses covering the artist’s work. Having put Google Glass TM on, the viewer starts looking at the installation — and the work starts communicating with one, “producing” the text of phrases and questions on the device’s display.
“You can get different pictures depending on your viewpoint, which enables each viewer to form one’s own opinion about it,” says Datuna. “The images that appear tell us about the past and at the same time bear on what concerns people today as well”.