NetWork

Currently, we belong to the moment when the classical perception of the world, defined by the division into conventions such as space and time, is ceding to the definition of the world as an entire system of interaction. The paradigm, when life is felt like a straight line and develops over time, is replaced by the concept of a network. It’s an organism that weaves its total fabric by connecting different points. The network has become not only a leading polysemic concept that describes the organization of the world, with its social, informational, economic, cultural relations, but also an epistemological category of the principles of life itself. Therefore, the mention of the network term in an art project is not a focused reference to digital or social communication, but a definition of the sphere of global thought in the context of modern philosophy.

The question about the network, about its principles and structure has also an aesthetic point. Actually, it concerns the network like a global creative act, the creation of a certain form that does not have a concrete aim, but has a philosophical and life rationale. Perceiving the network, its lines, and nodes mean using the imagination based on the subjective visual and aesthetic experience. NetWork is an art&science project developed by Olga Kisseleva. The name of the project follows its main principle. It has the most resemblance to the organic form - the rhizome with various parts, subject to different temporal and physical conventions, which intertwine into a unique object.

The forms of plants and trees, as well as the principles of natural communication, become not only structural analogies for NetWork project but also material for research and creation of its projects. In the context of the network principle, natural images become iconic nodes, because these images are the same for different persons of the same local environment, regardless of generation. Unlike various pieces of art, architecture, objects, and images that make up the subjective aesthetic background of a human, natural images are more objective. Their perception is more stable, not associated with social or cultural changes. For example, a unique tree could become a sign image or an emotional node for several generations of local residents. Thus, different individuals become connected to an imaginary network, due to the fact that they share among themselves common aesthetic experiences, emotional attachment to a place through the image of trees or plants of their environment. In this way, the network as a mixed experience, between cognitive, social, and aesthetic, becomes an act of art. This is the creation of a nonmaterial structure that has philosophical and artistic potential. NetWork offers various forms of reflection on the principles of this heterogeneous conventional body.