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The Multimedia Art Museum, Moscow presents a new project by Rodchenko Photography and Multimedia School graduate Igor Samolet, ‘Energy of a Mistake,’ in which the author studies the problem of human relationships through both social and digital filters. 

All of the artist’s projects are characterized by a complex dramaturgy: from comedy to genuine dramatism. Samolet interprets the image of the contemporary person through emotional fragility, showing that vulnerability inside a gigantic digital space. Screen culture dictates new rules of the game and algorithms for interpersonal interactions: ‘live’ human communication has given way to social networks and various chats, intonations have been replaced with emoji, and faces are replaced with masks in Snapchat and Instagram.

A new reality demands a new visual language. Igor Samolet calls his pieces ‘content of the form’: these are screenshots of the artist’s phone screen which include playlists, news, messenger conversations, selfies with Instagram and Snapchat masks, and Facebook posts — anything that he liked, that caught his attention, or that seemed important. The author shows how a screenshot can become a kind of ‘deciding moment’: a new form or genre in photography. 

This installation of fabric and other light materials on which the artist’s everyday smartphone content is ‘composed’ in the form of screenshots symbolises the ephemerality of digital space, lacking physical parametres, from which each of us nevertheless ‘sews virtual clothing.’