Boris Shershenkov

With Camera Infinita Boris Shershenkov continues to explore the application of scientific methodology (borrowed from biochemistry, microbiology, ecology, and bioacoustics) to the study of technological environments. In this work he looks into the formation of new digital “organisms” following the idea of primordial soup, a hypothesis that explains the emergence of organic life with an accidental synthesis of elements in a dense and active environment. Shershenkov sees Internet, and in particular its most active zones such as Twitter that constantly generates new content and accumulates large volumes of data as the primordial soup of technological reality. Shershenkov believes that interactions within such masses of accumulated data may follow patterns similar to biochemical ones, which could lead to the emergence of digital life forms. He sees the possibility of such an outcome in the speculative similarities between the evolution of nature and technology. For example, according to Shershenkov, the switch from mechanical machines to electronic ones could be likened to the emergence of organic matter from non-organic, while computerization, the invention of cybernetics and robotics, the Internet of Things, and artificial neural networks may be comparable to the development of separate molecules into protoorganisms.

Camera Infinita is a space for observation of the “primordial soup” fragment—local trends on Twitter— with the use of a special device. The device contains a version of the oldest optical instrument for the study of the world, the camera obscura, through which a constantly changing data forms moving light patterns. However, the speed of data development is too fast for the human eye to register, so the visual is complemented with sonic “observation,” allowing the ear to distinguish between the rapidly changing events. For Shershenkov, the camera obscura is an important invention that, for its time, was more than a mere technical device. It was part of the system of the organization of knowledge and of the observer. By placing the spectator within the isolated sound space of the hexagonal Camera Infinita, Shershenkov aims to recreate the image of “the first observer,” who has come across a radically new way of experiencing everyday reality and of forming knowledge about the unknown. This experience is similar to that of the first users of the camera obscura, the “free-floating inhabitant[s] of the darkness, marginal supplementary presence[s] independent of the machinery of representation,” in the words of art critic Jonathan Crary.

ES