Human Unlimited - Digital Decade NFT Drop
Designcollector network (2003) founder Arseny Vesnin, the curator of self-initiated Digital Decade (2013) art collaborations, presents artists drop in a series of "Digital Decade NFTs".
Dimitri Daniloff
is a Barcelona-based artist who has moved from pure photography and photogrammetry studies into the virtual world, aiming to explore the relationship between human consciousness and the digital void.
Dimitri Daniloff (b.1970, France) developed body awareness from an early age as the son of a sculptor. He has since cultivated a connection to texture and materiality. Fascinated by the numerous possibilities that technology offers, he first experimented with 4x5 view cameras and then turned to the practice of digital art. A shift, since he then started to transform his images. He now produces new scenes of everyday life by assembling raw elements with real subjects – always finding the right balance between authenticity and fiction. His campaign for PlayStation is a great example of this tension: deconstructed bodies knocking together and questioning our boundaries.
Another turning point in this creative artist’s career was his collaboration with the electronic music band Daft Punk. Producing the Virtual Girl project (2008), he integrated 3D creations into his existing pictures, thus proposing his own vision of an augmented human being. A few years later, Dimitri Daniloff started focusing on photogrammetry – a process consisting in taking measurements in space and building, through software, a 3D model from several viewpoints.
By integrating this technique into his practice, he inserted the virtual world into the real world. He created, in collaboration with plastic artist Tamal De Canela, L’humain illimité (The unlimited human), a project built around a virtual character still anchored into reality. Cleared from his corporeal envelope, the subject – half-man, half-God – pushes the limits of 2D image, body and thoughts. In this undefined space and time, borders no longer exist and humankind – and its extensions – finds its independence. The modern Prometheus owns as many masks as there are identities. “Give him a mask and he will tell you the truth”, Oscar Wilde said with irony.
Appearances press Dimitri Daniloff to question men's flaws - what still resists. And in this quest, the artist surrounds himself with other specialists: dancers, architects, decorators or even graphic designers. Highlighting the vulnerability of mankind thus turns into a political act, turning the stage around. More than a plastic artist, Dimitri Daniloff prevails as a sculptor of reality.
In January 2019 Daniloff was invited by EDF ODYSS ELEC (France) to make his first VR piece in collaboration with Ferdinand Dervieux. The piece was supposed to be presented at the VR Arles Festival but will be presented in an other event linked to VR Arles Festival later in 2020.
In 2020, Designcollector’s founder Arseny Vesnin invited Dimitri to take a part in Digital Decade SE 2020 - an online exhibition on the Sedition Art Platform.
Human Unlimited NFT Series
Series of six 1/1 NFT drops
“Imagery fascinates me because it questions our take on ourselves, and on our bodies especially.”
A small, intimate room that protects us from the vastness. As "The Milkmaid" by Vermeer, we inhabit the space, lost in our thoughts. But in this room we are not lost, we inhabit the virtual world, with a space that protects us. A virtual space, which is also real, two universes that meet, that confront each other. Above all they complement each other, the virtual space does not try to resemble the real world, it finds its own space, which is a combination of both. And that is the freedom of these rooms without a roof, that we can enter and exit, from both worlds, as if they were one.
And we can penetrate them, they are not photos, they are rooms, they are spaces to enter, to become part of the image. Become shells, like these people, like these characters, be statues, rigid, colourless, be bodies, sensual, Greek, perfect, imperfect, full of defects, like existence itself, but we multiply, and we can observe from different angles.
We can challenge perspectives and windows that do not fit but do not want to. Invert the process, create something, stop organizing everything and then take a picture, start with photogrammetry, to create the image with the captured elements, inventing combinations, unexpected, open to amazement. Enter everyday objects, as if they were every day.
And the looks remind us that it is the real world, that they can be confused, that we can be gods, above, we can invite the skull to a world without death, to a world where there will be no end, where our identity is fragmented, like small pieces, never erased, we leave traces of us in this virtual world.
These images, photos and non-photos, inhabit the appeared world, which does not want to be real, or virtual because it is both and that’s what gives it its strength, its limitlessness and its uniqueness. A universe where flying is allowed. Where originality dwells, an authentic universe that resembles what he has dreamed of himself.
“These images were originally produced between 2018 and 2019 as I was exploring photogrammetry and breaking the rules of photography. Special thanks to Tamal de Canela for the 3D support.”
Human Unlimited 03 - NFT drop on Digital Decade smart-contract
For the 2022 NFT release, Designcollector is happy to release 1 of 6 artist work (above) on our special Digital Decade NFT smart contract aimed to reveal art names we have collaborated with through our offline and online events.
