We are proud to present a new artist in our gallery, Andronik Khachian! Photo artist, film director and graphic designer Andronik is born in Moscow, Russia. He´s been living many years abroad, and travels a lot, as one can see from the titles of his works.
Being Russian, Andronik did not speak English well when he first started travelling. He couldn’t joke and didn’t understand what his fellow travelling companions were talking about, and so he started playing games on his smartphone.
For most of his trips he used public transport to get from one city to another, which takes up a lot of time. Andronik had his iPhone but didn´t want to play games anymore. So what’s left? Andronik is not comfortable with reading unless it is absolutely quiet, and quiet is rare in the countries he loves to go to. So most of the time he found himself looking out the window, listening to music or talking to fellow commuters – if he happened to know the language. Much the same as happens on the route to school, work, airport, and the like.
Five years ago in Morocco he found a way not just to observe what’s behind the window, but also to play with what he saw. Since then he has been making panoramas of all the countries he has been to; Russia, USA, Mexico, Iceland, Germany, Italy, France, Latvia, Poland, among others.
Andronik Khachian makes panoramas each time he is in а moving car, а bus, a train or а plane. Even on a horse.
For a smartphone camera it’s really hard to register everything it captures when you’re moving fast, especially on a bumpy road. Depending on the speed certain objects shrink, some replicate but most of them just disappear. It’s a lot like our memory…
There is no certain method to get this right. Each time you’re capturing it’s an experiment. Panoramas on smartphones are joined from many tiny vertical stripes of the photo to be able to merge objects without seams. Usually you turn around yourself, so each stripe is made from one point of view. However, when you are in a moving transport each stripe has its own point of view a centimetre or more (depending on the speed) apart from the previous stripe. That’s why some of Andronik´s panoramas look realistic and surrealistic at the same time. There’s no perspective. We rarely see sides of objects. This new reality looks fairytale–ish, and amply interesting for us to explore.
Much like a gamble, where you cannot predict which of those cards will help you win, Andronik plays around with the Panorama Mode. Is it going to be poetic, absurd, beautiful or not at all? Is it worth capturing or not? He keeps playing, unsure of what will happen. Only in Andronik´s case cards are buildings, wires, cars, people, etc., trying to make each panorama he hasn’t created before, better than the previous. Which is why, even in the midst of unpredictability, when he´s on the road he feel excitement, be it in the traffic or even when it’s shitty weather outside.
Andronik reflects that the panoramas’ greatness comes from chance presiding over man, and finds that the greatest things in life are divine accidents. For him it’s the only thing that keeps life from being dead. “Every time a beautiful accident would happen, boom! Genius would come out.”
This video will show you how panoramas are generated. It’s a smartphone screen recording.
A big part of Andronik´s projects are vertical videos that are meant to be used in exhibitions, but any person who stands in front of them (as it is a window) could try his technique to make panoramas. Andronik´s goal is not only to become the artist, who is acknowledged and lauded for making panorama pictures, but to start a wave in this niche and conduct exhibitions of other people’s panoramas from around the world. Change the way you see “boring reality”. Play with our routine landscapes. If you are tired or just want to play (mess) with what you have been given. Unpack the present.
His friends have already sent him their own panoramas. But he still would like to inspire people from around the globe to do the same. So if you have one, feel free to contact him on:
+7 916 342 0518 (telegram, whatsapp)
