NORMAN LETO: Two Video Recordings and Four Screenshots Taken in VR

Norman Leto was born in 1980 in Bochnia. He is a self-educated artist. He produces installations, objects, and most of all 3-D animation works. He participated in group exhibitions such as Establishment (and Its Discontents), CCA Ujazdowski Castle, Warsaw (2008); blankly, perfect summer. Young Media Artists from Krakow, vertexList Gallery, New York (2008); Power Games. Contemporary Art from Poland, Haifa Museum of Art (2009).

His films are futurological visions of art and life for which physical space is insufficient; this is why they are realized with the use of 3-D graphics algorithms, Artificial Intelligence and Artificial Life. They take the viewer for a walk around cyber space filled with installations of unique physical qualities, such as their own gravity, or density. Most of the films are based on autobiographical themes; they refer to stories or episodes that the artist observed, or to his personal reflections on the ways an individual is socially determined. […]

Although at first sight it is difficult to believe it, Norman Leto’s films are animations. They seem to be documents filmed with a hand-held camera, but actually they are made with programmes used for the production of 3-D graphics. “The so-called reality is highly overrated,” states Leto. This is why his artistic strategy brings to mind actions of a demiurge who has, as the artist claims, “a power to create internally coherent alternative reality with precisely calculated laws of physics.” The effect is emphasized by the fact that Leto appears in his films as a narrator. […]
more…

Marcin Krasny
fragments of the text from the “ArtBoom” catalogue,
ed. Małgorzata Gołębiewska,
Krakow Festival Office, Krakow, 2009
translated by Karolina Kolenda

____________________________________________

Norman Leto

Born 1980 in Bochnia, Poland, lives and works in Krakow.
Self-taught painter and video artist, currently works with paintings and making movies or experiments with virtual reality systems.

Solo exhibitions:

2007 Negative Aspects of an overdosed freedom at the age of 26. Paintings (debut),
          Centre for Contemporary Art Ujazdowski Castle, Warsaw, Poland
2007 Buttes Monteaux song with video clip and three oil paintings, Art Agenda Nova, Krakow, Poland
2007 I am so warm and calm inside, I no longer have to hide, Folia Concept Club, Krakow, Poland

Selected group exhibitions:

2009 Visual Arts Festival ArtBoom, Krakow, Poland
2009 Half of twin for sale, Norman Leto & Konrad Smoleński, City Gallery Arsenal, Poznan, Poland
2009 Power Games. Contemporary Art from Poland, Haifa Museum of Art, Haifa, Israel
2008 Establishment (and Its Discontents), CCA Ujazdowski Castle, Warsaw, Poland
2008 blankly, perfect summer. Young Media Artists from Krakow, vertexList, New York, USA
2007 Jeune Création Européenne, biennale of young European art, Paris, France
2007 Video Now Vol. 3, video art, Center of Movie Arts, Katowice, Poland
________________________________________________________________________________

Solid made of Norman and Fuss’s foam representing Edward Krasiński’s biography
Technique: custom software, 3D, photographic archive print
Date: 2009

The solid representing the biography of a renowned Polish artist was generated by means of our algorithms calculated on the basis of his biographical data introduced into the system by a relevant form. It is one of the very first solids that we have managed to visualize. Its relative simplicity is induced by the lack of comprehensive data on the person portrayed, who in this case is Edward Krasiński. More complex solids, on which we are currently working, involve the introduction of biographical information gathered on the basis of 150 questions which belong to various semantic fields; for instance the number of kilometers spent travelling; the number of visited countries; the number of sexual partners, offspring and siblings; age; addictions; average annual income; number of subordinates in an institution (if applicable); number of Google Search hits for the person portrayed; height; approximate body mass curve over the years; potential data acquired thanks to such programs as My Tracks; information about the person’s health obtained from Google Health; as well as dozens of seemingly absurd values which, in fact, make the visualization of the solid representing the biography of the portrayed person possible. Of course, only some of the fields are mandatory, yet the more precise the input the more detailed the output, i.e. the higher the resolution of the solid’s shape. When this visualization technique was first tested, it turned out that easily available and relatively extensive data on Adolf Hitler’s life were calculated into an enormous, complex and abstract shape that branched off and abounded in trunks, which reflected Hitler’s strong and complicated influence on reality. Similar gigantic and heterogeneous solids were created on the basis of biographical information about Albert Einstein, Pope John Paul II, as well as several other prominent figures who exerted a profound impact on reality. By contrast, we also fed into the system biographical data of an average school employee, a modest person doing regular, geometrical and scarcely spontaneous job, travelling very little and earning an average salary. The shape of the solid reflecting this biography proved to be more than ten times smaller than the ones mentioned above. Also, its cadence was repeatable, bearing many a linear regularity that resembled the structure of a comb, with the branches peculiarly dwarfed. The solids that reflected these biographies have been shown in the film entitled Buttes Monteaux 3. Curiously, and indeed alarmingly, enough, the biographical solid of a patient who has been in a coma for ten years came out as an almost perfectly-shaped white sphere.

Norman Leto
________________________________________________________________________________

Section of a car made of Norman and Fuss’s digital foam exposed to high temperature
Technique: custom software, 3D, photographic archive print
Date: 2009

The car made of what is a mathematical simulation of PVC foam does not exist in the so-called reality. Fuss and I exposed this foam to physical disfigurements calculated on the basis of simplified thermal stress equations. The rays of the digital sun hit the object almost vertically from above, thus heating the mass to a temperature that equals the one recorded on Earth near the Equator. The result of this action proved to be so interesting that I decided to take a snapshot of the entire situation and a close-up of the part in which the structure of the car is visible.”

Norman Leto