Pavel Seldemirov with his project The Becoming became the winner of the inaugural Audi Born-digital Award aimed at supporting Russian media artists.

The Becoming is a total installation that recreates the space of a poetically interpreted forest, filled with plants and portal displays. Visitors will be able to go on a journey where cultural artifacts and traces of 2020, which has already become an important milestone for all mankind, will appear among the virtual trees. A ventilator that connects real and virtual worlds; a lake whose surface breaks like a showcase; coronavirus trapped in the river like deep-sea mines; the graph of the stock market crash in the form of mountains on the horizon – from these images the artist collects our collective dream, reminiscent of events on a planetary scale.

In his works, Pavel Seldemirov combines interest in theory with the construction of complex systems using digital technologies. In accompanying texts to algorithmic light installations, the author often refers to the problems of ontology and semiotics, encouraging the viewer not only to interact with the object at the sensory level but also to go to philosophical reflections. This approach is a result of the author's background: Pavel took a course on the art analysis through anthropological methodology at the Research Institute of the Russian Academy of Arts, and also took Andrey Velikanov's course on the philosophy of art. In 2018, the artist graduated from the Moscow Rodchenko School (Interactive, Communication and Mixed Media department).

Pavel mentions Gilles Deleuze, Jean Baudrillard and Spinoza among the theorists who influenced him most. By studying the line of philosophy from Stoics to Spinoza, though Deleuze to Brian Massumi's philosophy of speculative pragmatism and Levi Bryant's object-oriented philosophy, Pavel puts the scope of his artistic interests on determinism and predestination in the act, ethics as a science about relations between objects, and aesthetics as an access practice, logics of sensation and affection, theories of formation. In his art practices, Pavel designs experiences and impressions.

The combination of a philosophical commentary with a minimalistic, self-sufficient visuality seems unexpected only at first glance. After all, text (programming language) is also included in the DNA of installations. According to Pavel, after the course of Velikanov, the language became the main tool of work for him, while programming gives the greatest freedom for creativity. A light beam became one of the most malleable materials in the hands of an artist-programmer.

For example, in the project IfRO & D (Interface for Research of Opportunity and Determination, 2019), laser beams served as visual markers of the viewer's interaction with an unfamiliar environment. As soon as viewers crossed the line and found themselves inside the installation, their intrusion resulted in a change in the state of the closed system. Each touch of the light beam generated an audio signal. The movement around the room became a soundscape. In turn, listening attentively to their own sound trails, later viewers tried to adapt to what was happening and predict the consequences of their actions.

The main subject of study in the installation IfRO & D is the environment where all the participants influence each other resulting in a differentiation of forces. The project is consonant with the philosophy of Levi Bryant who is concerned with interactions between objects, for whom ethics is the science of how an object acts.

Observation of processes and the distribution of forces is a characteristic component of Seldemirov's work.

The installation Storm Cloud (2018) was a spatial visualization of a thunderstorm. The algorithm analyzed the thunderclaps and decomposed them into 60 fragments (by frequency) – in accordance with the number of light sources. The intensity of the flash depended on the volume of the original sound. The viewers who got inside the installation literally found themselves inside the storm.

In the project The Becoming proposed by Pavel for implementation as part of the Audi Born-Digital Award, you can see the fusion of all his areas of interest. Here the viewer will again act in the world created by the artist. Objects located in the exhibition space will mark the transition from the physical world to the virtual one and lure the user into the VR environment. The scene is a forest. The image of the forest is partly of personal significance for the artist: Pavel has a certain ritual: once a year for a month he goes on a hike and remains alone with nature and his thoughts. On the other hand, the image of a forest refers to the historical conflict between urban and natural environment. For a long time in European culture, the image of the city was associated with order and control, while the forest symbolized chaos. Today, as Pavel notes, it is obvious that such opposition is artificial. As he sees it, the entire modern world is likened to a forest where there are no established codes, and the behavior of different participants can change, like the system itself. Talking about the images reflecting the events of 2020 (first of all, the coronavirus pandemic and the quarantine that has covered the whole world) the artist states that COVID-19 has once again demonstrated the effects of a butterfly or a house of cards. No matter how independent we think we are, in the end even the most delicate and subtle processes affect the life of the entire ecosystem and transform it.

The Becoming can be viewed as a mechanism that involves the viewer in crossing the border between what we call the real world, the imaginary and the virtual. The project refers us to ritual practices where the participant in the action crosses the border, and as a result of immersion in the ritual, he is unable to get out of it. The fabric of the imaginary is woven from the threads of the real, the outside reflects the inside, and the inside is created from the outside. Real and virtual lines of intensity influence each other, changing the general reality in which we are located. The VR universe, on the one hand, is easy to be read by using the language of everyday life, on the other hand, it is hermetic, shimmering, does not lock into a clear reading, offers the viewer freedom of intellectual action, by creating affect.

Seldemirov believes that affect is an important thing for understanding the formation and perception of the border. Gilles Deleuze, relying on Spinoza's texts, says that affect is duration, a transition. Spinoza, in turn, inherits the Stoics, for whom the whole world was in the making, in a constant recombination of boundaries. Deleuze says that boundaries are the limits of compositional integrity and recalls the questions of the classics. At this time, the Stoics were asking questions: "What is the boundary of the object? Where are its boundaries? But what if it's a forest? Where is the border of the forest? The forest is defined through potency, its intensity. Where will you go?", The Neoplatonists put a different formulation of the question:" Where does the light begin and end? Light reaches where it's potency reaches." Thus, Deleuze criticized the concept of "border", introducing the concept in situations in which it loses its validity.

Within the framework of the project The Becoming, Seldemirov offers his own interpretation of the border, which he conceives as a state of increased intensity. It's not in the logic of making, but it's in the logic of difference: we can feel it here and now as "the becoming".