Maxim Zhestkov (b. 1985) is a digital artist based in London. He merges his studies in architecture, sculpture, motion graphics, color, and sound, to dramatize the intersection of the digital and the physical as a critical site for imagining the aesthetic possibilities and psychological implications of a “phygital” reality. Working as an independent designer, Maxim has worked with clients like Adidas, IKEA, BMW, Google, Playstation and Adobe and has been awarded with many industry awards: a Red Dot Award, D&AD, iF Design Award and the ADC Award. Maxim Zhestkov’s work has been presented internationally in shows at major institutions, including Decentral Art Pavilion Venice (2022), Unit London (2021), Contemporary Istanbul (2021), MIT (2019), Modern Art Museum, Shanghai (2019), and the Hermitage Museum (2019). Maxim’s work has also shown at contemporary art festivals, such as Cosmoscow (2021), ART021 (2020), ArtBasel Miami (2019), and Ars Electronica Festival (2018).
Computations speculates a future when computation moves from the opaque ‘black boxes’ of our laptops and devices out into the world. In the film, Zhestkov boldly envisions these decentralized machines as lush dynamic systems, which he compellingly describes as “floating networks of small transistors—some kind of a strange computing organism.”