Maya Opara, O''''''''para Studio

Abstracts:

Our small presentation contains historical background and concept of our work. O'para studio was created by Vladimir and Maya Opara. Except for some practical experience of Vladimir (in children's art school in 1976-78 and in the school of contemporary art in 1993-94) we could never think of starting teaching at all. However during our exhibitions many visitors we asked us where they could study the contemporary art on the whole, i.e. photography, video art, photo and computer graphics, wed-design and interdisciplinary forms. Thus we faced the challenge - where to study all of the above. We conducted a research just to find out that there was in fact no place with the comprehensive education in contemporary art. We are the authors and curators of Moscow International on-line festival, therefore we have an opportunity to communicate with "computer artists" and have a good idea of strong and weak sides of the "new art". Sometimes we act as educators and it's not for nothing that in 1999 we were invited to be the members of the jury of children's festival of computer graphics and the same year we arranged a summer computer camp for children and organized a course lessons under the name "Computer as an instrument of an artist". Thus, from 1999 and until today we have regular classes in O'para studio and summer computer camp. In 2001 we arranged the summer camp in concert with the University of Culture and Art. Another sphere of our activities is Internet. Today Internet is no longer an exotic medium. Higher schools, museums, galleries and libraries - all want to have their person web-sites or web-pages. It' s important first, to learn how to design a web-page and second, how to make it artistically attractive. The existing computer courses, in our opinion, lack the cultural constituent, which is decisive for Russian Internet. Once you decide to create a web-page, you should realize that a web-page is a assemblage of visual images, created on the computer and including texts, graphics, music, animation - all with individual and combined value. This idea implies that you should be familiar with the principles of construction of virtual images, have good artistic taste and the ability to assemble them together. When a web-designer asserts that he has a commend of certain software instruments to design a web-site, but I don't know how to draw and in fact I don't need it - he is absolutely wrong. Any attempts to imitate famous sites without the knowledge of fundamental artistic principles result in numerous "faceless", if not caricature sites. A cultured and educated person should spend some time on studying of the principles of creating of visual images. It's not that difficult, after all, and has nothing to do with traditional academic painting. Moreover, there are helpful books, like "Art and Visual Perception" by Richard Arnheim and some other authors. Our summer computer camp has classes for adults, for example this year we held 72 hour courses "Computer Graphis and Web-design", the graduates of which received the official state diplomas. We are open for cooperation with all interested people and organizations. You may contact us by mail: 6 Klimentovsky Pereulok #30, 113184, Moscow, Russia or by e-mail: : focom@dol.ru