SOURCE

SOURCE Kolektyw is an art project engaged in combing contemporary art practices with mobile app programming. The collective’s primary focus is developing educational software, and following Netrice Gaskins claim, “technologies are not mere tools that we use, but active forces in the world”. In realised and open projects, the group supports critical and creative thinking through engagement in environmental empathy, egalitarian approach to contemporary art, and sensitive fascination over encountering other living beings or knowledge sources. 

One of the collective’s most important releases is the mobile app Art roulette. Art roulette is a tool that can be helpful during art classes or different artistic undertakings. It proposes a series of randomly generated actions to apply to the visual artwork, object, or text. The tool provokes us to expand our usual practices. It can be used in a group or to create a joint artwork in a playful way. The idea is inspired by the TVC taxonomy diagram presented in Nettrice R. Gaskins’s essay on vernacular technology. Actually, the group is developing mobile applications: The Spiritual Exercises and The Balance Workshop (Together with BWA Gallery Katowice).

The collective was established in 2019 in Mysłowice, Poland by programmist Kasia Szymanek and visual artist Agata Szymanek. Kasia Szymanek received a master degree in polish Silesian University of technology at interdisciplinary Macrocourse, which teaches skills in the most desirable engineering disciplines, in the areas of Robotics, Electronics and Informatics with a specialisation in software development. She gained experience as a Backend developer in polish companies developing microservices for data integration and maintenance using open-source. Currently, she works with a robotic startup based in Oslo, developing control application for autonomous robots in Flutter technology. Agata Szymanek works in the media of painting, collage, and conceptual art. In 2019 she obtained a doctorate from the Academy of Fine Arts Katowice. The artist recently started studies at the New Centre for Research and Practice, the post-academic educational platform based in Seattle. She is an author of the publication Spiritual Exercises, developed thanks to the Ministry of Science and Higher Education of the Republic of Poland Grant for young researchers, and from 2020 she is also engaged in curatorial projects.