Alexey Smirnov's blog

I have visited Moscow last week to do some business. Luckily I got things done at half past 10 in the morning and had plenty of time to enjoy Moscow attractions.

I have visited Christ the Savior Cathedral which happened quite randomly. I walked into a tourist booth and found out that a guided tour to the top of the church was just beginning. Because of the stunning view that opens from there I decided to join the tour. Taking pictures from above was free of charge and I used my iPhone to take pictures and Microsoft ICE to build a 360-degree panorama. Here it is:

In fact, the guided tour began inside the Cathedral with an explanation of the wall paintings. They are amazing! The name of the artist who painted many of those is Nikolay Muhin. The Cathedral contains many interesting icons and remnants of Saints. Then we used the elevator to get to the roof and enjoyed views of Moscow. Then we went down to the ground floor and visited a museum also located in the Cathedral. A number of old icons are located there.

Then I went to a museum of Ilya Glazunov located next to the Cathedral of Christ the Savior. Earlier I have read his book that describes life of his family over the last two centuries (19th and 20th) and how events in Russia were tightly intervened with lives of his relatives and his own. The museum is absolutely fantastic. It has four floors and many halls. Sometimes it seems that many people worked on those paintings, not just one person because they are dedicated to various themes: from Russian history to works of Dostoevsky to more or less modern art that depicts events in Russia in late 1980s.

I have bought a photocopy of this wonderful painting. After visiting the museum I went back to the railway station and left Moscow on an afternoon train to Nizhny Novgorod. I went in a sitting cabin which had 6 chairs but only 2 people were there so our trip was quite comfortable.

Also, in the Cathedral of Christ the Savior I bought a few books including life of Sergey Radonezhski. I want to read them but only after I finish reading History of Serafimo-Diveevsky monastery, an amazing book that describes life of Serafim Sarovsky and related events. Overall, it seems to me that Moscow is looking a lot more like Russian-Orthodox capital because of various events and exhibitions dedicated to Russian history and culture. I enjoyed my trip to Moscow.

It is well known that Google spends a lot of effort on various cool things. Its advances in technology make it possible for people to do things they could not do before. I always wanted to express myself in art but when I was in school I never managed to draw a decent painting. But with Google Sketchup and Building Maker I can build models of everything with the assistance of computer and the web. A great combination of a number of technologies: satellite imaging, graphics, web programming, user interfaces.

Google Earth is a program that many people have spent hours playing with. But those attractive 3D models of buildings were a privilege of qualified engineers and designers until recently. Given the ambicious goal of modeling every city on Earth Google had to ask for help of the community. Because not everybody is a gifted designer, Google has created Building Maker, a tool that presents an image of a building to a user and asks to find a shape that matches its best.

A few basic shapes are available: box, prism, etc. A box is used to model the body of the house whereas a prism is used to model the roof. It is possible to define relationships between elements, that is to specify that one is situated next to another.

Once the user has aligned all visible points on one image she can move on to the next one. After aligning the model you can submit it for review. Once it gets accepted to the buildings layer you can see it using Google Earth and also everybody else will see it. All this beauty (including Google Earth) lives within a window of your browser. I wonder which language it was written in. Obviously, browser applications are matching desktop applications in their capabilities and functionality.

But this cool technology relies on so-cold bird-eye views of cities which are not available everywhere. Another limitation of this technology is the basic set of shapes that building maker has. This is why if you want to model more complex buildings you have to use Sketchup, a 3D drawing program.

Of course, Sketchup facilitates the process through image-matching technology. You can load a photo into Sketchup, align axes and use the image essentially in the same way as in Building Maker. However, a lot more shapes are available: circles, arcs, as well as tools to manipulate them. After constructing the first version of your model you can use additional photographs as textures of its faces. As with Building Maker, it is possible to get the model added to the buildings layer of Google Earth after review.

I have created models with both tools. Obviously, using photo matching in Sketchup takes longer because you have to apply textures to each face of the model manually. I have spent several days creating a model of a school next to our house. The model consists of several boxes. The main problem was connecting the boxes to make sure that there were no holes in the model. At one point I had a seemingly good model except that when I tried to build the roof it was breaking up into pieces. It turned out that the problem was in one wall which height was slightly less than heights of other walls, and therefore, there was a crack between the roof and that wall. Once you get used to measuring heights and widths of everything constructing becomes a lot easier. I would estimate the learning time of Sketchup as one week. But I have not started working with circular shapes yet! That’s the next level of skill!

These are the models that I have built so far. Click on the image to see 3D model.

My apartment is located in the center of Helsinki. This studio is of course not the cheapest one but there are numerous advantages in living there because Helsinki is a great city.

For example, within walking distance there are several art galleries including Ateneum which nowdays hosts Picasso exhibition and Helsinki City Art Museum in which Tretyakov Gallery is showing its collection. So every weekend I have to make a tough decision whether I want to enjoy Cubism or Russian art of 19th century.

This Saturday I went to Tennis Palace, a building on Fredrikenkatu. It is unique in the sense that it hosts a big movie theater and two museums. I could never imagine Tretyakov Gallery next to a movie theater. In Moscow the museum is a building worth admiring itself, so nothing is located near it except a few other historical buildings. Here in Helsinki before you get to the Tretyakov Gallery you have to make your way through empty Coke cans, and popcorn, and trash.

The Enchanting Beauty exhibition contains works that you would not typically see in the Tretyakov Gallery. There lots of big paintings are displayed that occupy the whole wall and can stretch as far as 10 meters in length. The works presented here are typically in the storage of the Tretyakov gallery unless they rotate the paintings which I doubt they do.

Therefore, those who have not been to Tretyakov Gallery before this exhibition would not get impressed. In other words, these paintings do not represent the Tretyakov Gallery to the full extent. But if you have visited Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow then you would definitely appreciate these works because you will not see them anywhere else.

The content of the exhibition is mostly oriental which includes works of Vereshagin, Bryulov. But there are a few paintings depicting traditional Russian life. There are portraits of famous people including a portrait of last Tzar’s wife Alexandra Feodorovna Romanova and merchant Tretyakov’s wife.

The price of the exhibition is very low – 9 Euros. I guess it costs more to get into Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow. Thus I also bought a book showing the content of this exhibition along with explanatory articles.

Very good exhibition and I only wish I could go there again. I should have bought a yearly pass to the museum which costs only 20 Euros.

But after attending the museum I went on to explore other parts of Tennis Palace, in particular its movie theater. I decided to check out Michael Jackson’s This is It. Interesting movie. It is easy to notice that Michael suffers lots of pains, that he could either dance or sign but not both. But he is still the King of Pop. It is good that he was able to record all his songs before dying because the concert theme is quite global and goes far beyond the traditional entertainment show. For example, Michael explains that we should take good care of Earth otherwise it will deteriorate, etc.

There is another museum in Tennis Palace which I guess is called Museum of Cultures. Tennis Palace is a place where you can spend the whole day and enjoy a variety of activities!

This weekend I have attended Pablo Picasso exhibition in Helsinki Ateneum national gallery. This exhibition came from Picasso museum in Paris. Thus it represents only a part of what Picasso has created during his lifetime. It is funny that he was born in year 81 as well, thus I was able to see what he has been doing in my age. Quite impressive work, I would say. In other words, I liked his early works very much.

But his cubist works are also interesting. In ahoter ten years Picasso turned to a more classical style. There are lots of portraits with unusual color. It is an interesting exercise to try to interpret the meaning of each color of the face. But Picasso’s later works reveal the greatness of his talent. They are truly masterpieces.

After spending a couple of hours at the exhibition I went to the bookstore on the first floor in the same building. It is an amazing place. There are so many books on art of various kind – Egyptian art, Greek, European, and Russian art. There are lots of books in English. As I liked the exhibition so much I have bought a few art books.

Overall, great exhibition and I feel very lucky that it is located a 10-minute walk from the apartment in which I am staying at the moment. I wish I could spend more time at this wonderful exhibition.

I have attended a concert of Jean Michel Jarre in Helsinki, in Hartwall Arena. I arrived to Helsinki in the afternoon and had fun attending several museums. I will describe that other part in the next post.

Hartwall Arena is a medium-sized stadium with a roof. Therefore, this concert was indeed private as typically Jarre performs in front of multi-million audiences using city landscape as the background image of his laser shows. I guess the music that he played was specially designed to match with such in-doors environment. To start with, I was impressed that the sound was of very good quality in every part of the stadium. That’s because of the backstage sound system that he uses. In classical music, lots of effort is spent on designing the shape of concert hall ceiling to improve sound quality.

The music itself revealed the great talent of Jarre the composer. To me it sounded a bit like Shostakovich. Jarre uses lots of traditional folk tunes and reinforces them with electrical instruments. A few of his instruments sound like church bells, others like French accordeon played in Paris. Obviously, Jarre has processed lots of music in his head and compiled it to present to the general public.

The audience in Helsinki was more ordinary than I expected. We have to admit that the concert hall was half-empty, especially the upper rows. I guess the classic music audience decided not to attend this pop music show. They were wrong. Jean Michel only tries to promote the music as art no matter which genre it is. His performances are above such division. Thus, the people who attended the concert looked like office workers, or even factory people. But during the concert they were raving. They loved the music that Jarre played. Thus, the goal of unification people with music was achieved. Chances are that these people will decide to play music or even become composers themselves.

The instruments used in the concert were fantastic.

The laser harp is a powerful instrument which is intuitive to play. In computer science, everybody is trying to simplify the computers and operating systems. For example touch screen cellphones do not require any learning before becoming an essential tool. And so is the laser harp. Reinforced with artificial intelligence it starts shining when the musician approaches it. When it is being touched, a background music is played to match the tune that the musician improvised. I read on Wikipedia that this is not a new instrument but I saw it the first time. I think that such instruments can start a new phase of composers. Everybody is listening to the music of Mozart and Bach for several centuries. But new classical composers do not appear. This is because the environment for which the classical instruments were designed has changed. New environment demands new instruments and laser harp is a perfect example of such instrument.

Another important component of the show were the lasers. I also liked the huge backstage screen that changed its color arbitrarily. The trick of combining images with music is used nowdays even in classic music concerts, for example in Carnegie Hall a portrait of the composer is displayed when his music is played.

With lasers and lights, Jean Michel was able to display complex images resembling Egyptian pyramids or extraterrestial landscape. In addition to processing lots of existing music he made a huge step forward because it looked like his music came from space.

There is only one drawback of attending a live performance. Its quality is so good that you cannot listen to any home sound system afterward. After I arrived to home I turned on the radio. It was playing a song. To me it sounded as if it needed energy badly, as if its batteries were running out of power. But it was connected to electrical grid. Nothing can match the power of sound and beauty of lasers that Jean Michel Jarre was able to achieve.

I have visited an exhibition of a prominent American painter originally from New York. That was the first show of Alex Katz in a museum in Nordic countries. He was never considered as a mainstream painter because he painted ordinary people, American middle class. This is why the notable intellectuals professors Randy Katz, Boris Katz, and Victor Katz did not make it to his paintings.

Traditionally, the art deals with painting notable people or interesting historical events in which ordinary people may take place. Using ordinary people in ordinary circumstances is not considered art. If nothing interesting happens then why should we paint those people? I guess the exhibition of Alex Katz gives answer to this question.

To me the people that he paints look mostly like Abraham Lincoln. I guess this is the favorite politician of Alex Katz. Or possibly people in New York City are his followers. What makes the exhibition interesting is painting technique that Alex Katz developed. At first, his paintings look a bit cartoonish, like what children like to see. But then you can discover the deep meaning encoded into seemingly simple images. With only a few strokes, Alex Katz manages to transmit complex feelings of human nature.

Painters typically consider eyes as the most important part of human’s face. They put all their efforts in painting eyes. The rest of the face does not matter. In Alex Katz painting every part of face is equally important, in part because of vivid colors that he uses to depict the nose and lips.

There are paintings of landscapes in the exhibition such as forest and brook, I guess those were made in Maine where Alex Katz resides during summers. The drawing technique is quite simple but nevertheless he conveys the fast changing mood of brook or rainy forest. Expressiveness of his paintings is what makes the exhibition interesting.

I was in theater watching Gogol’s Revizor. Of course, it was in Finnish but this was a Russian novel so I felt obliged to check it out. Another reason was Gogol’s 200-year anniversary this year.

The theater is Tampereen Työväen Teatteri which is located next to Lenin museum. I guess this is why there was so much connection with October revolution of 1917 which happened almost a century after what Gogol describes in his novel.

It is always funny to watch how foreigners perceive Russians. The American movies often portrait Russians as wild people from cold Siberia with balalaika and vodka. The former was not present this time, but vodka was definitely there. But can you imagine how Finns thought Russians drink vodka? With such a care as if they were drinking a precious wine!

Next, in which type of houses do people live in Russia? Of course, in multi-storied castles! This construction was definitely nice, I really appreciate the effort of the theater to build a three-storied building resembling Turku castle, but what does it have to do with Russia? To make it more realistic they could have added a roof, instead the castle was going to the skies without any roof at all.

I learned that Russians take special care of their hair. Those guys had really fancy stuff on their head. People in Europe might have had it but I doubt that Russians wore artificial hair at that time.

Last but not least, the music was very unusual. Here is a list of what was played along with a 19-th century novel:

• Marsh, marsh vpered, rabochij narod – Go ahead, fight working people a song from October Revolution of 1917
• Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet – Prokofiev is 20-th century Soviet composer
• Vysotsky. Friend’s song – Vysotsky was a popular writer and singer in 1970s.

I don’t know if there was any special meaning in using modern music with a 200-year old novel, but that looked funny.

But Finnish actors were really good. Also, the spirit of the novel was preserved – very ironic. For example, they were smoking cigarettes all the time so the spectators were able to smell the spirit of Russia. In addition, there was an imitation of love, also one actor got almost totally naked. This is how they wanted to show the corrupt nature of the Russian people that the novel describes. So it was very satirical indeed. Russians look like total barbarians.

I wonder if Gogol had that in mind when he was writing the novel. Were any good qualities of people described in his novel? This makes me want to read the novel again.

In the Finnish interpretation there were no good people in Russia, I guess this is the tough memories of Soviet Union – a mighty dangerous neighbor. But was Tzar Russia any different? Those people were naive, so their bad deeds were funny. In this novel the people were trying to outsmart themselves.

The Finnish audience was a good one. Surprisingly, there were no students. In theaters in Russia and in the US there are lots of young people. However, such an older audience is very calm, they listen and watch very carefully. But they rarely laugh.

Overall, very interesting attempt at interpreting Russian life with a bit of European formality.

In Finland, there are two distinct phenomena associated with lighting conditions. In the summer there are white nights when the sun never sets down. It takes a while to get used to sleeping during those nights. In the winter it might happen that the sky is gray during the whole day. It feels chilly on such days. This is why there are so many electric bulbs in Tampere. I noticed it soon upon arrival that people here like various electrical equipment. For example, they have bus schedules near each bus stop which are made of the bulbs as well.

I have taken pictures of these nice figures. As you can see, a whole story is told using this innovative form of art. And it makes life so much more exciting.