Mechanical Garden after Tytus Czyżewski
netart / interactive installation

Tytus Czyżewski (28th December 1880 – 5th May 1945) was a Polish painter, art theoretician, Futurist poet, playwright, member of the Polish Formists, and Colorist. His work “Mechanical Garden” (Polish: “Ogród Mechaniczny”) of 1920 is a great example of “concrete poetry” (or “visual poetry”), which is “written” simultaneously with words and images. Typographic elements (here frames, braces, and the text layout) gain their own meaning; “they speak” in the poem as clearly as words.

"Mechanical Garden after Tytus Czyżewski" by Pawel Janicki is an interactive artwork based on Czyżewski’s original concept, re-created in a contemporary medium (software). The work touches upon the issues of conditional arts, synthetic nature, and the relations of art, nature, and technology in general.

Mechanical Garden after Tytus Czyżewski is part of the “Tetoki!” project by Paweł Janicki, premiered during the “SIGNALS / Interactive Playground” exhibition at the WRO Art Center. “Tetoki!” is a collection of interactive installations that serve as reproductions of or variations on the existing media works and important techniques used (or created) by artists working with electronic media. It is also a reference to the works and ways of working of the historical “analog” and contemporary artists who anticipated concepts and strategies relevant to media and technology-oriented arts.

Mechanical Garden after Tytus Czyżewski by Paweł Janicki exists also as an early version (2011), which developed in form of the stand-alone software commissioned by the Society for the Encouragement of Fine Arts (Lublin, Poland).