Brutal Burgers. Interview with Stanislav Starchenko.
Today we are happy to continue our tradition of introducing talented authors, whose works are available on our marketplace. This time we are proud to invite you to meet Stanislav Starchenko — the creator of the NFT collection “Brutal Burgers”!
Hey Stanislav! We are always glad to see new faces in the world of the Russian-speaking NFT community. Tell about yourself!
Hello! I am Stanislav Starchenko, photographer and artist, I also enjoy composing and writing music. For half a year now I have been studying neural networks and their application in the profession of a photographer and more!
Tell us about your passion for photography.
From childhood, I drew well, all my school notebooks were in drawings, in elementary grades this was even encouraged, teachers apparently observed talent and did not forbid it to develop. Then there were many hobbies and creative manifestations, for example, I actively wrote music, electronic and classical. I created my own rock band, where I was a guitarist and composer, wrote parts for all the instruments of my compositions, including drums, synthesizers, wrote lyrics. We often rehearsed, performed, took first place at rock festivals, our music was not easy, mostly instrumental, including jazz, space, rock, metal and electronic directions.
Then the army and the reassessment of many values. I spent several years in a creative lull, doing ordinary work, which is very uninteresting to me, but such a period is natural, a respite! And so I discovered photo retouching and creating photo collages. For the first half of the year, practicing retouching skills, I first asked to process photos of familiar and unfamiliar photographers, then the photographers began to write to me themselves, ordering retouching and collage. But I understood that it does not give me real pleasure — to process pictures that are not my own.
And so I buy my first camera and plunge into the world of a photo artist. The main direction in which I developed and achieved some success is photo collage. At school, I always liked the MHC (World Artistic Culture) subject, where there were a lot of illustrations, pictures with ancient works of art. In my photo collages, I depicted mythological themes, plots from my dreams, the beauty of human bodies, putting meaning into each photo collage. Before shooting, I always drew sketches, thought out where the light should come from in the photo studio, what color filters would help me realize the idea. Created! Also, I got interested in food photography, I shot burgers, pizzas, various dishes for Moscow restaurants. During the covid period, food delivery became popular, for example, and I shot a lot for food markets.
For about 5 years I was engaged in reportage photography of fashion shows in Moscow, these are the sites of Estet Fashion Week (official backstage photographer), Gostiny Dvor (Moscow fashion week) and personal shows of designers. During this period, I actively shoot artists, models, media personalities, creators in the studio.
How did you get to know blockchain technology, cryptocurrencies and NFTs in general?
Once in the bathhouse of a fitness club, it was around 2016, I heard from men sitting on a nearby bench in the steam room a strange, incomprehensible, but very interesting and enthusiastic conversation about how some kind of cryptocurrency went up sharply and how they happily noted it wine event from Chile. And of course they shared their successes and purchases and sales among themselves. I realized that we are talking about digital currency and whoever has certain knowledge has access to another way of income on this planet.
Actually, how often this happens in the universe, my thought and question were launched to the subtle levels of the universe and the answers began to appear. A short time after the overheard conversation in the bathhouse, I learned from a friend that he was mining. I didn’t know this word before. Moreover, the community of cryptominers was almost hidden; no one talked about it on the street, there were no advertisements, articles, posts, only on specialized sites. I am not an economist, mathematics and computer science have always been difficult for me, firstly, and secondly, I am always skeptical about what I cannot understand.
And so in 2020, I learn about NFT, read a lot of information, see stories and posts of creative people about NFT technologies, but I see more memes, jokes than really useful information. Everyone seemed to understand that it was cool, but did not know how to apply, what to sell and how.
About a couple of years ago, I registered on the Opensea site and started filling my profile with what seemed to me those photos or illustrations — which, in theory, can be sold. But then I realized that it’s not enough just to place a collection of tokens — you need advertising, the development of social networks, trust and loyalty to you as a creator from buyers. There are many factors that determine the success in selling NFT collections.
And just a short time ago, I read on the Internet about the Russian marketplace Barter Smartplace. Yes, I was glad that I could conduct a dialogue in my native language with contacts and support for this platform, and in general it’s nice when you get into a community of people who think approximately in the same direction, research and creative! Moreover, you don’t need to turn on VPN, translate foreign information (my technical English is not so good, if not bad). The founders of the project are inspiring, they are open and friendly, and this is no less important in developing a strategy for introducing new technologies into society, especially in the new era of neural networks, when the human factor is very important and valuable!
Tell us more about your Brutal Burgers collection.
The idea for the NFT Brutal Burgers collection came from my passion for food photography! I shot a lot of burgers, juicy, inviting, almost come to life before my eyes. The first shot burgers for the Beverly Hills restaurant in the center of Moscow were assembled by myself, with my own hands under the supervision of the art director of the project and at the suggestion of the chef. There are a lot of nuances in food photography, food is still a capricious model!
Using neural networks, I started creating burgers based on my existing photos, but in a strong style, embodying the concepts of strength, character and independence in the performance of crypto burgers! These photographs are of very high quality and size! At least print them on banners! They live in their own world, almost in dynamics!
Why did you decide to make fast food the main theme of your collection?
I’m a pretty good cook, the chef is my alter ego. Friends know this! I love the aesthetics of food, serving, the combination of colors in dishes, I even ran a small blog on social media. networks, where he published photos of his dishes with small recipes. And of course I decided to create one of the NFT collections dedicated to burgers! It is delicious!
Tell us more about the direction of neurophotoart.
As I wrote above, I started my passion for photography by creating photo collages. Creating such collages is a laborious process, sometimes one collage was created for several days or weeks. You need high-quality stock photos for a collage, clipart, on which you then redraw sometimes light and shadows, do color correction, post-production.
When I saw the new possibilities of neural networks, I realized that this is what I have been looking for and waiting for so long. Waited! The main thing is my message to all creators, to be able to wait and have patience, to believe in their talents and develop their product, no matter what, without listening to the opinions of others and criticism. It’s a good experience to go through powerful pressure criticism, often from non-specialists in photography or design.
With the help of neural networks, I create both digital illustrations and introduce real persons, people, customers who contact me for neurophotoart — into augmented reality, the neuroworld! We choose the style of neurophotoart together or I offer my own styles. For example, the current trend is cyberpunk, futurism, surrealism, but realism is also the base. Neurophotoart turns out to be realistic, causing a “Wow” effect, the customers and I are satisfied. This is essentially a photo collage, only many levels higher and more modern!
How do you feel about the hype around neural networks, graphical neural networks in particular?
I treat the hype around neural networks from the position of an observer sometimes, but more often from the position of a researcher. For example, I actively use the GPT chat, for example, Yandex has its own such chat — it’s convenient! For example, I enter a question into the chat — on which sites can I find out the first news about neural networks — and the chat gives me an answer with a list of sites and recommendations, and it does all this in a matter of seconds! I also use graphic editors for their intended purpose for myself. The hype, I think, will not subside for a long time, although I suppose there will be a period of stagnation, stagnation, but not for long. Now, in general, everything is developing at lightning speed, we are almost close to the singularity, to the collapse of ideas, space, creativity, business. Everything is spinning in one blender already!
Yes, I want to mention one more word with the letter X — Hayt. Having started to actively spread my neuroart, I encountered some opinions of experienced artists, designers, and photographers. They say it’s not art, it has no value and so on. We are observing, because earlier artists considered photography not art, and photographers were called pushbuttons. As a result, the drawing lives on and the photograph lives on. Now neuroart is born. Everything is fine! And I went from the opposite, I don’t use standard queries in neural networks, but I make complex illustrations, with complex prompts (requests), which favorably distinguishes my neuroart from the mass of cat art and Barbie avatars, for example.
How did you hear about Barter Smartplace?
I found out before going to bed, under the covers, leafing through the news of Runet) I wrote a little more about the Barter Smartplace marketplace above.
Tell us what inspires you to be creative?
What inspires most likely is banal self-affirmation and the desire to gain a sense of usefulness to this world, to be needed and heard. I feel that I can make a product in the field of culture and art — and the rest does not stop me. You need to feel these hints of the universe, super chances, if your soul flutters — it is yours. Need to do! Not infrequently, of course, I myself burn out, as it happened with music, but I hatch a plan how to continue writing compositions!
Give a couple of advises to future creators of NFT collections.
First of all, you need to study a lot of information, bases on what NFT is, who buys, a portrait of a buyer, a portrait of an artist (creator of tokens). You just need to read the latest information, since you can’t just sell an 8-bit punk or macaque just like that. Many have probably heard about these collections, sold for fabulous sums of dollars. Now, for example, it is useful to reinforce NFT — utility (service, advantage, valuable information for the buyer), especially if you are still little known on the Internet. Study and study again — that’s my instruction!
Examples of the author’s work:
https://smartplace.barter.company/advert/29795
https://smartplace.barter.company/advert/29794
https://smartplace.barter.company/advert/29793
Contacts of the author of the collection:
https://vk.com/stanislavstarchenko
https://www.facebook.com/stanislavstar
https://vc.ru/u/1456499-stanislav-starchenko
https://dtf.ru/u/1053241-stanislav-starchenko
https://render.ru/ru/artist/147954/portfolio
https://pikabu.ru/@user7206204
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