Created by Moscow based artist Dmitry Morozov (aka ::vtol::), Oil is the latest in the series of installations by Dmitry that explore the relationship between the material and ephemeral in contemporary culture. The idea behind this project is to present visitors with a chance to destroy any object that might happen to be on their person, in order to transform it into a unique sound composition. The installation consists of five hydraulic presses, capable of crushing practically any object (a mobile telephone, pair of glasses, headphones or whatever). In the process of destruction, a special microphone records the sounds made as the object undergoes deformation, and in just a few minutes, a computer algorithm transforms them into a 20-minute album.

The project is intended to provoke visitors into spontaneously ridding themselves of material consumer objects for the sake of creating their own individual work of art via deprivation, divestment and destruction.... The technological aesthetic involved constitutes an ironic attempt to make the process of art production into a technological process, but the result, unlike that of mass production, demonstrates a contrary phenomenon – this is a work involving programming and code in the context of generative art, with the potential to broaden the range of instruments at art’s disposal. At the end of the process, the sound production is automatically recorded onto an audio CD and handed over to the participant, completing the process of exchange.