Gazprom Neft has used its display stand at this year’s St Petersburg International Economic Forum to unveil its “Digital Twins” art project, created together with media artist Maxim Zhestkov. The stand’s façade is transformed into a neural-networked digital “mirror”, showing ever-changing images of the people walking towards it.

Detectors and sensors positioned around the stand’s perimeter collect information from the surrounding space, allowing the neural network — concurrently — to maintain focus on all nearby bystanders, process their movements, and create digital twins of each of them on the stand’s media façade.

This art project comprises different virtual “worlds”, each recreating a visual metaphor of technologies utilised by Gazprom Neft — from artificial intelligence in geo-analytics to blockchain contracts.

“When I first approached Maxim Zhestkov with an idea for an art project, it was in terms of a general concept for a dynamic visualisation of a person — a human — where everyone coming up to the screen would see their own digital twin appearing. Ultimately though, Maxim and his team were able to create a piece of digital art. This is a good example of how technologies can be successfully transferred from one area to another. Gazprom Neft uses artificial intelligence in geo-analytics and digital field simulations — but a neural network can, also, be used to become part of a work of art.”

Alexander Dybal Member of the Management Board, Gazprom Neft

“Digital Twins” represents a living dialogue between man and technology. Creating something, right here, right now. We might just have created the first “neuro-stand” in history — a stand controlled, simultaneously, by a human and a neural network.

Maxim Zhestkov media artist

Find out more about the “Digital Twins” art project at https://www.gazprom-neft.ru/twins/