Anton Berkasov plays his own art as one would play an instrument

In front of the camera, in the dark, a man moves his hands and the surrounding air responds. Clouds of particles open into membranes, fold like wet fabric, gain colored edges for an instant and then dissolve. His body remains there, blurred in the background, while the shapes he directs occupy the foreground of the image. It is not a post‑production effect. It is what is happening on the screen at that moment, and that is how Anton Berkasov works.

A 3D generalist and generative artist, Berkasov has developed a method that runs counter to the logic of almost all digital production. Instead of building a scene, tweaking parameters and sending it to render, he connects a controller to the system and performs the animation live, by hand, searching for the right values as the image takes shape. When something clicks, he hits the record button and moves on. Almost none of what he publishes goes through the traditional process of closing a final file.

The work that never ends

The decision stemmed from an unease. Berkasov says that defining the final point of a piece has always been the most difficult part of the craft, and that he struggled with it while working in 3D, because at some point the process must be closed and the definitive file produced. The solution was to stop closing it. What appears on his profile are live records of an ongoing practice, not finished works.

From engineering to image

The journey so far has been long and far from straight. Berkasov studied optoelectronic engineering, a field that blends optics and electronics and gave him years of mathematics, physics and technical reasoning. He insists he is neither a mathematician nor a physicist, but acknowledges that that training shaped the way he thinks about visual systems, simulation and light.

After engineering came photography, in which he worked for years and which, according to him, trained his eye more than anything else: light, composition, texture, atmosphere. Only then did 3D and Houdini appear, and the pieces began to fit together. He describes the result less as a career choice and more as a gradual arrival.

Today the tool is TouchDesigner, a visual programming environment used in installations and live performances. Berkasov says he tested a large number of programs before settling on this one, and he defends it for what it allows you to build: with the right mindset, almost anything fits inside.

What he looks at

His references do not originate primarily from other artists. They come from physics and nature in the broadest sense: plants, stones, materials, structures, anything in reality that can be imagined as an algorithm or as logic. Quantum mechanics, which he studied at university, remains an obsession he still tries to visualize. Among artists he mentions H. R. Giger and Simon Stålenhag, and notes that the list is much longer.

Where is this going

Berkasov avoids treating his own work as the future of anything. What he states is an interest in real‑time, responsive, living visual systems, and a growing disinterest in pre‑rendered content. The path he wishes to follow involves live installations and systems capable of existing, reacting and changing in the moment.

Born in Moscow, he has been living in Tbilisi, Georgia, with his family for four years. His work can be followed on his profile, where each post is less a finished product than a slice of something that continues to happen.