Elements is an experimental video work by Maxim Zhestkov, which explores nature, physics, art and love through digitally animated ‘particles’ or ‘elements’. More than two billion particles, governed by tensions and forces influenced by those occurring in nature were used to replicate the motion of collective behaviour. As well as patterns of motion, the particles tell stories and evince emotional responses.

The film is a trial by the artist to explore the idea that everything around us and inside us is made from simple elements or blocks, which can be arranged in complex relationships and become compound structures. It demonstrates that there is a relationship between the tiny and individual, and the enormous and multiple. The ideas the work explores brings together emotions, behaviours, thought processes, relationships, life, planets and the universe.