DIGICULT

Digital Art, Design & Culture

Founder & Editor-in-chief: Marco Mancuso

Advisory Board: Marco Mancuso, Lucrezia Cippitelli, Claudia D'Alonzo

Publisher: Associazione Culturale Digicult Largo Murani 4, 20133 Milan (Italy) http://www.digicult.it Editorial Press registered at Milan Court, number N°240 of 10/04/06. ISSN Code: 2037-2256

Licenses: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs - Creative Commons 2.5 Italy (CC BY- NC-ND 2.5)

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Digicult is part of the The Leonardo Organizational Member Program TABLE OF CONTENTS

Marco Mancuso Exploding Cave ...... 3

Marco Mancuso Alain Thibault: Elektra From Past To The Future ...... 9

Motor Material Hybridization ...... 15

Marco Riciputi The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button ...... 21

Matteo Milani Valerio Adami And The Pictorial Sound ...... 24

Marco Mancuso Esther Manas and Arash Moori: Sound and Sculpture ...... 29

Clemente Pestelli Giacomo Verde: Action Beyond Representation ...... 36

Silvia Casini Marc Didou: Resonances ...... 41

Stefano Raimondi Chris Woebken: La Gioia In Divenire ...... 47

Donata Marletta Cybercultures 4: A Journey In Virtual Space ...... 53

Tatiana Bazzichelli Vittore Baroni: From Mail Art To Web 2.0 ...... 57 Gigi Ghezzi Darwin From The Microscope ...... 68

Massimo Schiavoni Pathosformel fever ...... 73

Otherehto Psybody Design ...... 80

Alessio Galbiati Antonio Martino, The Reflexive Stalker ...... 88

Giulia Baldi In Video Collaboration ...... 100 Exploding Cave

Marco Mancuso

oscurità e nel caos dell’Exploding Plastic Inevitable, si poteva trovare una possibilità di trasformazione, se non di liberazione”. – [Branden W. Joseph, My Mind Split Open]

The Milan we know has been planned, starting from the 1950′s, in a way similar to that of the organization of work, the districts are separated by classes, the distances are calculated Trafficando con le forze tecnologiche between workplaces and houses. You emergenti, tra il 1966 e il 1967 Andy plan a specific family. You plan a Warhol crea l’Exploding Plastic certain type of house (…). The general Inevitable, formando uno spazio feeling was that of a crystallized contradditorio e sperimentale. Invece future, dominated by events mainly di una loro naturalizzazione, incomprehensible and not to be produceva un montaggio che participated to (…). In the scomponeva lo spazio nel quale ‘existentialist cave’ of 1950′s Milan, the diversi media interferivano ed traditional codes of the “Milanese” entravano in competizione gli uni con ballroom were replaced by the gli altri (…). Improvvisamente, il ritmo experimentation of new musical della musica suonata dai Velvet genres and new exchange methods Underground e dall’attrice/cantante between sounds and visions that in Nico, i giochi di luce, i movimenti dei turn involved specific dynamics. The diversi film di Warhol, le performance relationship of seduction was evident dei ballerini si univano per creare in the liberation of the body moved by qualcosa di significativo, ma prima di musical rhythms, not anymore by the cogliere il senso di quello che stava ‘classical dance forms’ of the dance avvenendo, tutto diventava hall. People’s looks are freed of the nuovamente confuso e caotico. Il bourgeois aesthetics of the ‘jacket rumore ti colpiva. Volevi urlare, o and tie’ . – [John Martin, Primo lanciarti in una danza sfrenata, dovevi Moroni, La Luna sotto casa ] muoverti, agire ( ). Nell’apparente

3 Exploding Cave revises and desecrates a complex machinery, bringing to rapid combustion the images and sounds of the cinema- cathedral of Hollywood, of television and of the social (anti)media; it is a . sudden storm for the expansion of With a double reference both to the stories, hallucinations and “existentialist caves” of 1950′s Milan extraordinary dreams, but it is also a and the experimentation of Andy concrete demonstration of Warhol’s “Exploding Plastic experiences, knowledge and criticism Inevitable”, “Exploding Cave” is a 2- of the present; it opens a tear on the days event that will be held in Milan harmonic visions and on today’s most on April 17 and 18, in the spaces of deafening noises. Cox18, structured in a series of meetings, workshops and performances that investigate the relationship and the least common denominator that ties cinema, sound, video and digital arts.

Organized by the same Cox18 with the collaboration of Digicult, Exploding Cave suggests the idea of an explosion, of an effort to “go beyond” the normal audiovisual perception . towards multiple directions, both in In a city that builds and models the the practices of audiovisual creation social spaces through mechanisms of and in the performative methods. It exclusion and consumption, in investigates the phenomenon of the contrast to the municipal politics of “optical unconscious”, the concept of repression and evacuation of matrix, the analysis of both autonomous spaces and self- production and fruition forms that managed realities in Milan and in Italy, work to the rediscovery of a primary Exploding Cave wants to reconstruct root of the audiovisual language, a paths and moments of synthesis common core at the base of the between experimentation of new contemporary dialogue among social and creative forms, and cinema, video and digital arts. involvement of other independent

4 cultural realities in town, like JointSventure . (http://www.myspace.com/jointsven On Friday April 17, there will be the ture), Vocecov opening of Exploding Cave , devoted (http://www.myspace.com/vocecov) to the relationship between sound e Dorkbot Milano and images, expressed through (http://dorkbot.org/dorkbotmil/). dynamics of research and A space therefore built to overcome experimentation especially in a the typical spectacular construction of performative context. An evening full an event (creator and spectator, of digital aesthetics, between noise speaker and listener), with the sounds, glitch, electro, 8bit and purpose of creating a more open generative visualizations of graphic circle, less centered on the codes in movement. The first live set performance but based rather on the will see the duo Komplex (Mariano sharing of knowledge and Equizzi and Paolo Bigazzi) that will experiences. In concrete terms, a introduce their live audiovisual set moment to give the floor to the artists “Blood Electric”, where the reading of / artisans and the machines / the homonym cyber-text, through a software they use for their audiovisual clock fixed in bpm, produces a production practice. constant flow of data that are destined to the controlling of visual The formula thought for Exploding effects and sound generation: the Cave is that of “a moment of free sequence that is so produced is search”, that allows the public – controlled through the I use of through a dynamic and articulated wireless sensors, and fed by a series course – and the featured artists to of pre-registered images. start a dialogue that helps better understand the dynamics that unite Later the audiovisual improvisation cinema, sound and video to the live set consisting of one of the most universe of digital creation. important names of the international idm/electro/punk Otto von Schirach (Schematic), and of one of the members of the Milanese collective otolab, Orgone. A live set which is expected full of energy and improvised elements, pushed towards the search of a total audiovisual and sensory involvement of the audience,

5 something in between hardcore to create sounds and images, videos, electronics and generative graphics. lights. For this event, LEP introduces Lastly, the 8bit music of one of the its last projects: “Leploop”, a small most interesting names of this ever analog synth to produce music rich musical scene, the Swiss Stu, that (http://tonylight- for the occasion will cross Game Boy leploop.blogspot.com) and and Atari with Milanese Tonylight, “Videomoog”, a video synth to who has been promoting this genre produce images of synthesis able to on a national basis for years. follow music. During the presentation, various prototypes will be observable, and it will be possible to listen to, and try, the tools, apart from exchanging ideas on the projects.

The late afternoon will be dedicated to the presentation of the Videoscreening cared for by Claudia Di Alonzo and Marco Lorenzin: an endless cycle projection of films, videos and short films, will then be . held at night in the spaces underlying the area where live shows take place. Saturday April 18 will begin with an This time we start from the sound afternoon workshop with experience, in order to directly artists/hackers/designers that work connect it to the re-appropriation of on the thin line between creativeness images and preexisting films (found and technological experimentation, footage). We will move from the realized in collaboration with Dorkbot combinatory game by Alberto Grifi Milano: the objective is to build new (Verifica Incerta), to the ironic tools and innovative platforms for the contamination of films by Bruce audiovisual production. The first Conner (A Movie; Mongoloid; Mea appointment is with the newborn Culpa); from the collages by Stan Popular Electric Laboratory (L.A.P.), Vanderbeek (Achoo Mr. Kerrooschev), consisting of the eclectic Milanese to the anticipations of the video artist Tonylight and Peppo Lasagna, scratch by Dara Birnbaum with the intention of planning and (Technology / Transformation: building electronic tools for Wonder Woman; Pop Pop Video); audio/video applications, of from the re-appropriation operated developing open source interfaces fit by René Viénet on the dialogues of an

6 Hong Kong martial arts movie ( La introduced and moderated by Marco Dialectique Peut-Elle Casser Des Mancuso. This will be the chance to Briques?) to the ironic and get to know from an insider point of disrespectful de-construction of view the “modus operandi” of all voices and gestures by Johan musicians, video artists and designers Soderberg (Surplus; Read My Lips; The involved – an “open-machine” Voice); from the criticism of the meeting. television images through repetitions, slowing down and overlaps by Duvet The night is finally devoted to the live Brothers (Blue Monday; War Machine) performances in the central hall. and Gorilla Tapes (Death Valley Days), Echran (Fabio Volpi, Davide de Col the to the improvement of the scratch and Accursio Graffeo) is a project of video brought by the collective EBN audiovisual research where a cinema (Commercial Entertainment Product), environment is created in which the a technique that derives from the soundtrack influences and deforms revolution of sampling and remixing the movie materials used in the live sounds born during the 1970′s in the visual set. Echran offers a live set split Bronx, with Hip Hop. The screening in two parts: in the first one “Stardust” will be closed by the mash ups of the visuals develop starting from a Eclectic Method (U2 ZooTV Remix) sequence with a close up of Charlotte and the trailers on commission of Rampling’s face, in the second, the AddictiveTV (Snakes on a Plane; Iron visions of A.Tarkowsky are Man). reconstructed through some of his famous masterpieces, like Solaris and Sacrifice. Later on, the audiovisual live set coming from the second production of Exploding Cave with the participation of JointsVenture and Vocecov: the electro-acoustic improvisation group In Zaire (Claudio Rocchetti + G.I.Joe) will take the floor in an energetic performance halfway between electronic, analog and percussive sounds, accompanied for . the occasion by the special visual and cinema talent that is Virgilio Villoresi, On prime time Saturday, there will be for a totally exceptional AV set, very a meeting with the artists that will motivating and exciting for the perform live during the evening, audience.

7 sampling of the work in 69 parti and 19 details) and “CINEmatic eXperience” (vjset), remixed in real time by ilcanediPavlov! Project by Alessio Galbiati, focused on a live performance with a special attention to the cinematic image, which was born as a part of DJCINEMA and quickly became a performative project. ilcanediPavlov! collaborates . since its beginning with the cinema culture digital magazine Rapporto Finally, one of the historical names of Confidenziale. the club / underground scene of Milan, Dj Pier, will accompany with his techno / electro sounds the projects of sonorization of “Dillinger è morto” (live editing of the 1969 masterpiece by Mark Ferreri beginning from a http://cox18.noblogs.org/

8 Alain Thibault: Elektra From Past To The Future

Marco Mancuso

and consolidation of an entire artistic movement, as well as a cultural and professional research that in the last decade set Montreal on an international artistic experimental area through new digital technologies.

As it is known to all those who have been at Elektra at least once, to all the artists who are invited to perform, as well as to all professionals who meet Hereafter we will carry on an every year at the International Art approach analysis on Elektra 2009, Market, the work of Alain Thibault with the tenth edition of the festival does not “just” mean to select and of the Audiovisual Art research and decide about which works and artists the New Media Art, which is the most will perform, but also to promote interesting and complete in the entire Elektra at the international level, and North American territory. And in link it to a series of realities, festivals, general one of the finest on the research centres, journals, critics and international scene, as well as one of curators, that can bridge the the most appreciated by the artists. geographical gap that separates This should never be underestimated, Montreal and Europe, this latter being in my opinion. the centre of the market and digital artistic production. For the April issue, I found it appropriate to have a direct talk with When I was invited at the first edition Alain Thibault, pioneering artist of the of the International Art Market during synesthetic and immersive Elektra 2006, I had exactly the relationship existing in the audiovisual following feeling: while visiting other field, together with the artist Yan art research centres in the city, in Bruleux known as Pureform. Alain is which numerous places and spaces also the famous artistic director of are associated with the Market, as Elektra, as well as distinguished Hexagon or SAT, I realized the promoter of the development, growth importance of the work of Alain

9 Thibault and of the springboard for “covering” the festival with interviews Elektra’s artistic and cultural and further reviews, but by presenting promotion among the French- at the North American premiere the speaking artists. That is a task I greatly live “OP7″ by Otolab. Let’s listen to consider, as director of Digicult Alain Thibaut himself about further together with the agency Digimade. details on the tenth edition, which will This confirms how the role of the be held in May, from 1 to 10, at UsineC curator should be today (at least in and in other areas around Montreal … some cultural fringe situations, in which Italy is certainly involved for Marco Mancuso: This is the tenth many reasons) a more complex figure, edition of the Elektra festival and I comparable to that of a cultural know that you are preparing a really operator, able to network and share special edition, 10 days performance, ideas and projects, who can work not live events and meetings. Would you only for himself but for a larger like to give us a preview? Which artists project and for a wider view. will be there? And what do you expect from Elektra09?

Alain Thibault: Well, the tenth edition of the Elektra festival there will see: Ryoji IKEDA [test pattern] – Nort- American Premiere, Kurokawa RYOICHI [rheo] North-American Premiere, ANTIVJ & PRINCIPLES OF GEOMETRY [a stereoscopic show] – North-American Premiere, DEFASTEN [Openland] – North-American

. Premiere, OTOLAB [OP7] – Canadian Premiere presented by you and Apart from being a great festival that Digicult, KURT HENTSCHLÄGER [feed] provides an insight on audiovisual – For the last time in Montreal, research projects in the form of Celebration of its tenth anniversary, performances, interactive Saturday May 9 : ARNAUD REBOTINI installations, robotics, new media art, [Music Components, live] – Canadian Elektra is also and above all a platform Premiere, BLACK STROBE [live] and for cultural sharing, to which Digicult many installations of Canadian artists will take part again not only with throughout the city.

10 festival of digital art. Not only we present “exhibitions” but installations (of audio or interactive kind), screenings, conferences, shows, and so on … So, exactly from 1999 we started to present artists as Granular Synthesis and Pierre Henry, and then we moved slowly towards new media artists and musicians interested in audiovisual performances. . Currently we are very interested in the Marco Mancuso: You’ve been running immersive works. The fourth Elektra from the very start and also as representation by Feed, that is the an artist, you’ve been for many years Austrian artist Kurt Hentschalger’s involved in the development of the seminal work, is an excellent example Audiovisual and the New Media Art of the audience interest in that type of Festival. Compared to the first work. The success that we found editions of the festival, what , were among the audience was really the changes? What were the important to get more financial directions in response to the changes support, as well as gratitude. It was a and developments in digital artistic relative success, of course, because creativity? we focus on experimental work, not on techno parties. Alain Thibault: ELEKTRA is produced by ACREQ, a company that manages electroacoustic concerts founded by the ea composers in 1978 . I was appointed as artistic director in 1993. I thought about it as a long cross fade between what this community was expecting and the future of this style. Elektra has become an audiovisual event with a strong component of experimental music combined with visual elements of any kind, video, . robotics etc … Because of our music roots, performances and concerts are Marco Mancuso: What has changed very important for us. Elektra is now a the internal structure of Elektra in

11 recent years? There was the Elektra network of international festivals and Lab, the International Art Market and realities? Can you show a concrete so on. How much are these changes example of an average project important for you? I would like to developed between Elektra and the know the artistic director’s point of other partners? view? Alain Thibault: As an example, many Alain Thibault: Well, certainly these Canadian artists were invited to many progresses we had, really let us stay festivals European festivals. For much longer in touch with the other example, Tvestroy was represented continents, especially with Europe this year at Nemo in Paris, at the STRP where the practice of Audiovisual Art in Eindhoven, at the RIAM in and New Media Art is very strong. In Marseilles. The magazine MCDm North America, after the island of Musique Digital Culture invited us at Montreal there is a desert. From the Maison des Métallos last Toronto to Vancouver nothing September to present installations by important is happening in our field. four artists from Montreal, with the Just as in the United States. Almost addition of an evening of nothing. I really believe that what we performances by Bill Vorn, Jean Piché, do or exhibit is the future of art. It is Yan Breuleux, Thomas Begin, Matthew essential that people know this way of Biederman and me. Bill Vorn is displaying art (a special thanks to the presently showing its robots in younger generations that are less Maubeuge and Creteil (Exit festival) technophobe than us). The and we are preparing a small tour for International Marketplace for Digital next September in France and Art is therefore very important to Holland. Elektra was invited at the create a network of producers Grand Palais in Paris for a week of interested in the exhibition of digital audiovisual performances, with artists art experiments. and researchers of Hexagram. Lastly, we were invited by Sonic Acts in Marco Mancuso: In 2006 I was invited Amsterdam, Arcadi Nemo is to the first edition of the International producing a new work by Herman Art Market and I remember it was a Kolgen which will be shown really positive experience, sharing exclusively to the Elektra audience at ideas and projects in festivals and the Market. We are also organizing in cultural networks. How did the project Montreal the exhibition of artists from grow over the last 3 years and how the state of Winninpeg. *We are you developing your original idea experienced that this process of of a link between Elektra and a collaboration requires a little time to

12 activate, but the results are growing international producers through the exponentially. market, they have the opportunity to present their works outside Canada.

Marco Mancuso: I know you would find it hard to tell it, but who do you think is the artist or which is the project, or even the season along the last 10 years best embodying the spirit of Elektra, that you tried to share with the audience and artists?

Alain Thibault: It’s bizarre, but many

. people think that art created with technology is “without soul”, or does Marco Mancuso: This year, Montreal not have emotions. I must say that the (with Quebec) is celebrating ten years works that I remember most are the creation and development of new ones where I felt the strongest structures in the field of new media emotions. I think that digital art has art. How is Elektra linked to other the ability to arouse true emotions, as creative and productive realities in the if something is really about to happen, city, as for instance Exagon, SAT and but everything seems under control. I others? Do you share knowledge, will always remember Modell 5 ideas or projects? Did they play an Motion Control of Granular Synthesis. active part in Elektra? It was presented during two evenings in 1997, before the beginning of Alain Thibault: Our idea is based on Elektra, at Usine C (plus an additional mutual help. We are interested in evening during Elektra 2000). The submitting work for the artists combination of visual elements and associated with Hexagram and SAT, sounds was pretty impressive. I could for example. And these artists need a hear the movement of the air place to display their works to the between my legs and my trousers. community. So, we are a perfect Even the subwoofer (on this occasion complement. They know that we care there is a wall dedicated to them), about all technical aspects of each pushed the air up to my nose. I had to presentation. And now, as they can try not to breathe …. access to a large group of

13 thought: okay, this is really what happens when you die. The final immersive work . Then there was the installation Spatial Sound:100dB at 100km / h, by Dutch artist Edwin vander Heide and Marnix de Nijs. A great interactive work, with a machine producing magnificent sounds. You are scared to receive the speaker in your face while running very quickly. . But that’s not happening!.

Then Feed from Kurt Hentschlager was certainly a very important project. The first time I saw the work I www.elektramontreal.ca/2009/

14 Material Hybridization

Motor

A scenario easily defined “hybrid” because it is characterized by material entities with unusual technical and aesthetical features, not enclosable in a usual material definition. Their characteristics escape the conventional categories, which dissolve until becoming transparent. Soft woods, liquid or flexible ceramics, electro-luminescent or biodegradable plastics, see-through The important progresses made by cements, glass with controllable the science of materials in the last opacity are materials of the close decades, have offered to the artifacts’ future, and they are already changing projecting new and unusual the contemporary project, linked by a opportunities to interpret the common denominator: overcoming traditional concepts of materials’ the traditional barriers between family, characteristics and sphere of various typologies of materials, and application that in the past were the borders – once unmistakable – typical of the materials selection for between families of materials and designers, architects and artists. quality. Contemporary materials acquire an always higher content of information and functionalization. They can be projected to adapt to complex requirements and applications, and to perceive and react to stimuli in ways everyday more similar to those belonging to living beings. All this requires new approaches and new cognitive instruments to choose the most suitable materials to render the . expressive wills of design and arts.

15 Foamed aluminum. reveal aspects of themselves that were unthinkable before, and open In this scenario, experimentation of new ‘worlds’ while guiding us towards new productive and transformation new logics. The presence of these processes and transferring all this intelligent “objects” has therefore from a sector to another, become consequences on reality itself, but on more and more meaningful and our body as well, and influences our important. Both new and traditional relations with the others and our materials, when put through these language as well.” (Fiorani E., La processes, can acquire characteristics comunicazione a rete globale , completely different from those they Lupetti, Milano 1998, p. 10). originally had, that often make them unrecognizable.

Matter, when modified and made functional, is bound to blend with the performance, and to become essence of the product itself, thus removing the always existing borders between material object and function. The so- called smart or intelligent devices, for example, that use such miniaturized electronic and computer technologies . as to define them materials, integrate these three spheres until overlapping Alumina ceramic foam. them. Hybridization as an instrument for the In this scenario of hybridization environment-sustainable design between animated and inanimate The possibility to modify materials is matter, also user and instrument are an opportunity, not only in terms of blurred. “You cannot talk anymore aesthetic and performance, but also about man and technological artifact, of environmental impact. Thanks to about subject and object, you have to the possibility to project the talk instead about a <>, that is about characteristics, it is also possible to interactions between man and affect environmental performances machines, where probably we are no starting from their limits, to then more ‘subjects’, and where things, overcome them. objects, that we use and with whom we extend our mind and our senses, Through innovative processes, like

16 co-extrusion, it is possible for by designers and manufacturers also example to create one-matter – thus in a communicative way, in order to more easily recyclable – components, show the attention of the producer to in which the material takes on subjects as: scientific research, different characteristics in different technological innovation, parts of the object (density, molecular commitment to pursue higher and weight, conductivity, orientation) to higher performances. An approach support specifically and punctually to that, in some cases, leaves aside the various structural or functional needs. real functional exigencies of the A similar approach is found in nature, application, and this is why it risks to that in living systems obtains make the choice not appropriate to functional differentiation, while not the kind of product and to the varying the chemical base elements, potential of the materials, depressing but rather the organization of their instead of enhancing them. structures. Materials and interactive devices, for Everyday materials like metals and example, are chosen mainly in ceramics, processed to obtain a applications related to the game’s foam-like structure, offer interesting dimensions, but can have many opportunities of decrease of the different technical and functional quantity of matter and increase of the potentialities even in very distant specific resistance, but also some spheres, like social or sustainable interesting artistic potentiality. design. In these fields of design where the conceptual message expressed by products gets very important in order to alert and inform people, it is essential to be aware of the communicative value of the new materials and technologies.

New materials – thanks to their peculiar characteristics (project, interact and react) – can contain a big amount of information. The possibility . of manipulating them by influencing their structure, and the tendency to Cascade, installation realized by miniaturize all computer and Michelle Brand with PET bottles. information technologies, offer more Today, innovative materials are used and more chances to project and

17 control even the concept behind concepts like poor mechanical products. In sustainable design, this performances and low durability, and potentiality is an useful opportunity, this limit the possibilities to use them. since it helps linking a low- Design should also be aimed to environmental-impact product to a “dignify” these materials, interpreting conceptual message coherent with and amplifying the expressive and sustainable approaches. communicative potentialities and their capacity to conduct ethical values, thus inverting the negative into positive.

Biodegradable materials instead, tend to resemble and be mistaken for the conventional plastics they have been called to substitute. In this case, design should instead “explicit” their environmental value through projects aimed to the communicative aspect. . For example, by including in a product made of biodegradable plastic some Wattson produced by DIY Kyoto. vegetable material, or seeds bound to Smart materials, for example, are able grow only if the object is planted into to detect and signal maintenance soil at the end of its lifespan, the level and eventual damages in real characteristics of these materials can time, and this allows for immediate be conceptually evoked and related to restoration and maintenance. They sustainability. can therefore create reactive, self- diagnosing or self-repairing structures, with longer and more intense life spans, able to communicate to users meaningful pieces of information about environmental sustainability, and to induce compatible behaviors.

For example, using recycled materials has always been subject to their . polychromatic aesthetic appearance, which is usually linked to negative

18 Energy Curtain by Static ! . consumption models by more and more consumers, allows to strongly The message-oriented approach, is amplify the results of environmental nowadays mainly followed by an politics, that in the past were mainly experimental design which is closer to sustained by very limited and contemporary art than to the specialized cultural and social groups. industrial production project. This is Nowadays research in this field has the case of Michelle Brand’s obtained steady results, same as the installations, English Eco-designer, methods and instruments for the who works on the possibilities of sustainable project have consolidated. extending the mass-products’ waste – i.e. PET mineral water bottles – by re- using them as furniture like tents and dividers, that reveal the aesthetic potential implied in their geometries or in the light refractions effects, in order to emphasize the matter potential even when it becomes waste.

Communication of ethical values is a fundamental and precious . opportunity for design and architecture to conceive objects ‘E-Static Shadows’ project and “reporting” problems, values and experimental research by designer sustainable objectives. Design has a Zane Berzina and architect Jackson growing responsibility towards the Tan, aimed to obtain smart fabrics issue of environmental sustainability. able to make static electricity Its opportunities of intervention and perceivable. influence are everyday wider: from A new phase has also started, in the choice of materials to the which the results of application of productive processes with which the these methods have to be verified on artifacts are realized, design can today a large scale through a diffusion that influence the environmental impact of involves more and more users, and the whole life cycle of products, and that happens through communicative their consumption and fruition processes which are planned and conditions. strategic, able to lead the way to a Acquiring new scenarios and deeper and extended consciousness.

19 In this phase, the role of design to consciousness is fundamental, and spread and “induce” this preludes to new modes and project interventions.

20 The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button

Marco Riciputi

elaborated on the computer.

The plot of the film is marked as: the story of a man, who is born in his eighties and whose age flows on the contrary, event inspired by a narrative of Francis Scott Fitzgerald from the 20′ies. From New Orleans to the end of the First World War until 21st century: The film is the story of a man not very ordinary and of the places ”They ask me what does Benjamin which he discovers along his route, Button have to do with the Future the loves which he finds and looses, Film Festival, what a question!” bursts the joy life and sadness of death and out Oscar Cosulich, the art director of what remains further than time. the kermes which presents the Italian Premiere of the film of David Fincher. ”It’s the life of a man ” says the Justifiably disappointed, because the scriptwriter Eric Roth, ”which is very ‘special effects’ always make you extraordinary and normal at the same think of something heavily-noisy like time. What happens to this strange ‘travel to the centre of the earth’ or person, also happens to all of us.” ‘King Kong, 20 meters tall’. – Young as in Kalifornia.

Instead, the special effects applied to cinema will always be visually less invasive. On the other hand, it’s enough to reason by fresh mind on Button/Pitt in his 20′ies, from ‘Thelma & Luise’-style features or ‘Kalifornia’: Rejuvenation is not a certain fruit of the make-up artist, on the contrary if we talk about the make up, we need The mask of Pitt to talk about the digital make up

21 The film has received three Oscars, among which there is the best special On the invasion of the eyes effects, supervisioned by Eric Barba, The challenge was only apparently who collaborated with Fincher since simple. The digital domain knew the 2003, when they worked for the reproduction of Pitt as old had to be advertisement of Adidas. The effects so credible that the public shouldn’t have been developed by Digital realize anything. They had to Domain, which is already awarded for overcome repulsion effect, which the Titanic. observer tries on anthropomorphic The principal challenge was how to human reproductions, which are not have Brad Pitt act from start to end, perfect. This so-called ”zombie” effect because the actor had the role by the which renders the personality of condition of impersonating Button in Romero unappealing even though it’s all phases of his life. For the first 52 more humanoid than C-3PO of the minutes of the film Pitt never acts Star Wars. himself. And there is still room for the What the public sees is a digitally recitation. All the expressions are the aged copy of the face of the actor fruit of the choices of the actor, which generated on computer: Pitt acts all are based on his talent and of the facial expressions of the lead- experience. Having said that, seeing actor at a separate part and the guru the behind the scenes of the film of he special effects draws them onto which shows Pitt immobile with the a digital mask which faithfully cameras aimed on his face to capture reproduces the movements in order his movements, makes a certain to apply to the face of the animator effect. on the set.

But the future may relieve the artist form also from this job, because the

22 animator promise to make giant jumps forward developing the techniques used for Benjamin Button and aim to reproduce the eyes – the http://www.benjaminbuttonfx.com/s mirror of the soul of men- perfectly, ite.html the ultimate stronghold which keeps its originality to reproduce serially.

23 Valerio Adami And The Pictorial Sound

Matteo Milani

States, in Latin America and in India – and he struck up new friendships: writer Carlos Fuentes, philosopher Jacques Derrida, painters Saul Steinberg, Richard Lindner and Matta, Octavio Paz, Italo Calvino and Luciano Berio are only a few people of his intellectual circle. He exhibited his works in the Jewish Museum in New York in 1968, at the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris in 1970, Valerio Adami (17 March 1935) was then in the Museum in Mexico City , in born in Bologna, but he was in Milan Jerusalem , at Centre Georges during the war. He initially drew ruins: Pompidou in 1985, in Tel Aviv, in houses devastated by bombs. Felice Buenos Aires , and in many other Carena’s studio, then the meeting places. with Oskar Kokoschka in Venice and later the Brera Academy with Achille With his brother Giancarlo he shot the Funi marked his education route. film “Vacanze nel deserto” (1971). He is a member of the Collège International He started from an expressionistic de Philosophie. In 1997 he founded painting that was influenced by the Fondazione Europea del Disegno Francis Bacon’s works and later dealt (European Design Foundation) in with the resolved figuration, following Meina, on Lake Maggiore . His the models of American Pop Art and relationship with the sound element particularly of Roy Lichtenstein; he has always been close and careful: thus developed a sort of fantastic and this is the reason why his thought ironic comics story, where ordinary about the relationship between objects are put in depersonalised painting and sound is still topical in interiors, becoming symbols, sexual as the contemporary field of the well, of modernity. In 1958 he began relationship between sounds and to travel and he lived and worked in images. Let’s listen to his words in the many cities in Europe, in the United following interview.

24 concerts were given every evening in our place, they invited us to take shelter in their basement, much more protected and deeper than ours, during the nights of bombardments.

My brother Giancarlo, the firstborn, played the piano and he could play Chopin though he had never studied any note. As for me, although I did not

. have any talent for music, I have always felt, till today, the strong need Matteo Milani: Can you tell us about to accompany my life with music. the relationship with music in your pictorial research?

Valerio Adami: When I was a child my mother used to tell me: “Don’t worry, sing happy”. In my family music was part of our daily and social life: my mother played the piano, my father the violin, my grandmother the mandolin and my grandfather the guitar. Every day of my childhood was accompanied by music and the . outbreak of the war did not even suffice to threaten this love of music: I I remember the passion with which, in still see, as if it were today, the day on the Fifties, I used to read Adorno’s which, during the bombardments, it music essays and the perseverance was decided that the piano should be with which I looked for the form of carried from the third floor of our representation, for my style, for my house in Via Caravaggio in Milan , pictorial thought in the twelve-tone where we lived, to the basement. My compositions, above all in Anton mother was convinced that music Webern’s scores My unreserved love could protect us from fear. of a kind of music offering itself to a “difficult” listening, like for example The Wehrmacht command had Helmuth Lachenmann’s or Savatore occupied the house nearby and when Sciarrino’s music today, dates back to the officers found out that amateur that period.

25 However, my veneration for Adorno Matteo Milani: How did you strike up was bound to disillusionment: during your friendship with Luciano Berio? a long stay in Finland , I had the opportunity to listen to Sibelius, Valerio Adami: I met Luciano Berio in exactly that Sibelius against whom 1956, when we founded together the Adorno had so much inveighed, and it magazine “Incontri musicali”. It was was love at first listening. Therefore I thanks to him that later I met Bruno painted, as a sort of mea culpa , a big Maderna and Cathy Berberian. painting with the title ” Finland “, Luciano was one of my best friends, a which I devoted to the wonderful music genius. He had an extraordinary symphonic poem of that talent that did not give him peace: extraordinary composer. wherever he was, in a plane, on a journey, perhaps in my house in Paris , ater, in the Seventies, during my I always remember him in search of a travels in India , I discovered the table on which he could work. He classic music of Northern India and composed till late at night and he since that day ragas have marked my started again as soon as it dawned. afternoons in the studio, while I paint. We had in common a big passion for In my studio I prepare the colours in the sea, too; he was a great sailor, advance, one by one, in a great Luciano number of mixes, then I choose and match them. I ask the colours to Matteo Milani: What do you think recycle the dross of the drawings; I about the abstractness of the sound operate as if I was using a treatise on phenomenon, the desire to transcend harmony, like a composer who needs reality? the piano. Valerio Adami: Music helped my time of working very much. You have to think about each note to manage to listen. In the meantime there is a listening coming from your body, too. Ancient Egyptians said that every part of the body thinks; I would rather say that every part of the body “listens”. I often quote Hermann Broch’s definition of the origin of painting. Unlike Greek-Roman tradition,

. according to which painting was born in Corinth, from the drawing that the

26 girl of the potter sketched on the wall, conception and structuring of space? by candlelight, following the silhouette of her beloved, Broch Valerio Adami: In 2004 in Naples I maintained that pictorial image was produced, for San Carlo Theatre, the born from music: the rhythm of a scenery for “The Flying Dutchman” primitive piece of music became the (Der fliegende Holländer), an form of a tattoo, a sort of dance extraordinary and unforgettable represented on the body. Till one day experience, an adventure into the tattoo emancipated itself from the Wagner’s thought and above all into body, it became a representation and his conception of the music space, painting had its origins. There is a where time becomes form. What I particular moment during which the tried to do in that scenery was to drawing becomes “real” and it is at introduce the music drama of “The that moment that we are freed from Flying Dutchman” in a pictorial space, ourselves and throw away words and making an effort to reconstruct, with definitions of things. In drawing the tools of my style, Wagner’s “view”. nature, things, the “figure”, the object . of the drawing changes and our Matteo Milani: Today the electronic intuition becomes the subject. composer is able to create sound Perhaps this is the ecstasy of ART. worlds without a score. Is it necessary to codify the hearing experience?

Valerio Adami: Most of western culture, not to mention religious tradition, was handed down thanks to memory, without the aid of any material support. I am thinking as well about Indian music, about ragas, music that is not written, which gurus give to their disciples thanks to the sharing, for many years, of a life . consecrated to music and music Matteo Milani: Could you explain to us thought. To hand down a music the application of the music principles memory is certainly far more difficult contained in painting to the than to give it to a written score. A true test of mere abstraction .

27 28 Esther Manas and Arash Moori: Sound and Sculpture

Marco Mancuso

concretization in terms of symbiotic relationship between the work, the audience and the surrounding environment. A “classical” audiovisual installation, consisting of sound and neon lights, in an interactive and synesthetic connection between sound and visual subject, but with a spatial element to it that clearly attest to a deep analysis of the location and how the public relates with it. Last month Digimag devoted a section to Domenico Quaranta, All the works by Esther Mañas and curator of one of the two parts of the Arash Moori, ‘Composition for Five section Expanded Box at Arco Madrid Rooms’ (2007), ‘Every Man and 2009. Among the very heterogeneous Woman is a Star’ (2007), ‘The Fly Killer’ works on show, encompassing (2008) and the more recent ‘Inside the different languages and media, one in Beehive’ (2009), reflect on this particular represents in my opinion practice: works that tend to use sound one of the exhibition’s highlights: the as a sculptural medium to transform work “Every Man and Woman is a and interact with the perceptions of Star”, by the two artists Esther Mañas the visual and architectonic – but also and Arash Moori. emotional and social -environments, where they are installed. In other The work, exhibited in the stand of words, the artists consider all their the Ayuntamiento (organized by works as vital steps to define and Madrid Art Council), is set within a bring forth the their artistic practice, precise and complex framework of as each new work bears the echo and artistic and contemporary sound is simultaneously a distortion of the research, devoted to the physical previous one, where various elements representation of the auditory appear under different guises. experience, its visualization and

29 sound/music and from my fascination and use of sound as a medium within my artistic practice. A number of early works realised were reconstructions of soundtracks for films made with the use of amplified domestic objects, orchestrated through real time actions. These works were concerned with an interest in a semantic ambiguity of . sound via its dis placement within various settings. ‘Composition for Five Marco Mancuso: Would you like to tell Rooms’, 2007, ‘Every Man and Woman me more about you? How do meet is a Star’, 2007, ‘The Fly Killer’, 2008 you, when do you start to work and more recently ‘Inside the Beehive’ togheter and which are you artistic 2009 are all works that we consider backgrounds? important and reflect the current Esther Mañas / Arash Moori: Esther’s direction of our practice. These works work previous to our collaboration tend to deal with Sound as a had been concerned with a sculptural medium used to interact symbolism of architectural sites and with and transform perceptions of the socio-cultural connotations visual and architectural settings. That ascribed within those. Her working said we consider all of our works vital method was to use the site as a steps in defining and pushing support for an expanded form of forward the concerns of our practice, painting and geometric abstraction, as each new work is an echo and transforming the site into a distortion of its predecessor in which representation of a fictional site various elements reappear in different through various forms of signification. guises. The spatial exploration of work and changing point of view of the viewer altered and distorted the visual coherency of the space.

My background is related somewhat with sound, both from my involvement and collaboration within various circles of ‘experimental’

30 . read as a reaction against an ever increasing commodified and market Marco Mancuso: You are an unusual driven art environments. combination of visual artist (painter) and sound artist (musician): many of At times we see our work as a form of your works are audiovisual artworks in expanded/personal film which terms of relation between sound and perhaps takes some cue from a visual element like light or painting. structuralist/materialist film How do you think to be different and traditions, other times we see our which is your potential refering to work leaning towards certain audiovisual artists working with tendencies in areas related to that of audiovisual art? sculpture. It becomes quite a slippery thing for us trying to define our work Esther Mañas / Arash Moori: The as the parameters can vary depending foundations of our practice draw on on the nature of the site and the parallel interests regarding perceptual objects we find and appropriate, but and cognitive mappings of space there is a definite interest in creating which we believe transcend our malleable and personal works which chosen media and perhaps bring a are perhaps shared concerns echoed coherence to our working methods by some artists working in current and aims. Our practice seeks to audiovisual fields . explore the boundaries between which the experience of our work can be received and its recognition as an art work blurred by creating intimate immersive environments in which participants act on some level as co- creator, through spatial investigation and encouraging open ended readings of the work.

We appropriate numerous materials and found elements culled from our . immediate environment altering and reworking them via various Marco Mancuso: Your record player techniques of augmentation, installations are complex works with a amplification and magnification these painted record, turning around a strategies as well as the ephemeral painting on the floor, with a strong nature of our installation work can be optical and kinetik art attitude and

31 aesthetic. Could you speak me a little path of working vinyl record players. It bit more about it and what inspired is also possible to relate them to an the piece? expanded form of cinema and early optical experiments with moving Esther Mañas / Arash Moori: Our image, as rotating discs whose record player installations are some of material image generates its own the earliest works and attempt to soundtrack. draw together various aspects of our individual practice through These initial works can be seen to investigating a dialogue between have informed the direction of works elements of architecture and sound. such as ‘ Inside the Beehive’, 2009 in which architectural elements of our There have been numerous variations installation are utilised to generate of this work as each one is dependant sound, a scenography creating its on certain architectural details of the own soundtrack. A record player site they have been installed within, reappears in this recent installation informing the various sprawling this time reading a broken section of geometric drawings that interrupt the ceiling.

32 Woman is a Star’,2007 was initialy concieved and based around a quote taken from Alesiter Crowleys , ‘The Book of the Law’(1904). Other such experiences and inspirations may come from just listening to a record or finding discarded materials in streets or markets.Work presented for Expanded box, Arco09 draws upon disparate sources such as the films of . Victor Erice, Constant Nieuwenhuys’s ‘New Babylon Project’ , a satirical Marco Mancuso: The use of light, the poem by Bernard Mandeville to found immersive audiovisual light structural materials. environment, are not so common within the world of digital audiovisual Also an important inspiration for us art: I can remember the LSP project are the personal interactions with by Edwin van der Heide, the Feed people whom we meet and whom are project by Kurt Hentschlager with the active on some level in realising use of strobo light, the one presented various independant artistic activity’s. at Sonar last year, the one presented Some direct artistic references and at Transmediale last year, Punto 0 by inspirations both past and present otolab and few others. Which are your would be Christina Kubisch, Erkki references in the past and which are Kurenniemi, Stan Brakhage, Æthenor, other inspiring artists for you today? Thorsten Fleisch, Peter Tscherkassky, Andrei Tarkovsky to name a few. Esther Mañas / Arash Moori: References come from a variety of seemingly different sources and experiences and inform many aspects and directions of our working process,taking inspiration from a varity of areas and media which exisit outside that of various artistic frameworks. These can range from titles or lines appropriated from literature or musical sources. For instance our interactive sculpture of . flourecent tubes ‘Every Man and

33 Marco Mancuso: You usually work details, to the social-cultural with the space. With a specific site in connotations ascribed within a site. which the artwork will be installed. For this reason, you use dark Its an integral part of our work to ambients, you work with interactivity utilise such concepts of space that and proximity, you distribute speakers you mention, especially regarding in the space, you use strobo and flash pre-conceptions pertaining to how a lights to create an augmented light site may be perceived or utilised ambient , and so on. How is important culturally. Thus for us it is always for you the concept of space, and the necessary to allow a certain elasticity ability to play with it and make it a within our working process in order to part of your artistic process? allow for these elements to inform certain directions of a work. Its a Esther Mañas / Arash Moori: Almost similar process adopted when all works we make are reliant on the working within our studio, in which a sites they inhabit in order to inform host of unexpected possibilities and certain directions of the work either working directions appear when utilising found structural or material working with or augmenting found materials.

34 construct sites within sites, which on some level are parasitic in nature and strive for a certain amount of autonomy or independence from the site they are installed, ultimately though the working process is quite similar as space for us is utilised as a material element of within our work.

.

More recent works can be seen to take a different route via seeking to www.arash-moori–esther-manas.blog spot.com/

35 Giacomo Verde: Action Beyond Representation

Clemente Pestelli

a technique also used for video- backgrounds in live concerts, recitals of poetry and plays. He was one of the first Italians to create an interactive work of art and net-art. His constant theme is dealing with playful experimentation in techno- anthropological mutations taking place and creating connections between different artistic genres. Many people will already know Giacomo Verde’s name and activity: a Although he has worked with many video maker, performer and, as he means of expression – theatre, video, likes to define himself, techno artist. computer, and web – what makes his For those who do not know Giacomo’s artistic production unique is the work, perhaps it’s sufficient to say constant and coherent political use that he represents one of the ideal from the bottom of electronic and bridges between the first pioneer digital technologies searching for season of video and multimedia “actions beyond representations”. experimentation in Italy and the current experimental phase. From the pretext of the publication of his book “Artivismo Tecnologico – He has been working in the theatre texts and interviews about art, and visual arts since the 70′s. From politics, theatre and technologies”, we the 80′s he has developed works tried to focus on his point of view on connected to the creative use of possible relations between art, “poor” technology: video art, techno- activism and technology, from performances, plays, exhibitions, presumed errors and aes-thetical workshops. He was the inventor of failures of video art to the current “video-storytelling” – theatrical static phase of utopias and performances that involve narration, movements on the net. micro-theatre and macro live filming –

36 creazione, mercato e distribuzione anche ai “prodotti immateriali e duplicabili” della videoarte. Si danno un tono di “modernità tecnologica” ma nella sostanza affrontano solo il lato “retinico”, come direbbe Duchamp, delle possibilità offerte.

Clemente Pestelli: Anche la rete, parallelamente e

. complementariamente al fenomeno dei movimenti new global, è nata e si Clemente Pestelli: In una tua recente è sviluppata in un clima di fermento intervista hai parlato di “fallimento teso ad un cambiamento radicale , ma della video-arte”. Mi piacerebbe tu sempre la rete, oggi, ha smesso di contestualizzassi questa affermazione avere quel carattere di in contesto più generale di arte sperimentazione sociale che abbiamo contemporanea in cui l’utilizzo del conosciuto tra i ’90 e i primi ’00. video, ma più genericamente dei Nonostante il generale progresso del dispositivi mediali, è divenuto una contesto tecnologico e di una prassi comune. Parli della videoarte in maggiore alfabetizzazione quanto linguaggio o in quanto circuito informatica, la spinta creativa e alternativo di distribuzione culturale? pionieristica oggi appare controllata e In che cosa ha fallito di preciso normalizzata. Che fine hanno fatto secondo te la videoarte? dunque secondo te i sogni e le utopie della rete? Davvero tutta l’eforia Giacomo Verde: Ha fallito perché si iniziale era destinata ad esaurirsi nel proponeva di contribuire al gioco autoreferenziale dei vari miglioramento del linguaggio dei youTube, facebook e degli altri social media e di modificare le regole del networks? sistema dell’arte. Ed è evidente che non è riuscita in nessuno dei due Giacomo Verde: Siamo solo all’inizio. propositi. I media hanno saccheggiato E’ troppo presto per mettere la parola dalla videoarte solo gli effetti speciali, fine. E’ vero che la logica del profitto ignorando tutte le problematiche senza etica tende a chiudere gli spazi linguistiche. Il sistema dell’arte, e la di liberazione ma io penso che ci sono grande maggioranza degli artisti che ancora tante cose da far succedere. utilizzano il video e le tecnologie, Sinceramente io non ho mai mitizzato hanno applicato le solite regole di la rete come soluzione dei problemi.

37 Quello era il sogno. Ho sempre detto dall’uso della tecnologia in scena fino che bisognava riempirla di contenuti e all’approccio open source che, tramite azioni concrete, cha andava connessa un kit drammaturgico liberamente con la realtà delle azioni fisiche. scaricabile dal sito, permette alla Adesso stiamo passando alla realtà. performance di diffondersi Ovvero si sta davvero solo iniziando a viralmente, in un’ottica di capire in che modo usarla. Secondo condivisione dei saperi. Al di là dei me e’ una crisi di crescita. contenuti, Eutopie segna l’inizio di un nuovo percorso di ricerca? E quali sono le direzioni che sta prendendo?

Giacomo Verde: Il progetto Eutopie non voleva incentrasi sulla performance teatrale. In questo momento è in fase di stasi. Dopo più di 5 anni di produzione di diversi materiali sto cercando di capire come andare avanti. Il problema è che al momento la diffusione virale che . auspicavo attraverso la rete non ha funzionato. Il progetto si è sviluppato Clemente Pestelli: Sempre a sempre attraverso la mia persona: io proposito di rete e utopie: uno dei ho fatto da virus; ma poi i “contagiati” progetti che hai portato avanti che avrebbero dovuto diffonderne la nell’ultimo periodo è la performance filosofia e creare altre oper’azioni non techno-teatrale Eutopie (dal greco sono riusciti ad andare oltre. “luoghi felici”). Dal sito del progetto: Probabilmente il progetto è troppo “Le vecchie utopie sociali sono morte, legato al mio nome. Devo trovare il ma nuovi modi di “immaginare” e modo di reimpostare e rilanciare la realizzare ‘mondi migliori» si stanno tematica in forma più anonima. Per concretizzando ‘qui e ora»”. Il una serie di circostanze ha avuto una progetto appare interessante non solo certa diffusione principalmente per il suo approccio assolutamente nell’ambito teatrale che purtroppo è pro-positivo e lontano dalla solita ancora troppo legato alla figura contrapposizione di simboli ed “autorale” e poco propenso all’open ideologie, ma anche per le modalità source e alla condivisione di saperi. con cui si sviluppa. L’intero lavoro si Penso che dovrei reimpostare dirama in molteplici direzioni: dalla completamente il sito del progetto e scrittura collettiva alla performance, dedicare più spazio alla creazione di

38 video da diffondere in rete. Ma 2001. Riallacciandoci anche alla dovrebbero essere dei video che precedente domanda precedente In propongono una modalità che quasi un contesto di saturazione mediatica chiunque possa poi sviluppare di immagini, cosa ti aspetti – al di là autonomamente per diffondere la del “semplice” appagamento estetico consapevolezza dei “luoghi felici” che – dai tuoi lavori in video? esistono sul pianeta. Al momento il problema è, come sempre, trovare i Giacomo Verde: Mi aspetto la cosa più soldi e le occasioni che mi banale di ogni creazione artistica: che permettano, magari assieme ad altre facciano pensare senza dimenticare il persone, di sviluppare il progetto in cuore. Ma mi aspetto anche che lo più ambiti. spettatore si senta trattato con rispetto e intelligenza e non come un “allocco” di cui bisogna catturare l’attenzione. E questo cerco di provocarlo cercando ogni volta delle modalità di creazione diverse dallo standard dominante. Perché penso che il processo influenza in maniera determinante il prodotto. Quando devo realizzare un video cerco di elaborare una modalità di creazione che non segua il classico schema che . va dalla sceneggiatura, alla ripresa e montaggio, ma piuttosto mi invento Clemente Pestelli: Abbrutita un processo che sia anche una dall’immaginario televisivo, quello che esperienza o una performance che forse manca oggi all’azione politica – alla fine produce un audiovisivo. intesa qua nel suo significato più Inoltre mi aspetto che soddisfi e generale e nobile – è forse l’aspetto sorprenda la “committenza”. Perché poetico, ovvero la capacità di ormai sono anni che ho scelto di stimolare l’immaginazione collettiva. lavorare su commissione. Ovvero al In questo senso, ciò che colpisce in servizio di un “pubblico” preciso che molti dei tuoi lavori è il modo con cui mi chiede di produrre qualcosa su un riesci a far coesistere senso politico e dato tema. E questo per me è perfetto senso poetico – penso ad esempio alla in quanto ritengo il processo più serie dei teleracconti o al video “Solo importante del contenuto. Limoni” delle giornate di Genova del

39 art/attivismi? Provocazioni a parte, che cosa ti aspetti possa sortire dall’ibridazione tra arte ed attivismo?

Giacomo Verde: Nessuno si deve sentire obbligato a fare niente, nemmeno l’artivismo. Per me l’artivismo è tale quando una cre- azione artistica si accompagna coscientemente ad una azione politica

. o quanto è cosciente del valore politico che mette in campo. E Clemente Pestelli: Di recente hai comunque l’arte, in quanto azione pubblicato un libro (“Artivismo pubblica, è sempre politica anche se Tecnologico”) che raccoglie molti dei non vorrebbe. Si tratta di decidere da tuoi scritti teorici che, in un modo o che parte stare. L’artivismo è nato in nell’altro pongono l’accento sul un contesto che si riconosce controverso rapporto tra espressione nell’autore collettivo, nel binomio artistica ed impegno politico. Il arte-vita e nel superamento termine chiave è, appunto, artivismo: dell’oggetto d’arte. E questa è una in un momento in cui si fa fatica a precisa scelta di campo. L’ibridazione distinguere la politica dalle sue tra arte e attivismo dovrebbe produrre rappresentazioni mediatiche – dalla una doppia azione: nel campo attivista televisione alla blogosfera per arrivare dare più spazio alla comunicazione quindi agli attualissimi social network creativa e nel campo artistico – non credi che sarebbe meglio aumentare il senso di responsabilità lasciare la politica alla sfera dei corpi e politica delle proprie scelte. dell’impegno civile individuale, liberando – per detournare una tua celebre affermazione – artisti da http://www.verdegiac.org/

40 Marc Didou: Resonances

Silvia Casini

thinking his art research and production after the encounter with this technology. Based on the physics principle of nuclear resonance imaging, thanks to complex software and data elaboration procedures, MRI creates images of the human body particularly used for medical research and diagnosis.

Besides the images, the scansion Marble, bronze and wood coexist with procedure itself plays an important reflected images: what firstly appears role for Marc Didou, who has as an abstract monolith, sudden undergone an MRI examination as reveals another face thanks to experimental subject. Still inside the concave or convex mirrors. Marc scanner tube, with a small mirror as Didou’s original way of assembling the get-away point toward the outside to ancient art of anamorphosis with a reduce claustrophobia, the cutting edge medical imaging experimental subject is overwhelmed technique is constitutes a remarkable by the rhytmical thumping sound encounter between art and science, produced by the magnetic gradients where Magnetic Resonance Imaging interacting with the radio frequency (MRI), set free from the scientific impulses. Neither a performance nor a laboratori, is made available to the form of body art, but rather the public as sculptures to interact with. ‘suspension’ of the automatism of the sculptor’s hand. The condition of Marc Didou is a world-renokwn immobility inside the scanner, in fact, Breton sculptor, winner of the allows the artist to overcome the Michetti Prize in 2005, with many solo cliché of the sculptor as a demiurge, and group exhibitions both in Italy and the sculptor as the unique creator of abroad. Since the ninetees he has the artwork. It is the machine itself, on been using MRI as a new medium for the opposite, which starts to sculpt sculpture with the result of re- the scans.

41 The property of the magnet to attract metals, which is at the core of MRI functioning, prohibits to place any metallic object nearby or inside the scanner. A large number of Marc Didou’s sculptures are made out of metal, for example the monumental “Eco” (2004) and play with the property of the magnet of attracting and, simultaneously, pulling away the . viewer. Some times the material used is bronze, other times it is iron: iron In Marc Didou’s art production the can be forged, bronze can be fused. relationship between MRI and Despiteactions the impression of staticity, sculpture becomes perceivable at a due to the materials employed, material and conceptual level. The Didou’s work is always characterised digital images produced by MRI by : to lie still inside the become material layers; the mirror scanner, to listen, to scan, to draw, to present inside the MRI scanner forge, to fuse, to cut, to re-assemble, becomes the anamorphic mirror; the to create reflections with mirrors and immobility of the artist-experimental further on. Sculptures are firstly subject becomes the immobility of conceived inside the MRI scanner and the spectator in front of the then completed by the viewer’s anamorphic mirror, which obliges the perceptual acts. viewer to maintain a precise point in the space in order to be able to This brief interview, originally held in perceive the reflected image and, French and here translated in English, therefore, the sculpture in its deals mostly with the influence of MRI completeness; the immaterial rhythm on Marc Didou’s artistic production. of the scanning procedure becomes By presenting some threads for a the materials of the layers one on the understanding the conceptual rigor top of the other, layers that are made behind the work of this sculptor, it of traditional materials such as highlights the aesthetical possibilities bronze, wood or marble, and worked of cutting edge medical imaging manually by the artist. techniques

42 usual working habit which most likely corresponds to a frailty of the individual facing the diverse and complex technologies all around. I am no man of science at all and I cannot explain the reasons causing a lot of artists to present their art as science, since, in my opinion, these two disciplines are quite separate and follow different paths. However, I . have always thought of the trajectory of art as a circular or spiralling Silvia Casini: In the past years we have evolution whereas science and witnessed a growing number of medicine project themselves forwards artist-scientist collaboration, often in a much more linear way. thanks to the support of public and private institutions (for example, the This is the reason why I think it so-called ‘artist-in-residence’ model difficult to develop a real common in Great Britain). Scientists collaboration which would go beyond seem to take advantage of art in order what you describe, a real exchange to communicate the general public where art would affect science as the contents of their research in a much as science would affect art. sexy way, thus making available the When I get in touch with scientists, abstract insights of science. Artists doctors and radiologists, I do not have gained access to advanced mean to dissolve my activity into technological instruments which science, but simply to pursuit my allow them to cover unexplored path. work as a sculptor benefiting from a In my opinion, however, the artworks tool box which does not belong to resulting from these collaborative me. projects are often merely functional to comunicate scientific issues, thus lacking the dimension of ambiguity which, paradoxically, can be found more easily in the scientific images and artefacts per se before any artistic intervention.

Marc Didou: Collaboration has become also in the art world a very

43 . me more in details what you have seen in MRI images? Silvia Casini: You have undergone MRI Marc Didou: I was not interested in in order to create your sculptures. The these images in their details, that is I departure point is, therefore, your have not examined them individually own physical body, immobilised in what each image could represent. I inside the MRI scanner. Do you think have considered them as an that the use of your body has assemblage because only in their influenced the theoretical conception succession these images reveal this of the work? I mean, does the original kind of rhythmic “neutral” power. This idea you had before undergoing the neutrality does not exist in the works I MRI examination change at a completed since a sculpture, a successive stage or during the painting represents a sum of examination itself? reflections, decisions and knowledge. Getting rid of anything useless, being Marc Didou: I think that starting a able of strongly detaching oneself this work with a very precise idea weakens is what really matters to the artist the interest in its execution. It is for when he starts a work. Since I believe this reason that I always try to make that will hinders rhythm, it is only in the starting point as open as possible. the “passive” use of this kind of The risks and the changes are part of a machine that I could reach this job. When during the examination I rhythm. With the images produced by keep as still as possible, I do this so to the magnetic resonance after each allow the image to be read, but later sequence I find myself owning a new everything overlaps and becomes alphabet with as many letters as I more fluid. Ideas and decisions pile up wish and infinite combinations. and get tangled, they do sometimes Manipulating all this I feel I shape such cancel each other. a plastic and rhythmic material Silvia Casini: Scientists regard the directly so that I never need to ask scans obtained from MRI not as myself the questions about the representations, rather as statistical imitation of form. I try to evocate only data projections. The general public, forms I work with, but certainly all the however, looks at these scans and transformations I achieve refer to interprets them as images which other dimensions as from a might call for analogies with other phenomenon of assimilation to other archetypal images. Can you explain images.

44 shaped the form in the idea of an abstraction. Never could I have conceived a sculpture as a representation of a face, for instance. In this sense and as I have already stated I am no figurative artist. My way of working totally differs from classic observation, followed by formal transcription. The first time I made use of a curved mirror to walk . through the work backwards, as a return to verify or ascertain what Silvia Casini: In your sculptures the might have been the starting point of dimension of possibility, the passage this work, that is the body. When the from the immaterial to the material image appeared, its figure curiously and viceversa are always present. The did not worry me because it had MRI scansion of the human body does become something different from a not produce photographic snapshots, simple human representation, as a but rather bi-dimensional models matter of fact something which well (sagittal, coronal, axial) of the corresponds to this dimension of the distribution of cerebral activity. This possible you mention. Later on, I have departure from the idea of actually started to get interested in photography as representation seems anamorphoses as a virtual space, a to take us to one of the paths widening of space. One associates undertaken by cinema and anamorphoses with perspective, photography, that of photography mathematics or optics, but it is very without lenses or cinema without the rarely integrated as real artistic camera – Man Ray’s rayograms, Len medium. Lye’s film Free Radicals (1979), Brackage’s Mothlight (1963) are good examples. Your sculptures often embodies two possible points of view of the same sculpture, two images, one real and one virtual. Why did you choose the technique of the anamorphosis to achieve this result?

Marc Didou: That was achieved through several stages. I have always

45 . blindness. I generally think that vision is the main place of all our senses, Silvia Casini: Credi che l’uso della RMT that it also exerts some tyranny on the nell’arte possa espandere le possibilità touch. In my opinion there exists a della visione, possa creare una visione sort of hypertrophy of vision - an quasi tattile? Mi dicevi come la tua atrophy of the touch and the other visione sia stata “migliorata” senses. I do not believe that the idea dall’esperienza della scansione. of associating sculpture to the touch is commonly spread, and when I Marc Didou: It is by grafting to my earlier evocated my experience of hand and eye an instrument which blindness inside the scanner, it is allows me to analyse reality in a more really because I found myself in the objective way, that I have overcome unusual situation of a blind sculptor, myself in a sense. An MRI scan is for which allows to exasperate the sense me like a vibration-drawing, of touch to the most extreme point. transparent and monochrome, that neither my hand or eye could have observed or drawn. Moreover these images reveal themselves when I lie http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f inside the scanner, that is to say in the 2P7M7jiz74 shade of my perception, in my

46 Chris Woebken: La Gioia In Divenire

Stefano Raimondi

punti di vista, la realizzazione di universi possibili o immaginari, sono alcuni dei campi in cui si svolge la ricerca di Chris Woebken, che si definisce come un experience designer, un progettista di esperienze. Uno dei suoi progetti sicuramente più noti e affascinanti è “Sensual Interfaces” in cui il designer, piuttosto che focalizzarsi sullo sviluppo delle nanotecnologie, preferisce Uscito dalla nidiata di designers della concentrarsi sull’esplorazione del loro Royal Academy of Arts, ricercatore potenziale ulteriore, creando quindi presso la New York University, Chris prototipi di materiali manipolabili Woebken è tra i più originali come per esempio gli “elettroni interaction design americani. organici”. E ancora, “Sensillae” del Dopo aver esposto le sue idee alla 2008 è un progetto di interaction mostra Design and the Elastic Mind, design che consiste in una serie di realizzata al MoMA di New York nel strumenti che creino un campo 2008 e curata dalla direttrice del d’azione in grado di innescare un dipartimento di architettura e design dialogo e un linguaggio di del Moma, Paola Antonelli (di cui comunicazione tra insetti ed esseri Digimag aveva parlato nel numero 34 umani. – http://www.digicult.it/digimag/articl e.asp?id=1158), ha preso parte alla Biennale di Design a St.Etienne e si appresta a partecipare alla mostra Extreme Frontiers, Urban Frontiers di Valencia.

La biologia cellulare, la realizzazione di interfacce capaci di mutare i nostri

47 . approccio al lavoro. Curiosando all’interno del tuo sito internet ho “Escape”, è invece un device che trovato, nascosta, la frase “Enjoy Life”. consente di esplorare e di giocare con le proprie fobie: lo scopo dello Chris Woebken: Apprezzare la vita strumento, non è quello di significa per me godere dei piccoli mascherare l’ambiente circostante piaceri, osservare e scoprire il più potenzialmente fobico con delle possibile. Realizzo centinaia di ambientazioni sonore, ma anzi di immagini di oggetti, cose, situazioni, innescare nuove interazioni sonore posti e persone. Mi piace scoprire con l’ambiente circostante posti nuovi, specialmente negozi di potenzialmente fobico, in modo tale hardware o negozi come “Canal da annullarlo mediante l’elemento Rubber” a New York o il negozio di dell’esplorazione e del gioco. Infine, il insetti “Mushi-Sha” a Tokio o ancora il “Flicflex”, un futuribile interfaccia ristorante coreano nascosto nel elettronica flessibile, un foglio seminterrato della drogheria “Hana” a elettronico che attraverso azioni Londra. molto fisiche come lo strappare, lo sfogliare, il flettere, consente una modalità innovativa e piacevole di “maneggiare” le informazioni.

Nel quadro di un processo di ricerca attuato da Digicult, sul rapporto tra design, arte e scienza, nello sviluppo di nuove modalità di interazione e progettazione tra materiali, discipline, idee e progetti, l’intervista a un designer come Chris Woebken, si . colloca sicuramente come uno delle Stefano Raimondi: Credo che la gioia tappe più importanti di questo possa essere considerata come una percorso. Di altri suoi progetti, legati parte importante del processo di sempre al rapporto tra specie umane creazione estetica, nonostante il e non umane, animali, o robotiche, ci termine “estetica” sembra oggi essere parla meglio lui stesso nel corso di visto, da artisti e designer, con questa chiacchierata un’accezione negativa se non Stefano Raimondi: Vorrei iniziare addirittura primitiva. questa intervista parlando del tuo Chris Woebken: Il graphic design può

48 essere descritto come un sistema o un design. linguaggio mentre l’estetica è qualcosa di più personale e complesso. Ho passato i miei primi anni di designer in un “geeky software engineering environment”. Non c’era un linguaggio visuale o un prodotto finale particolarmente interessante, ma un modo di pensare o di risolvere i problemi attraverso un metodo di lavoro particolarmente estetico. Accanto all’ideazione degli . esperimenti ho trovato molto utile, per la mia ispirazione, sfogliare e Stefano Raimondi: Kierkegaard consultare libri di fotografia. Spesso i affermava che la seduzione era il fotografi fanno osservazioni migliori culmine del processo estetico. Uno rispetto ai designer, creano temi e dei tuoi lavori si intitola: Seduction = sistemi che offrono moltissimi punti di adhesion * viscosity. partenza per grandi progetti di design. Chris Woebken: La Seduzione è Ancor più che vedere un grande un’area a cui sono particolarmente lavoro, piuttosto che nel prodotto interessato in quanto permette di finito, la gioia per me si trova nel creare un linguaggio visivo atto a processo e nello sviluppo di un’idea o vedere l’invisibile. Sarebbe un grande di un progetto. Quando guardo al successo se riuscissi a creare un lavoro delle altre persone sono più linguaggio visivo in grado di suscitare interessato a capire il pensiero e i l’immaginazione delle persone. processi che sono dietro i loro Vendere l’idea di “futuri possibili”, esperimenti, e vederne gli sviluppi. come se fossero un prodotto, è quello Capire le modalità lavorative e le fasi che sto cercando di fare; la che costituiscono il prototipo è molto rappresentazione di un’idea è una più interessante che vedere la cosa importante ed eterna. presentazione del progetto. Il design oggi ha meno a che fare con le qualità Stefano Raimondi: Hai realizzato funzionali dell’oggetto ed è invece più almeno tre progetti inerenti la sfera collegato alla fruizione esperienziale animale; dal recente Bat Billboard , ad dei prodotti, dei servizi e del contesto. e Sensillae . Perché sei così La gioia è veramente parte della mia affascinato dal mondo animale e dalla vita quotidiana e del processo di sua interazione con la sfera umana? In

49 cosa questi progetti differiscono uno relazionarci al contesto naturale con dall’altro e qual è il loro obiettivo? una sensibilità non più umana ma animale. Il progetto interattivo Chris Woebken: In particolare sono è un esperimento cognitivo interessato all’aumento delle capacità più complicato e meno ludico che vitali e alla loro combinazione con il espande la sensibilità umana sintetico, anche attraverso attraverso un animale minuscolo. “Bat l’ibridazione robotica. Ho lavorato ad Billboard” suggerisce invece di una serie di progetti attorno al tema recuperare gli accessori urbani e della relazione tra specie umana e non creare habitat per animali selvaggi umana, creando interfacce e linguaggi nella città, rendendo questa per produrre e esplorare i rapporti tra interazione uno spettacolo scherzoso. umano ad animale, come i giochi Con questi progetti voglio creare una “Animal superpowers” e “Beetle discussione riguardo alle possibilità Wrestler“, creato insieme a Natalie future di design alternativi e di come il Jeremijenko. Entrambe permettono di nostro rapporto con i sistemi naturali modificare la nostra percezione e di potrà cambiare nel tempo.

Sensillae

50 spesso molto sofisticati da un punto di vista ingegneristico ma non offrono una vera esperienza dal punto di vista del design.

Stefano Raimondi: Prova a definire in modo sintetico ciascuna di queste parole: Nanotecnologia

Chris Woebken: Il futuro della nanotecnologia e la biologia cellulare. .

Stefano Raimondi: Il progetto Future of money porta alla luce la tua curiosità verso i rituali e i gesti quotidiani. Sembri allo stesso tempo essere attratto e impaurito da un mondo dove il virtuale supera i rituali, come se i rituali non potessero vivere o essere creati nel virtuale. Parlando con le persone vedo una grande confusione tra ciò che è digitale e ciò . che è virtuale. Qual è la tua opinione a riguardo? Stefano Raimondi: Corpo

Chris Woebken: sistemi virtuali e la Chris Woebken: Il cioccolato si scioglie stratificazione dell’informazione a 37°C, esattamente la temperatura digitale possono essere la base per del corpo. sviluppare un livello virtuale capace di offrire nuovi servizi e nuove Stefano Raimondi: Potere interazioni. Ho indagato l’approccio delle persone ali soldi digitali, Chris Woebken: Partecipazione e chiedendo se i sistemi digitali convinzione potessero essere disegnati in modo Stefano Raimondi: Intervista da creare esperienze significative e azionare meccanismi di feedback. Chris Woebken: Riflessione

Durante gli esperimenti mi è parso evidente che gli attuali sistemi sono

51 http://www.woebken.net/

52 Cybercultures 4: A Journey In Virtual Space

Donata Marletta

the publication of hard copy volumes and e-books, promotes exchange and interaction of ideas, projects and research on a series of issues related to contemporary world.

During this fourth edition of Cybercultures, in the section entitled ‘Online Communities, Web 2.0 and Emerging Practices in Social Networking’, related to interactions in From the 13th to 15th of March cyberspace, I presented the paper Salzburg hosted the fourth edition of ‘Hybrid Communities to Digital Art the multidisciplinary conference Festivals: from Online Discussions to Cybercultures, academic meeting that Offline Gatherings’, which in this aims at examining and exploring the article I have the chance to illustrate diverse implications that derive from and I would like to share with the the use of information technologies in readers of Digicult, thanks to the the field of interpersonal explicit request of director Marco communication. Mancuso.

Cybercultures encourages critical exchange and debate on theoretical topics regarding the varied and numerous dimensions of the virtual world. Some of its main themes include: Cyberspace, Virtual Communities, 3D Video Games and Virtual Worlds, Interactive and Digital Art, Politics and Cyberjournalism. The conference is part of a wider project called Inter-Disciplinary.Net, an . international forum, which through the organization of conferences and The aim of the paper is to give a

53 contribution in blurring the gap communities give a critical between ‘virtual’ and ‘real’ contribution to both festivals and the communities, trying to deconstruct digital art movement in general, by the rigorous and obsolete offering the opportunity for their online/offline dichotomy. Although participants to share common today this dichotomy still exists in knowledge, and keep experimental some studies, since the ’90s the culture alive, both online and offline. concept of virtual community has changed, becoming more flexible, and shifting the focus not only toward the relationships that develop exclusively online, but also toward those that take place offline in the real life.

My interest on virtual communities is part of a wider research project I started two years ago in the United Kingdom at the Centre for Tourism and Cultural Change (CTCC), in the . Faculty of Arts and Society ( Leeds Yet the paper traces the evolution of Metropolitan University ). The CTCC the concept of community, in its promotes critical research on the classical conception, thus associated sociological, anthropological and to geographical space; and the historical aspects of tourism, in its concept of online community, which diverse forms. In the specific my PhD results liberated from social thesis is an ethnographic study on the constraints and spatial proximity, emergence of a new generation of mainly based on shared interests. festivals, which have appeared as a Within the field of Critical consequence of the increasing use of Cyberculture Studies the concept of new technologies and media, both as community that exists exclusively artistic expressions and social online has been substituted by a connectors. blend of physical and virtual Tourism, through Digital Art Festivals, components, in which the two encourages the creation of new social dimensions coexist and complement spaces, and allows people to get each other. As a consequence together, share mutual interests, build Cyberspace is no more understood as new collaborations, and attend the an isolated social phenomenon, performances. In this sense online detached from the real world, instead

54 it represents one of many ways are intrinsically related and almost through which human relations undividable. develop. In numerous studies Cyberspace has been associated with the notion of the Agora, focal point of communitarian life in the Ancient Greek Polis. The Digital or Electronic Agora represents the collective space, intangible place and core of social interactions.

The new vision of online communities has often been associated with the concept of imagined communities . formulated by Benedict Anderson, in Cybercultures 4 gave to the about relation to the emergence and thirty delegates the opportunity not diffusion of nationalisms. According only to present their projects, but also to Anderson the nation is an imagined offered an informal environment for community in the sense that the exchange of ideas and members of a nation will never know experiences, encouraging or meet their fellow members, yet in communication and debates during the mind of each lives the image of the three days of the event. I warmly their communion. invite those interested, for academic The concept of imagined community or professional reasons, to the has frequently been transferred to thematic issues of Cyberspace, to visit Cyberspace, where relations between the Inter-Disciplinary.Net’s website participants to online communities that publishes online the papers are not based on face-to-face presented, and is editing an eBook interactions, but members of the that will include the sessions of same group hold a mental image of Cybercultures 4, and finally offers the their affinity, which encourages opportunity to join the Cyber Hub attachment, and the development of network. a sense of belonging. Today is clear that studies of online communities should not forget to take into account http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/ the relationship between virtual and real, between online and offline http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/crit elements, and how these two aspects ical-issues/cyber/

55 56 Vittore Baroni: From Mail Art To Web 2.0

Tatiana Bazzichelli

postal communication.

We spent a lovely afternoon together, surrounded by the surprises hidden in his archive that often come back to life in order to pleasantly entertain the many guests who visit Vittore and his family (cat and rabbit included) and we thought about the current dynamics of social networking, relating them to the artistic Vittore Baroni was born in 1956 in experiences and practices on the net Forte dei Marmi, Italy, and lives and of the past few decades. works in Viareggio. A Music critic and investigator of countercultures, he has been one of the most active operators in the mail art planetary circuit for the past three decades.

Since 1978, he has been promoting exhibitions, events, publications and collective projects on Art Networking and net cultures that anticipated the Internet. He also dealt with visual and audio poetry, street art and comics . meticulously. I met Vittore in Viareggio, in his house in Via Cesare Tatiana Bazzichelli: Do you think that Battisti, a treasury of wonders for all networking platforms defined with those interested in the dynamics of the term Web 2.0 (Facebook, the net and creative correspondence, Myspace, Youtube etc.) are important seeing as he collects hundreds of in order for younger generations to materials, envelopes, stamps, records get more involved with the concept of and works from collective projects networks, or are they a mirror of a accumulated over thirty years of involution in net practices? What do

57 you think the term “making the net” by connecting with one another. It means today? seems obvious to me that the social networks that have had and will have Vittore Baroni: Vittore Baroni: First of more success are those where people all I think that we have to accept the find a certain amount of practical use. fact that there’s a new generation of Before the Internet existed, I was part social networks that have sprouted of the music circuits and music from a constant evolution of collectors, and this network had technological and communicative already expanded worldwide. The instruments. By doing some research Internet, with all it’s affiliations it’s evident that there are not only the defined by the term Web 2.0, is an most commonly known social instrument with enormous potential, networks, but it’s such a vast but, and this seems impossible, we’re phenomenon that it’s difficult to give still not able to use it fully yet. Every an opinion on the value of these and time I come across collective creative consider them more or less positive projects online, I’m surprised to state compared to the more “traditional” that the results obtained are often networking practices. In a few words, inferior in terms of networking than I believe that the presence of these what was capable of being achieved instruments is useful; what becomes with postal art through a simple decisive is understanding how to use postage stamp. them and for what purpose. Even Ray Johnson, known as the “father” of mail art, in reality didn’t just use mail in his networking activities, but for example he also used the phone, for physical encounters with groups of people based on particular strategies. Networkers are people who don’t close themselves in their study in order to make their art; instead their primary objective is the desire to build nets and communicate with other . people. The act of communication There were decades of becomes a work of art. countercultures and political battles, I find it very useful that there are during which the most common millions of people who are beginning means of communication used was to approach the theme of networking the simple instrument called

58 “mimeograph”. The flyer given to chatting, with someone who shouts a people on the street, during 1968 little louder once in a while. But the (which in Italy was actually 1969), the structure of networks is not thought fanzines or punkzines from the punk of in order to create a constructive era, created an efficient and dialogue. If tomorrow social networks disruptive action in certain circuits. A made with fewer restrictions and no process such as this should be even strict rules will be successful, this will more exponential with the Internet, be a step forward and perhaps there because it is directed to a much wider could be a new counterculture. In the audience. But I believe that we are past these practices arose because still not capable of using the the “entertainment” was so restricted instrument efficiently. Maybe we that the subversive content would should wait for Web 3.0? You realise leap up and become evident more that many of the peer-2-peer quickly. Today we are saturated by networks are still widely used to data and voices. On the one hand it’s exchange pornographic material; a positive, but on the other the large part of the world’s population is message becomes diluted and no one subject to the digital divide and knows how to take part actively. problems of primary survival; others seem to prefer an “individual” life Why was Luther Blisset so right in the concept more than a “social” one; I 90′s? Because we realised that we don’t think we’ve gotten to an arrival were missing a certain mythology of point and a total maturity of network attitudes and ways of thinking; what practices, despite the fact that many Franco Battiato described as “a think the opposite. permanent centre of gravity” was missing. Once upon a time you would The hope is, as it was in the 1960′s go to see a concert like Woodstock when hundreds of thousands of and on the stage you would see copies of independent magazines per “mythological” people who were like printed, that today new forms of lightning conductors and diffusers of social networks can be developed energy. Today in the network that are more elastic and really favour dynamics we have an explosion of creative work. Usually the “inventors” artificial democracy and equality, of these platforms are young adults which creates a total opacity; the that start doing this kind of thing just subject of individual responsibilities for fun, and this is positive. We’re still tends to crumble in an in a very immature phase: to be on undifferentiated mass of fragmented Facebook is more like going to a data. Once upon a time people like piazza and listening to people John Lennon created a song that had

59 meaning because it was created by by this, much before the Fluxus people like him, but also because it experience, can find a place in the was perceived by an audience that current generations of social contributed to distributing it and networks. I think of the fact that the spreading it through people’s mail artists themselves and the imagination. If a song of his like “Give networkers can use social networks as Peace a Chance” was sung by millions a territory for artistic criticism. Do you of people in a piazza during a protest, think these practices on the net are a virtuous circuit would be created reversible or immeasurable? that contained the artist and the public. In the frenzy of equality of Vittore Baroni: The creation of mail Web 2.0 the most satisfied are those art coincided with the diffusion of who have the power, because the postage as a means of problems are still the same but people communication in different circles, have the illusion that there’s a full like that of the New York freedom and the possibility for Correspondence School founded by everyone to have their 15 minutes of Ray Johnson, but also those of visual fame. I think that current social poets in South America, or artists networks are reality shows for within the Iron Curtain. The genesis everyone. Now we just have to coincided with a practical need: the transform the reality show into a idea of connecting in the most simple cultural program (which is a difficult and functional way possible. George task!). Maciunas understood that there was a network of people who shared artistic and creative objectives but they were in Europe, America or Japan. It was no surprise that Fluxus came about through a festival in Germany, spinning a web via the post and telephone between different people who had common interests. There was an intense epistolary correspondence activity behind Fluxus. Ray Johnson the most . efficient and economical way to create his artistic network through the Tatiana Bazzichelli: I ask myself post and telephone, but if he were still whether the network of mail art and alive today he would probably use to the net practices that were inspired internet too.

60 In fact the true primary essence of so doing not giving up on the pleasure mail art was not the fact of “using the of the “physical” manufacture, but post”, but to begin sharing projects. using email to send invites quickly, for No one who practices mail art has an daily communication, etc. Mail art is a absolute or fetishist attachment to non-profit and non-commercial the post as a means, and no one has a artistic practice, but can be very refusal toward different means of expensive when you start to communication and new communicate to hundreds of people. technologies. On the contrary, the The natural generational replacement computer has revealed itself as being is always moving toward electronic very useful for filing archives, for ways of communicating. managing large databases, to layout and print your own pages of stamps To answer your question I believe that and much more. A lot of postal artists, these practices are reversible, within like Piermario Ciani, began using the the limits of the fact that in some Commodore 64, the first computers, countries the computer has become the fax machine, trying to learn the the most common means for first programming language, mostly communication. But for mail artists in to be able to communicate. Some Africa or China the computer is still an people tried to create “alternative” expensive means and so postage is postal systems for artistic still widely used. In the projects of the correspondence, like Ulises Carrion past few years, I have tried to send and Peter Kuestermann. mail art project invites via post but also via the Internet. In this way I saw how many participants I could involve through these different channels of communication. In 2008 I managed a project on the artist’s book, based on the theme of Utopia, sending the invites through different art websites, like those dedicated to the continuity of Fluxus, to the creators of stickers or street art. The invite was open to everyone and bounced around . different websites and blogs, with the risk of receiving an unprecedented When the use of the computer amount of work. I received 170 artists’ spread, many mail artists began to use books in total from 26 countries. Of email while using traditional mail, in these, about two thirds came from

61 the mail art circuit that I built over often brings to a weakening of the thirty years of correspondence. Not content of a message. more than 50 came from authors that saw the invite on the Internet.

People on the net are unfamiliar with the mechanism of mail art and perhaps they believe that it isn’t possible that everyone can take part in a project and everyone gets free documentation. Perhaps they think that there’s some trick underneath it all. There’s a strange discrepancy between “analogical” networking and . digital networking. I took part in Tatiana Bazzichelli: How do you various creative web projects, explain the diffusion of net art conceived with a similar structure to projects in the 90′s then? that of mail art, and I realised that the number of participants was Vittore Baroni: Thinking about net art, considerably reduced compared to when I go to the various Biennale Internet’s potential. In order to create events or make use of projects on the digital networking, paradoxically net, I have the impression that these much more work is needed, despite sharing platforms, that are often the fact that there are more potential conceptually innovative and well- users. People are used to the fact that built, are actually used by very few web projects are for rapid and of people over the course of time. It immediate fruition, Internet language reminds me of conceptual art: put is rapid and intuitive. To participate in side-by-side with great enunciations, a web project can be reduced to the the work often seemed a little stale. fact of writing a simple line, or Often the net art works, after an initial sending a ready-made image. For mail moment of enthusiasm, don’t have a art there are slower and more future on the net, and “good games” personal preparation times, but are invented that remain static in the people seem more inclined to use enunciation stage. They aren’t used by their time creatively, with a view to a vast audience and (perhaps) they the work they will receive in exchange only make the net artist look good, or for their own in their letterbox. Mail whoever created the work and art is communication, but it is also a exhibited it somewhere. The work gift, a potlatch. The speed of Internet

62 remains in the history of net art, but is music, without having created any poor in its social use and quickly masterpieces. We’ve gotten used to a becomes obsolete and cannot be world that travels at light speed, but found on the net any longer. maybe cultural paradigms have gestation periods that don’t coincide From my point of view net art is an with our consumerist frenzy. Since I elitist practice, common in the was a teenager, I was fascinated by cultural industry, which must continue artistic movements and cultural to produce catalogues and make phenomena of opposition, from imaginary capital. I’m almost happy Dadaism to Fluxus, from the Beat that mail art was not historicised and Generation to Hippies, which brought studied. Maybe it’s not worth much, a fertile movement of strong ideas for or maybe there’s something a change in real life, capable of really uncomfortable in its “openness” and giving you something. In the recent “gratuity”, in its pointing the finger at years of postmodernism, that I hope regal nudity, which is best not to talk are ending, we took elements of about too much… The sum of art + modernity and limited ourselves to Internet should, in theory, trigger rearranging them, without really revolutionary projects, which are going beyond (post), and without being delayed and are difficult to opening ourselves to a new dimension concretise. of art thanks to the net.

Perhaps hacking or net art practices have not yet found a way to leave a real “gift” to those who use them. When, as a boy, I looked for underground magazines by sending a few dollars sealed in an envelope to New York, hoping that I would get something in return, the experience enriched me, those materials provoked cultural shocks in me. Until . we can create a strong mentality If we take the computer-generated through current media, the conclusion music field for example, it’s been at will always be something like least 30 years since people like Brian Facebook. Lots of people put Eno have experimented with robotic together, but who exchange poor and superficial content.

63 History of Mail Art whose interior and humus developed phenomena that few know anything about, like Neoism, Multiple Names, Plagiarism, Impossibleism, Trax, the Luther Blissett project, that represent the tip of the iceberg. We should have the patience and curiosity to study the origins of artistic networking, taking example from those few critics and . authors that have triggered a theoretical observation on the subject Tatiana Bazzichelli: Perhaps what’s (Chuck Welch, John Held, Craig Saper, missing in Web 2.0, which was not to mention your book on included in Mail Art, is the fact of Networking Art), to avoid to continue creating a “real” exchange and to discover what has already been generating a criticism of the medium discovered but to also try to itself. Perhaps we should try to create comprehend how to develop less strategies in order to move social superficial sharing mechanisms in network users to more “traditional” digital networks that aren’t so forms of networking? connected to commercial frames of Vittore Baroni: Well, it would be mind. strange to go back to mailed fanzines I hope that in the not so distant future instead of blogs… Actually I think the platforms like Myspace or Second Historical phase of mail art was over Life, where you are caged in enforced at least a decade ago, mail art has had structures and behaviour – personally I its time and we cannot go back and feel like they are “concentration take the same route. But mail art can camps” – leave room for other be useful as a Historic memory, as possibilities where you can really feel well as the preceding forms of comfortable. More suitable analogical art. What should be experiences that are more similar to favoured at this point in time is an mail art are for example Flash Mob, attentive analysis and study of the which use the web to give life to past of networking, its many small physical meetings, to live a common threads that are often hidden, which albeit brief “aesthetical” experience, a could give useful advice to those who bit like the meetings organised by Ray work with computers today. Like the Johnson. In my opinion, we must case of the forty years or more of the overcome the distinctions between

64 art and non-art, between personal mail artists created the extremely identity and artistic work, between active Dododada: worker and work, between http://dododada.ning.com/ ), in so individuality and collectives, between doing creating a kind of geo-psychic virtual and physical encounters. With shared map, where every participant a few friends I’m trying to move in this can suggest new situations for direction, through a project that uses meetings or other “wandering places” the web but needs real life suggested by others. interventions, thought out to involve people who know nothing about net “Creative” social networks should be art or hacking or art in general. usable by anyone, not just those who have specific knowledge in the artistic environment. Luther Blissett was created in this way, like a unique “public” icon that anyone could take on, deprived of any specific characterisation in the art world. I think there can only be a new generation of artists/networkers when people begin to find pleasure in taking part in different projects, when they will find a way to enrich . themselves in them. There must be something constructive to exchange The project is called Wandering Places and share. It’s not necessary to always and pushes toward collective hide behind nicknames for efficient exploration, on convocation of the results, the fact of getting together single participants, of concrete places physically without barriers is perhaps that mean something to these the true objective of “making the net”. particular people, like a door that When an experience is created where opens onto a memory, a dream, a we find ourselves alone with other utopia. The first meeting was on top professionals of the field, then we of Mount Borla, in the Alps, in a know that something is not working. natural valley where the forest opens Even if I am against the star system, I up to a circular vision of the sky. These realise tat today we are missing places are documented on a blog on a “reference figures” that are used at social network Ning (where Italian catalysts in order to coagulate forces.

65 people they haven’t seen for a long time, and through word of mouth the number of users has rapidly and excessively increased. People join out of curiosity but they stay because the chatting is company and it’s also a kind of authorised voyeurism, but it could also be a nine-days’ wonder. As soon as there will be a similar network, but a little more pleasant . and useful, the users will move on. Look what happened with Myspace. It Tatiana Bazzichelli: In social networks had Facebook’s function, but now it you don’t create the platform, but find has become an obligation to anyone yourself in someone else home, trying who has a band and often the record to furnish it as you prefer and companies themselves create pages producing content for third parties. for their artists. Why do you think there are so many users on Facebook today, despite the There are a lot of new ideas for Social speed and superficiality of exchange, Networks that are in incubation, whereas in the BBS’s we were always waiting to have success or to be so few, even if talking about ways of abandoned. For example, Arturo di thinking and utopia? Corinto created a great network with the objective of monitoring Italian Vittore Baroni: Communication on politicians, to make the dialogue Facebook is very easy and at the same between voters and politicians as time all social networks allow an transparent as possible. The doubt is integrated way of sharing that was whether the project will really be impossible before: with your mobile capable of capturing the interest of you can film something and put it on people and make them participate, so Youtube, then link it to Facebook. All that the platform can be updated this, at the time of BBS, was regularly, the truth of information can unimaginable. The procedure is be verified, etc. Perhaps a social immediate and easy, you can promote network about a single politician yourself easily and reach a lot of would be easier to concretise, where people with one click. On Facebook voters and adversaries alike can everyone is curious about what confront each other. happened to old classmates, or

66 provides a useful service. The system works if everyone uses it correctly, starting from and open source concept, if you feel part of it. In many social networks you feel uncomfortable, you have the sensation that you’re a temporary guest. I believe that from the moment we really feel at home, at ease and certain of the possibility of sharing an . experience with others without a Big Brother breathing down our necks, Wikipedia is a good example of a then we can really talk about social virtuous platform, which works with networking. the contribution of everyone and

67 Darwin From The Microscope

Gigi Ghezzi

theory is its contemporaneousness, however, it’s worth dwelling on those aspects that reveal the impact on society today, such as the ways in which it is accepted or rejected.

This was the main concern of Venla Oikkonen, researcher at the Christina Institute for Women’s Studies at the University of Helsinki. In her contribution Narrating Descent: Darwin is turning 200 years old and Popular Science, Evolutionary Theory we must admit that if we consider this and Gender Politics (Journal Science period of time by the topicality of his as Culture, V.18, n.1 marzo 2009) has scientific work, he doesn’t look his age deepened and made more complex at all. Although Italy is not celebrating the idea of science popularization. him except for small events (a Country with a catholic scientific freedom) there’s someone like the National Research Council that with a number of Almanacco Science thought at least about mentioning the anniversary. http://www.almanacco.cnr.it/base_t utto_cnr.asp?ID_rubrica=1

I do not want to dwell on the debate creationists vs evolutionists, because . there’s loads of good articles that can animate the discussion, and because I In fact one of the goals of scientific do not think this can further enrich topics (even the arduous ones) is to the huge scientific heritage that go about under the form of a story: Darwin left us. If one of the most documentaries, news articles, radio interesting aspects of Darwinian broadcasts are an example. They are

68 stuffed with stories of heroic scientists, molecular struggles of gay . sea horses, and so forth. But H. Porter Abbott has described in As regards the Darwinian scientific detail the reasons of the unnarrable of discourse, some authors have focused Darwinian theory: first, the evolution their attention to the narrative forms is not a “good story”, even better it is thanks to which it became popular not a story tout court, because the and how he generally influenced the actors, that is the species, do not exist cultural values associated with it (see as a story unless they are described a e.g. Myers, 1990, Writing Biology : posteriori , after their extinction or Texts in the Social Construction of rather as long as they are on the verge Scientific Knowledge and Mellor, of extinction. And the same applies to 2003, “Between fact and fiction: the evolutionary events which, demarcating science from non- although they are identifiable as well, science in popular physics books.” a posteriori they are a strange Social Studies of Science 33:4 ). combination of interdependence (variations on an evolutionary level According to Curtis (Curtis, R., 1994, shall have an effect on other levels) “Narrative form and normative force: and independent (indirect causal baconian story-telling in popular relationships and the absence of science”, Social Studies of Science intentionality). These are the two 24:3 , pp. 419-461), the popular cornerstones of the famous model of scientific discourse that follows ‘punctuated equilibria’ proposed by narrative schemes is a powerful tool Stephen Jay Gould and Niles to promote a normative vision of Eldredge, still one of the main points science and at the same time to in support of Darwinian theory. immunize it against criticism, a way to moralize the target audience while In other words, the protagonists of apparently it only seems to describe the story are always changing, there “facts” (and this tells a lot about the are countless, and this crowd is reason for creationist acrimony). dominated by a blind mechanism of life, love and death without an intelligent design (in which the creationists believe, after all).

Oikkonen has led these considerations towards new purposes and has positioned her analysis mainly on the

69 tracks of gender studies. In particular, theory, but she has studied in depth she has focused on the pressures rather the opposite aspect, such as upon the evolutionary theory when narrative devices that allowed the this is made into a narration: on the negotiation of the unnarratable to one hand she studied the conventions make it coherent and popularly of popular writing that privilege recognizable. stories dealing with science and nature (such conventions are realized To do this, she has undertaken a through narrative structures defined detailed semantics of two popular “family”, as plots of adventure, science texts well known, such as the discovery and conflict), on the other one by Adam and Bryan Sykes Curse: side she wanted to put these A Future without Men and Natalie “popularising” narrative devices into a Angier Woman: An Intimate conflict against a more productive Geography that share the attribution textual research about the Darwinian of a crucial role to the “micro- scientific subject. The one by Herman narrative”, i.e. the world of H. P Abbott (see Abbott HP Herman, microscopic entities (which could D., (2003) Unnarratable knowledge: perhaps be better defined as the difficulty of understanding “microscopic narrative”), of genes, evolution by natural selection. chromosomes and gametes. With Narrative Theory and the Cognitive these two texts, Oikkonen wanted to Sciences) is certainly among the most suggest the possibility of a further famous in this sense. dimension in the analysis of the evolutionary theory, an area that goes beyond species and organisms.

Oikkonen mainly distinguished four levels of effectiveness in micro- narrative, thanks to them the evolutionary theory was justified and accepted with a significant popularity. Briefly summarizing the first level consists in a sort of coherence and precision in the microscopic world of

. genes and organic chemistry, a kind of immortality that the species and However Oikkinen not focused, as organisms do not have because they Abbott, on the concepts that most are governed by the visible laws of were impoverished by the Darwinian mortality..

70 asof OurOikkonen’s Tribal History analysis and

are emblematic in this sense). Those sexual attributes assigned to chromosomes have met a certain nostalgia for a binary sexuality, which is daily called into question. In this sense, maintaining clear boundaries between sexuality and behaviour has provided the micro- . narrative with a sense of security for gender beliefs that deny the The second level has more to do with proliferation and the volatility of contemporary media culture: the sexuality in late modern or post- visual charm of gene sequences, modern society. whose vision was allowed by the microscopic technologies has made Finally, the fourth level is linked to DNA a fascinating cultural icon of our scientific discourse itself, as it is self- time, improving its development and justifying: the micro-narrative is more arousing the interest from the early popular because it enhances science school age. itself, but to do what is needed to stimulate feelings it must provide Third, as Lancaster and Roof certainty and all this comes from the emphasized (Lancaster, RN (2003) The space dimension in which we are. Trouble with Nature: Sex in Science Thanks to micro-narrative, the “inside and Popular Culture ; Roof, J. (1996) organizations” in which we find Come as You Are: Sexuality and ourselves, the vastness of science Narrative), the popular discourse on may seem “out” because it regards the contemporary ‘evolutionism – inner being, inside species and bodies, particularly the psychological ones – and to a certain popular idea of have used a microscopic strong “finitude”which is opposed to the anthropomorphism linked to complexity of the major current sexuality, which at times has reached scientific theories, and because of this the paroxysm of involving finite promote its acceptability with chromosomes X and Y directly in a feelings of security and confidence in miniature of masculine / feminine scientific research. gender (the works by B . Sykes as well Blood of the Isles: Exploring the Genetic Roots

71 from misinterpretations, has shown how the semantic analysis of works of popular micro-narration can reveal some mechanisms of science legitimation . A complex and no coherent at all theory, like the evolutionary one, can become popular through assertive patterns of trust, hope and patriarchal sexuality. The semantic analysis of popular scientific . texts is clearly a very interesting tool for the understanding of Oikkonen’s work, although not free contemporary culture.

72 Pathosformel fever

Massimo Schiavoni

possible thanks to such companies, as Pathosformel, that aren’t intimidated by experimentation and comparison, in a multimedia society which is always growing and nevertheless watching attentively and giving critiques on those works masked by dramatic techniques. Daniel, Francesca and Paola create woolly works of art appearing on a stage or in a room, where the scene and the 26 January 2009. Pathosformel audience, the artist and the user, received the special prize UBU 2008 breathe together, where the eye with the following award : “young comes into drama and the sound company aiming at an abstract and comes into opera. physical theatre to be pursued with an There is nothing to envy in the already distinct and layered sign, by theatrical projects by Aleksej Krucenik which the research on material and or by Malevic, when the timidity of form is the starting point to evoke a the bones uncovers bit by bit, and fragmented and deconstructed shows scenic and physical abilities, visionary theatricality of great charm, accepting personal imagination, which exploded in the national and international scene, achieving a suspended trainings, tuning and significant relationship between “dancing algebraic equations”. A conceptual art and theatre.” relaxation we tend to love through the white colour, when the absence of the They have been staging for more than body is that little bit extra and where four years and their innovative style we can watch a sort of natural birth; a revolutionized and turned upside cautious performance, a palpable down contemporary theatrical scenes acrobatics, an impudent delicacy. An that needed continuous lifeblood, elegance that elbows and suddenly when the Made in Italy was disappears as long as wax is melting, enormously flourishing. And this is being this material pure and

73 ephemeral, malleable and spiritually A work was presented at the Alboreto erotic. The mise en scène is not much – Dwelling Mondaino Theatre in traditional or at least it disperses Summer 2008 who “took off” among alternations, still tasting the typical the other cities in Dro and in Brussels : materiality of a Joseph Beuys or a “The shortest distance” is the last Marina Abramovic. We are in front of a effort represented as work in progress new theatrical aesthetics, a new . New materials and visions, live music poetics that embraces sculpture and plunges us into a bar at the Folies- sound, performance and Berg, but we can still decipher free choreography, cosmopolitan will and subjectivity, or simply dream scenography of the invention. gasping behind the passing of suspended squares. “Each of these squares on the lines now corresponds to a sung note, as signs of a Gregorian score that can be continuously modified. Everything we hear is manifested by the sliding presence of forms on the lines. Everything we see is accompanied by its corresponding voice. There is an evident, even ambiguous synchrony between song and image. Does the movement of . this ever-changing music generate If the main element in a drama is the the melody or is it the song driving audience, in Pathosformel the quibus these geometric inhabitants? Is it the is characterized by the potential behaviour of the forms that gives birth unconscious ability to bring together to liturgy, or is it the interweaving of a generation of users, from the most voices imposing choreography to this oddly assorted cultural and social dance opera without stature? corners of our country, as well as of (Pathosformel) Europe . That’s an important centre On 19 th April the Pathosformel will be for thousands of fans and experts who present at the Palladium Theatre in feel the call from the Venetian Rome. In May they will take part in collective, who “peregrinate” all two events, that is the Egg Festival in around Italy and fill up Festivals e Milan and Another Theatre 2009 in theatres sometimes acting as fans of Forlì. Meanwhile, I tried to investigate singers crowding the stadium. on some issues related to the training, the project phase and the artistic

74 creation of this new collective the techniques and to compare with through a short interview. any other possible language. At every time we need to have a confrontation with a new material that can be represented.

Now we are people who share a passion for this work and who try to make it a consolidated activity. We work together but at the same time we do other things, because we need it and because we are interested in it. Our differences and specificities are . still there; they are probably the most important aspects that can enrich a Massimo Schiavoni: Who were Daniel project and that give different Blang Gubbay, Francesca and Paola contributions to every new work. Villani Bucciero? Who are they now?

Pathosformel. Daniel Blangé Gubbay, Francesca and Paola Villani Bucciero were three students at the University of Venice IUAV that associated at the end of 2004 to build a work project called pathosformel, that could investigate through works the limit between theatre and performance. We come from different cities (Milan,

Bologna and Parma ) and from . different experiences that range from a rather more theoretical mark, and a Massimo Schiavoni: But what I’d like more developed dramatic practice, to to know is: did you look around? and more technical experiences.. what did you see before creating this project? Was it already inside your We shared all our specificities, and we minds or did it generate from other knew we wanted to work together needs, from other interests in without any other preconceived idea progress. about drama or any other clear poetic reference. We always had to build a Pathosformel: The meeting was born new strategy of work, to understand from our compatibility, apart from a

75 common vision on the type of work bones” comes from a theoretical that we wanted to conduct. Surely we reflection : there are many of us who looked around, and we studied many think about performance and live things together as we needed – and show as immediate arts, or the we still need – to see as much as absence of any material medium – as possible, we believe it happens to can be the canvas for painting or the most people who face an artistic film for the cinema – between the creation. We trained together at the observer’s eye and the actor’s body. university and we discussed about The idea was to reflect on the one everything we found around us, even hand this immediacy, deny non-theatrical matters. expectations for the body’s visibility on stage. We thought its presence Meanwhile we deeply wanted to “do before the public was no longer the something”, but it was not too much basic element from which we could clear yet; life circumstances in Venice build the rest, but the heart that must and our own interests determined our be called into question. way to begin work and this influenced work, as well. At the same time this is bound to a theoretical approach linked to defiguration, to those artistic techniques that sketch the shape , that put signs, that give it a new power – going beyond the entirety of the shape itself: the shape will be completed by each observer in a different way and it is as if it already possesses in itself the power to become all these forms. The idea of the show was to cover the body, not . to hide it, but to let it emerge in a new Massimo Schiavoni: “La timidezza form every time and to let the delle ossa”, could you tell me why it observer rebuild it in an anatomical or was born and how? And does it imaginative way. The project in this reflect, according to you, the sense is for us the beginning of a beginning of an alternative process or process of delegation or extreme at least an original process inside confidence in the observer’s contemporary drama. imagination. This is simply to give clues that can be taken for what they Pathosformel:“The timidity of the are or completed within a kind of

76 narration. body image and support of the representation. If in “The timidity of If in “La timidezza delle ossa” we the bones” the canvas was the – offered a “dotted body” to be ideally almost classical – support that allow completed and rebuilt in its entirety, the presentation of the body image, later in “The smallest distance” we here we chose to take the problem have built a geometric-musical further. system from which the audience could find their own abstract or Space is completely dark, and the narrative intimate structure. They are bodies are completely covered in squares flowing in two directions, still black therefore invisible – or only for us they represent exactly this visible on the limbs covered in a layer delegating instrument that maybe of white wax. The game is ambiguous: allows each spectator to find, in the on a side, wax is the support that loneliness or in the shapes’ crossings, makes the body visible, on the other a different life or a total musical side the body itself is a support for the abstraction in which he is allowed to wax. They are bodies of wax, forcedly lose himself. temporary and fragile, that blend and separate while creating human figures not always recognizable.

Metamorphosis is inevitable in this work: there is one voluntary component, and one typical of the material. Wax is an organic material, and of course it starts immediately to melt and crackle progressively diminishing the body’s visibility. It is a disappearance by fragments; in the . end we find scales on the ground, like a constellation born from the body’s Massimo Schiavoni: What is the evaporation. meaning of the body in ” Volta “? What role does the metamorphoses have here?

Pathosformel: ” Volta ” was born at the same time than “La timidezza delle ossa “, always within our reflection on the relationship between

77 . made our work richer with a vision that we would otherwise hardly find. Massimo Schiavoni: You’ve been chosen for the first part of the “Fies Factory One” project, together with four other young artistic realities like Sonia Brunelli, Teodora Castellucci, Francesca Grilli e Teatro Sotterraneo. How do you live this, and what benefits were taken by this creative experience in close contact with different ways of working and other stylistic codes in the Dro residence? . Pathosformel: Fies Factory One surely represents an opportunity and a Massimo Schiavoni: Your works stand support like we couldn’t imagine out in the artistic panorama also for before. First of all, it gave us a three- their personal and original scenic years funding not related to a single presence, and for the use of project, which allowed us to plan innovative technical and spatial more completely the times at our solutions. How did the creative disposal for a production: it allows us passage go from the previous works to develop a project in an articulate to “La più piccola distanza”, and why way, and to take time to research the now a sort of “bodiless concert” next project. suggests more than squares in motion? Furthermore, the relationships with the other selected artists was for us Pathosformel: The passage towards especially interesting. Beginning with “La più piccola distabza” has been for evident analogies and differences us quite immediate: we wanted to (some of us come from theatre, some continue in the sign of the previous from dance or visual arts, and at the research, while distancing from the same time none of us can be listed in kind of image that we had only one definition), the confrontation represented in our early works. We during the common residence times wanted to continue creating a system and the rare but very important that played with the imagination of collaborations – i.e. during the event the audience, that allowed them to in October 2008 for the firts complete in infinite manners a system anniversary of the Factory – have of abstract signs loaded with a human

78 imprint. was born from this research and as a result of this first performance. We In case of this work, though, we were still needed to investigate the not interested in working on an relationship between music and anatomic reconstruction of the body, behavioural geometries, and in this but more on a study on movement case we chose to relate music reading that could be translated into the to an actual geographical map of an intentions and relations behind ideal city. A cartography in human movements. For this reason, movement, that is played live while it we worked on the idea of a staff in forms and dissolves: it is as if every movement, a system of signs in urban path traced on the map a line, which every element moves following and at the same time was its own speed, and through these accompanied by a note that – springs and stops, enters in some kind together with the hundreds of paths of relationship with the nearby that we cross everyday – creates shapes. music.

Choosing a geographical map was for us very meaningful, almost a manifesto, because in it we found that hybrid system, in balance between abstract sign and allusion to the real world, that we had been constantly looking for.

. www.pathosformel.org

The “Concerto per harmonium e città ” www.myspace.com/pathosformel

79 Psybody Design

Otherehto

secondo Freud non solo gestisce i nostri modelli comportamentali ed etici ma che, grazie al suo collegamento con l’Es, funziona anche come un’oscena agenzia di controllo che recapita bersagli offuscati dal pathos. I diktat che ci vengono imposti contengono ordini di scala ultraterrena (o in termini aggiornati transumana) che l’agenzia rilascia per farci aggomitolare su noi stessi Premessa nonché per deriderci quando Questo testo presenta il background nonostante tutti i nostri sforzi non teorico che ha ispirato la nascita del riusciamo ad eccederli. psybody design, un work-in-progress Riporto ora un recente episodio che formulato per la prima volta all’inizio può, nonostante la sua apparente del 2008. Psybody design verrà trascurabilità, suggerirci degli spunti presentato pubblicamente a per un discorso “d’occasione” sulla novembre 2009 alle conferenze concezione contemporanea del Multiple Ways to Design Research corpo. Il mattino successivo a una (Lugano, CH) e Consciousness notte di lavoro mi è capitato di fare la Reframed X – Experiencing Design, spesa. Uscendo dal supermercato, la behaving media (Monaco di Baviera, commessa mi ha salutato dicendomi: D). “Come stai? Non hai dormito vero?” . 1. Il corpo immagine Dopo un mio leggero scuotimento della testa con il quale confermavo la Il corpo si sta virtualizzando sua intuizione, lei aveva concluso: “Il Onnipresente e radiante, ci impesta viso non mente ” . Dopo aver provato dalle pubblicità e dallo schermo dove un lieve imbarazzo di fronte a tale la sua IMMAGINE scolpita (in materia denudamento, cercai di comprendere digitale) emana vibrazioni del meglio il motivo della mia reazione: superego – quell’”ideale dell’io”che non è solo il viso a non mentire ma

80 l’intero corpo, il quale funziona come viva non totalmente controllabile, ci una mappa che fornisce delle sentiamo a disagio, perché il nostro indicazioni riguardo al luogo che viene corpo biologico tende ad apparirci lì riportato. Su questa mappa obsoleto e inadeguato quando corporale viene trascritta la memoria confrontato con le purificate immagini personale (conscia ed inconscia) dello (in)corporee riportate nei media. psicocorpo: le nostre basi genetiche, Queste mediate RAPPRESENTAZIONI le esperienze, ma anche i traumi e gli spettrali incorporano le tre Grazie del accidenti nei quali siamo inciampati, capitalismo – Bellezza, Gioventù e ferendoci durante lo sgocciolamento Ricchezza – le stesse tre (dis)Grazie della propria vita. che dominano nel mondo della moda.

La moda è un simbionte che ha come partner il regime capitalista. Questa simbiosi mutualistica produce reciproci benefici. Entrambi gli organismi generano un sostegno morale ed economico bilaterale: se il capitalismo ha impiantato i germi della moda, la moda ha ricambiato il favore attraverso un’azione di propaganda dei valori capitalistici. . Così il sistema moda da un lato pratica e promuove una suddivisione “Il viso non mente ” Cosi come il gerarchica che definisce ‘la corpo non mente. Mentre noi invece differenza» in termini di determinismo vogliamo mentire! Vogliamo biologico ed economico. Dall’altro lato nascondere i segni che il fruscìo della invece la moda ostacola la creazione vita ci infligge sul corpo e nella psiche. del ‘diverso» perché assorbe ogni Sogniamo di sfumare o persino di provocazione e la depotenzia tramite i annichilire la cartografia attraverso la suoi meccanismi di standardizzazione. quale il nostro corpo comunica chi Questo processo di standardizzazione siamo. Desideriamo poterci mostrare verrebbe in ambiti diversi chiamato sempre ‘in forma», sempre in accordo MERCIFICAZIONE; dei corpi e delle con l’ eidos ( e?d?? ) (1) che ci siamo cose. Sono il linguaggio pubblicitario e costruiti e con il quale ci individuiamo. la moda i veri creatori dei nuovi Quando veniamo colti modelli del corpo, o meglio dall’imprevedibile e sensibile dell’immagine corporea. Queste esistenza del nostro essere materia IMMAGINI gloriose del corpo,

81 modellato da angelici pixel digitali e Günther Anders chiama ‘mancata appiattito in ‘eleganti» bit informatici, reincarnazione industriale», ovvero il vengono a prendere il posto un tempo malessere umano di fronte alla sua riservato al complesso corpo glorioso mancata trasformazione in ‘prodotto artaudiano, fatto di carne cruda in serie». Il prodotto seriale dispone infestata da flussi di liquidi ed energia. sempre di una matrice – una forma ideale dalla quale si possono produrre infinite riproduzioni del modello. La possibilità di ricambio del prodotto industriale garantisce alle merci una longevità che diventa teoricamente estendibile all’infinito. E’ per questo motivo che anche una banale “lampadina del forno del cazzo” può sembrarci più degna di ammirazione rispetto alla fragile materia organica, la quale rimane, almeno per ora, più . difficile da rimpiazzare e tenere in 2. rimPianti di conservazione vita.

“Nessuno ci aveva ancora pensato, a migliorare la materia di cui sono fatte le cose, ti cambiano le lampadine del forno del cazzo ma la materia non la cambiano mai, questo ci vorrebbe, che distruggessero questa roba senza proporzione e ci mettessero dell’altro al suo posto. Dovrebbe tutto occupare meno spazio. Meno ci sei meno ci senti ” (2) . Queste frasi esemplificano Il malaise che proviamo oggi nei perfettamente l’angoscia che dopo confronti del corpo non si accontenta l’avvento dei fenomeni di di comprimersi su se stesso ma cerca industrializzazione e mercificazione la propria redenzione attraverso l’uso proviamo verso il corpo. La sensazione della tecnologia, la quale ci di antiquatezza corporea è dovuta sia permetterebbe di sostituire l’arretrato all’invasione di immagini nella società psicocorpo umano con un cybercorpo contemporanea che a quella che

82 postumano; un cybercorpo che negli scenari più estremi (quelli concepiti da . Hans Moravec e ripresi poi dalla 3. Lo stato schizoide corrente transumanista) diventa in toto virtuale in modo da potersi Nemmeno il campo dell’arte non riversare, tramite un upload mentale, rimane immune al rifiuto dello dentro un computer. psicocorpo. Citando l’artista e performer australiano Stelarc, “lo Osservando tali sviluppi psicocorpo non è né robusto né tecnoscientifici non posso non notare affidabile, il suo codice genetico come gran parte di questo filone produce un corpo che spesso cerchi di recuperare e impiantare sulla funziona male e si affatica Terra la visione platonica del mondo velocemente, consentendo solo iperuranio, quel luogo ‘oltre la volta ristretti parametri di sopravvivenza e celeste» dove solo “l’essere che limitando la sua longevità. La sua realmente è, senza colore, senza chimica, fondata sul carbonio, genera forma e invisibile, che può essere emozioni obsolete. Lo psicocorpo è contemplato solo dall’intelletto schizofrenico.” (4) timoniere dell’anima e intorno al quale verte il genere della vera conoscenza, Una delle molte critiche che avrei da occupa questo luogo.” (3) fare al discorso di Stelarc, è che lo psicocorpo non può essere a priori Quali mancanze o timori cela la definito come ‘schizo». Nonostante vergogna che attualmente nutriamo ciò, non nego che lo psicocorpo verso lo psicocorpo? Se scendessimo possa, in base al contesto in cui esso nei tunnel sotterranei dell’Iperuranio, si muove, essere stimolato a nonché di tutto il pensiero dualista, diventarlo o che possa tendere a capiremmo che dietro ai pianti riportare dei sintomi simili sull’antiquatezza del corpo brilla il all’alienazione mentale provata da uno perverso desiderio di immortalità, o schizofrenico. Nel suo capolavoro sul meglio la solita paura della morte. postmodernismo, Fredric Jameson osserva come tale stato di spaesamento cognitivo sia profondamente legato alla dimensione politica, sociale e culturale del tardo capitalismo. Jameson recupera la definizione della schizofrenia formulata da Lacan per

83 descriverla come “un’interruzione ovvero, dallo spazio sociale dove la nella catena significante” che rende nostra esistenza è situata. Di instabile l’assegnazione di un senso. conseguenza, cominciamo a Ciò provoca una percezione del trascurare i rapporti: con i corpi carnali mondo frammentata che pietrifica lo che ci circondano, con il territorio nel schizofrenico all’interno di quale ci muoviamo e con i modelli “un’esperienza di significanti economici con i quali ci scontriamo. puramente materiali o, in altre parole, di una serie di presenti puri e irrelati La problematica di una condizione nel tempo.” (5) psichica ‘schizoide» diventa notevole nel momento in cui la moltitudine di significanti linguisticamente non identificati diventa troppo ampia per rendere possibile un ‘linguaggio comune» che permetta una comunicazione e condivisione di informazioni efficiente. Come ci fa notare Hannah Arendt, “gli uomini nella pluralità, cioè, gli uomini in quanto vivono, si muovono e agiscono in questo mondo, possono fare esperienze significative solo quando possono parlare e attribuire . reciprocamente un senso alle loro La difficoltà con la quale oggi parole.” (6) concepiamo e portiamo a compimento delle azioni sovversive dipende in parte dalle sensazioni di congelamento temporale sollecitate dall’attuale inondazione di immagini. Le immagini possiedono una qualità particolare: quella di sospendere la nostra esistenza concreta tramite l’incitamento alla contemplazione passiva o all’interazione virtuale in mondi di alteRealtà paralleli. In questo . modo veniamo distolti dallo hic et nunc a cui siamo legati fisicamente, 4. Psybody design: dall’estetica

84 dell’immagine all’etica del linguaggio riconsiderare la carne dei nostri corpi psicocorporale in tutta la sua gloria e intensità ma anche sottolineare l’importanza dello “Tutti i termini che scelgo per pensare strato virtuale che viene a priori legato sono per me TERMINI nel senso ad un corpo. Nei suoi Messaggi proprio della parola, vere rivoluzionari dice : “L’organismo non è terminazioni, risultati dei miei [parola affatto il corpo, il corpo senza organi, illeggibile nel manoscritto di Artaud] ma uno strato sul corpo senza organi, mentali, di tutti gli stati che ho fatto cioè un fenomeno di accumulazione, subire al mio pensiero. Sono davvero di sedimentazione che gli impone LOCALIZZATO dai miei termini, e se forme, funzioni, collegamenti, dico che sono LOCALIZZATO dai miei organizzazioni dominanti e termini è perché non li ritengo validi gerarchizzate, trascendenze nel mio pensiero. Sono davvero organizzate per estrarne un lavoro paralizzato dai miei termini, da un utile.” (8) susseguirsi di terminazioni. E per quanto in quei momenti il mio pensiero sia ALTROVE, posso solo farlo passare per quei termini, per quanto contraddittori, paralleli, equivoci possano essere, pena in quei momenti il cessare di pensare. [ ] Mi trovo al punto di non essere più a contatto con la vita, ma con tutti gli appetiti dentro di me e la titolazione insistente dell’essere. Mi resta una sola occupazione: rifarmi.” (7)

Da queste intuizioni di Antonin Artaud . emerge la scoperta di come il Dopo tali considerazioni siamo pronti linguaggio rappresenti dei limiti per la a comprendere come tutte le nostra esperienza del mondo e di noi perplessità rivolte al corpo abbiano in stessi. Valori questi, che nella realtà poco a che fare con il suo dialettica artaudiana assumono ‘essere materiale» ma derivino sempre il significato di CORPO, inteso soprattutto dal suo ‘divenire virtuale». come ‘localizzazione» di tutta la Detto in altre parole, il problema non nostra esistenza. Attraverso la risiede nel corpo (nella maniera in cui concezione di un ‘corpo senza esso è costruito) ma nella sua organi», Artaud voleva prima di tutto

85 significazione socio-politica che è spiraglio per un ‘rifarsi» linguistico determinata dal linguaggio. La tanto (trans)corporale. elogiata riprogettazione del corpo non serve a nulla senza che si ripensi e ricostruisca il luogo dove abita il corpo carnale, ovvero la società e le relazioni di potere che la delineano. Più che di una ricostruzione della materia di cui siamo fatti, abbiamo bisogno di una presa di coscienza della PRESENZA del proprio corpo, inteso come superficie di significazione situata nell’In-Between tra materialità psico- . organica, considerazione (bio)politica e rappresentazione linguistica. Una (1) forma, immagine, modello ideale. presenza corporea che non sia a priori mutilata dal ‘Corpus Domini della (2) A. Pesavento: (inedito) potestas » ma che venga valutata nella sua potentia , ovvero nelle sue (3) Platone: Fedro non-ancora-realizzate possibilità (4) Stelarc: Da strategie psicologiche a messegli a disposizione. cyberstrategie: prostetica, robotica ed Fuori da queste considerazioni, nasce esistenza remota , in Pier Luigi l’idea del psybody design: un’o Capucci (a cura di), Il corpo perazione di d étournement della tecnologico , Baskerville, Bologna 1994 moda di carattere situazionista che, (5) F. Jameson: Postmodernism , Duke come tale, non ha come obiettivo la University Press, 2007; tr.it. creazione di una nuova forma di moda Postmodernismo , Fazi editore, Roma, (9) ma conduce ad una totale 2007, p. 44 Si specifica che Jameson negazione del suo sistema, o meglio usa l’esempio della schizofrenia in ad un superamento della moda e dei senso metaforico; per descrivere modi di produzione capitalistici che la quella che secondo lui rappresenta la definiscono. Attraverso uno dominante condizione cognitiva nel spostamento dell’attenzione postmodernismo e che non può dall’impatto visivo dell’immagine essere direttamente collegata con la corporea all’impatto che la presenza schizofrenia clinica. del corpo ha sulla società, il ‘psybody» si oppone alla pratica di (6) H. Arendt: The human condition ; mercificazione del corpo e apre uno

86 1958, tr.it. Vita activa. La condizione scrittura della moda» segue il umana , Saggi tascabili Bompiani, paradigma del prodotto depurato 1999, p. 4 dalla sua caratteristica maligna. Se dovessi applicare una critica (7) A.Artaud: Al paese dei Tarahumara a questo modello, direi e altri scritti, p.42 che il problema non risiede nel contenuto del messaggio ma nel (8) A.Artaud: “L’anarchia sociale mezzo (il sistema moda) attraverso il dell’arte”, in Messaggi rivoluzionari , quale un determinato messaggio p.165 viene esternato. Si potrebbe dire 9) Poiché ogni versione di una moda perciò che la moda ‘ concettuale » ‘diversa» non produce nessun rappresenti una moda più sobria, resoconto che sia veramente innovativa e ‘intellettuale»? Forse. alternativo. Un esempio di queste Però pur sempre di moda si tratta prassi è il cosiddetto conceptual Pur sempre un ‘esclusivo» sistema fashion design praticato per esempio verticistico basato sull’ESCLUSIONE e da H. Chalayan, M. Margiela, che favorisce il mantenimento dello M.Yasuhiro e J. Cope, la cui ‘ ri- status quo sociale.

mcluhaniana

87 Antonio Martino, The Reflexive Stalker

Alessio Galbiati

documentations on the ominous effects of the human-act, searching the memories of the five environmental catastrophes, among which the humanity which had the disaster of living them. I wanted to deepen and share the knowledge on this author because his style appears to be among the most stimulant ones of the Italian Scienography also in the productive means, because what his This article is an extract of the experience teaches is that we live in interview done by Alessio Galbiati for the times, in which the possibility of the 10 th . issue of the digital making cinema has never been such magazine of cinema and video art reachable by everybody. He has Rapporoto Confidenziale, whose collaborated with POLIVISIONI, an founder and director is Alessio. The independent group of film-makers, exchange is a part of a friendship with whom he dealt with the problem relation and collaboration between of anti-prohibition in Italy making the Digicult and one of the most documentary ‘We’re made like this” interesting and professional which presents Freak Antoni, the independent editorial realities on the singer of Skiantos, as the principal national panorama. actor. Already since 2004, his constant 1977 Class Antonio Martino is, without ( manca un sostantivo o nome?) any shade of doubt, one of the most becomes the research of the reality, interesting documentary authors of which takes him closer to the places the last years, the very many awards and to the difficult themes. His obtained by his works are there to interviews are transformed to the show this, if only the vision shall be conscious eyes, and his images enough. become inquiry. In 2005 he goes to the front-door of the nuclear reactor Gifted by a dry and essential style Chernobyl and makes the ”We’re air Martino has five documentaries, five not soil” documenting the actual life

88 conditions and the consequences film has beenpurchased by Rai3 and faced by the people living in the Rai News24. In the February 2007 he vicinity of the nuclear centre of made the ”Pancevo_mrtav grad” an Chernobyl at eighteen years of interview made in the most polluted distance from the disaster. The city of the Europe: Pancevo, in Serbia, documentary has been selected by a few kilometres from Belgrade. The various national and international video examines the consequences of festivals. In the fall 2006, he makes the bombardment of the largest Blue Panorama nearby CPA/CPT on industrial complex of the ex- the Island of Capo Rizzuto, the huge Yugoslavia by NATO. The fierce crater. The film portrays the escape of bombardments provoked one of the the clandestine from the fields where most serious ecological catastrophes they were temporarily of the last century, which were highly accommodated. volunteered and authorized by today’s new Nobel Peace Prize winner Al Right after in 2005, being curious of Gore, also a famous environmentalist, understanding the motivations of the vice-president of Clinton by then. some serious newspaper facts committed by the very young Rumanian children in Italy, he decides to analyze the conditions of the babies who live in a society in the hard times, trying to recover from the horrors of post-Ceausescu. He makes the ”Gara de Nord_copii pe strada” only by the use of a small handy video camera more or less hidden and by a budget equals to zero. He lives with the babies of sewer of Bucharest for a . month, in this way he opens a window Alessio Galbiati: I believe that this way on the reality of these babies who live of giving a measure to the reality, in underground canals of the city in which you want to express, is a cost of winter and on the street in summer, your works. The best-fitting definition the victims of paedophilia on street of your work is stalker, which came (usually perpetrated by foreign into my mind from the tarkovsky tourists), of drugs and of abuses by guide, which is the one who carries parents. The film receives many with him principally himself, and the awards, among which the prestigious reflections of the others and Production Award Ilaria Alpi 2007. The

89 moreover an eye (a look), on distant because it’s what I really want to do, and marginal realities and always tries which is the stalker, the guide. The to be distant from judgements. bigger question around, on which I’ve Therefore, your cinema , your way of found myself thinking and studying, is narrating by images, always becomes obviously the question of the statute very hard, strong. I get the feeling of documentary. There exists a long that, this doesn’t happen because you diatribe on the theme, it’s present want to construct something heavy since when the documentary was and shocking for the public in a born, that is the documentary is the programmed manner, it happens pure reality, or half fiction, and on because the reality narratives are how to interpret the documentary o shocking and dramatic in themselves. how to relate it with the culture of I wanted to ask you about this work that moment or place. I’ve created my method of yours if it’s getting sharper best films using these little video by time and more concretely how it cameras . functions either in the moment which you produce a documentation or when you get in contact with a reality, with the people. It really struck me very much in this sense, a sequence of your documentary on Chernobyl We’re air not earth (2005) when you enter into a dispersed house on the countryside in Ukraine and there’s this old woman which shouts at his son, of letting you in, and not letting you . shoot the house as it’s very messy. Right, it struck me because a large Alessio Galbiati: I interrupt you component of improvisation it’s very because this things return usually to evident, I believe that neither you the articles dedicated to you and I knew what you would find on the would like to clarify this. Little video other side, you don’t know the cameras or little DV video cameras, answers you will find I would like to which are found in supermarkets and understand what are your sensations cost about 500 Euros? especially those humanistic ones, with regards to your method of work. Antonio Martino: Let’s say that, it’s about consumer not prosumer. A Antonio Martino: Well, in this while video camera – this has always been you’ve had very nice intuition,

90 my reference-, which has at least reached the maximum levels of three sensors, 3 CCD, because it’s the development with us, I think that we minimum from which you can depart. would have to stop a moment and The reflection is not even here; it’s in rethink what the technology is for us. the fact what changes the society This means to observe the society in a The society is changing. It’s an reflexive way. Take for instance, the obvious thing for everyone. Ten years television Before everyone had a before, for us, being able to send a television, there has been a period in photo by a cell phone was a science which it was begun to posses more fiction, also at the times when you than one of the TV, since babyhood and I were in high school. We really we demanded a TV in our rooms. It think less about this but it’s important, seemed normal, unexceptionable. out parents would say us: ”and us, we Today, certainty is not a fixed point had to go to neighbours” house in any more, but a technological object, order to telephone”. The relation with around which the human reflects. The the technology has to be more same thing happens by Internet. It’s a reflexive. Human needs the difficult concept to explain. technology. I give you an example. Years before, in the 70 and 80′ies, being human in the society had references which came from the institutions: the government, the school, the information, and the television if they said one thing on the television, everyone would believe in that and they would believe in it blindly, because the television was the truth. If the president of the council . on the town square said: we will do this, that and that other one, the Alessio Galbiati: It’s a concept, which people would believe in it because I’ve found in No Sense of Place, a very that was the truth. The same thing beautiful book of Joshua Meyrowitz… was valid for the school; the word of the professor was the law. Antonio Martino: In fact, I refer to the texts of Ulrich Beck. Who already in Because, the people trusted in these the 80′ies wrote the Risk Society, institutions. Today, in the new towards a second modernity; think millennium, we enter into a second that I published it three months modernity. The first modernity has

91 before the explosion of the Chernobyl almost totally missing, the scientist or Central. Above all I think of Reflexive the professor, this is because I would Modernization: politics, tradition and like to construct the works as reflexive aesthetics in the modern social order, as possible, I’ve always tried to have an essay of Ulrich Beck, Anthony the information from ”normal”, Giddens and Scott Lash which I common people, from the people personally consider as the first text of who are nobody rather than the the new philosophy of our days: scientists. At the beginning this thing Reflexive modernization, quite disturbed me because I modernization reflexive. It seems that departed from the presumption that this text is conditioning the art of the documentary had to be a film of making documentary from many documents which document (sorry for points of view. When I started to do it, the tangling) something textually, a even before I knew the theories, research of trials. But, how to find almost unconsciously i understood these trials? How to demonstrate a that I needed to do something determinate thesis or point of views different, I knew that the classical when a tangible reality doesn’t exist? documentary with an omniscient Documenting myself on the voice – the off voice which knows psychiatric question, which I was everything – has had its time and most telling you of, I lit totally upon myself, importantly it wasn’t the possible on the contrary of everything. There form for the being contemporary any are multinationals, which diffuse false more. At the end it’s true that my way information, patients who tell the of making documentary is a way of recovery thanks to a psychic- guide, which accompanies inside of a pharmacist, and others, which reality without taking any position. In document the worsening of the the time we are living it’s difficult to conditions because of the same take positions, you may be oriented psychic-pharmacist. Everything and towards a something or some other, the contrary of everything! The truth but very clear positions are hardly has become liquid, it’s no more as the taken. The institutions, the same it was some decades before where schools and the media men are not the ideology consented to have fixed, trusted any more… The human returns non-removable points. For this reason to position himself at the centre of the I like the idea of the guide, I pick you universe, trying to discover what are up and take you there, inside of those the new rules to live this time. situations immersed in a reality. In the act of taking there, the spectator has Contrarily to the classical documents, the concept of voyeurism in itself, one in my works the figure of the expert is

92 of the fundamental concepts of the absolutely been the forerunner of the cinema, one of the reasons, which practice in Italy. Then, I was telling, take us to watch a film. My though is with the digital this potential is reconnected to the ideas of Cesare multiplied exponentially… Zavattini and Alexandre Astruc; Zavattini said that on day all of us Antonio Martino: Since the 60′ies and would have had the possibility of today, there has been incredible using a cine camera and we would improvements in the non-professional have had the possibility of expressing image quality, and it has been passed ourselves using the language, in the from the almost unintelligible image same way of a writer’s or a journalist’s of the films of Grifi where the with the fountain pen. Right after, necessity was to tell in order to arrived Alberto Grifi… separate from the qualitative formalism, to the products which are realized with a very reduced budget which have been able not only to access to the halls but also real blockbuster. I think that the Tony Blair Witch Project (the film of Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sanchez in 1999) despite being a film of certain stupid verses , it has inaugurated the era of the digital cinema in its own way (and there are also the cases of Dardennna . and Bertolucci and many thousands of others more) which according to my Alessio Galbiati: What you’re saying is point of view, they are characterized absolutely overlaps with what I wrote of their voyeur character. The in the editorial of the issue 8 (October directors design viewing equipment 2008) of RC. I’ve written that the first which projects us into the interior of a (unconscious) witness of the potential situation, an equipment with which no of the Super-8 has been Abraham other reality has been connected Zapruder who showed the potential unless it is brought administered to of this vehicle to the world by filming us… the assassin of Kennedy, later on, there arrived a crowd of filmmakers, Alessio Galbiati: Without the sparsed over the globe, which tried to involuntary point of view of the make cinema by this new vehicle, camera of Zapruder with all the among which Alberto Grifi has probability the hypothesis,

93 triangulation of the shooting representation of the Eskimo in happened in Dallas wouldn’t probably Nanook (the famous documentary of be realized 1922, Nanook of the North). That is how direct this poor eskimo has been Antonio Martino: A perspective of the from this director, in that time the facts is brought to the world by that image had a such a value that as there amateurial and non-professional film. were very limited possibility to That film was put into discussion manipulate the images that they many times, exactly because it isn’t mattered so much. Today every image professional… can potentially be manipulated today a television broadcasting company can create its own conflict in the production studio.

Alessio Galbiati: There’s one thing I expected to come out naturally of this conversation, but it would be certainly surprising not to, is the dimension of the risk – absolutely evident in your production- the fact that you always jeopardize your health, your well- . being… You’ve told me that you had Alessio Galbiati: On the other hand problems with the local government today we face a rapid growth of non- forces in Uzbekistan… You’ve been to professional images… places far from being calm, like Chernobyl, Pancevo, the sewers of Antonio Martino: I believe that today Bucharest…shortly: Why? we’re brought to trust much more into non-professional images than Antonio Martino: I fundamentally those of the media. Today we don’t believe that it’s question of believe in what the media says neither personality. I’ve grown in one of the we believe in the images they most dangerous places in Italy: Capo produce. In the times of Robert J. Rizzuto. When I was twelve years old Flaherty (Robert J. Flaherty 1884-1951, there was army on the streets, with pioneer of the documentary, ndr) the trenches made of sand bags, armed image in itself and for itself was there soldiers everywhere out of home, to mean what you attribute to it, it armoured cars going around the was a real image, it’s not important to town, a place where shootings were know how much natural the practically a part of daily normalities.

94 Living in that place has on the one video camera and equipment of hand made me get used to absurd shooting went to condition my things, but above all it has fostered presence in the place. There have my anger, a desire to take my revenge already been’ remarks on the size and on the things which were clearly the visibility of the camera in the past. happening because of the personal The relation between the director and interests of some people, because of the situation is that you have to the wrong policies because of recover the dimension and the fabric whatever you imagine… Living in of the vehicle of shooting and it’s certain places, being armed by a absolutely important. Unfortunately, filming object, may mean revealing, it’s important. If I have video camera reporting, changing the things in the hidden in my glasses or hat, I’ll have a collective image. In Romania, I bluffed different perception of the danger in a certain sense; I’ve told to the with respect to that generated by use police that I was a student making a a bulky and visible camera. In summer movie with my little video Uzbekistan, it took 3 or 4 minutes to camera. I became a person who’s make the exposition, and the focus appealed to the normality of the use was manual so was the zoom… It has of a video camera. In Uzbekistan, I been a completely different always worked in the logic of experience than precedents. We documentary of enquiry but with a hadn’t paid so much attention valuing different technology, a little more the risk involved in the desire to make evolved, more professional and so an enquiry an assault, that is more bulky, more visible. Every little dangerous and borderline, with the detail brings its consequences during dimensions, which aren’t properly the shootings. I’ve taken a Panasonic contained by the shooting device. P100 with me, a half-shotgun for the audio, a tripod a bit more stable, all aimed to produce a work mostly professional with respect to precedents, but at the end all went fucked up.

I was very conspicuous! This desire of mine, to improve the quality went knocking against the reality, against the reluctance of the institutions, which govern that territory telling . their problems. The dimensions of the

95 Alessio Galbiati: So we can say that Alessio Galbiati: In which way it’s you feel closer to a dimension of possible to see your works? Can you compactness and extreme autonomy, give some coordinate to our readers? in the availability of the device? The I’ve seen that there are something on smallest possible? your site: www.antoniomartino.net…

Antonio Martino: Yes, I would say the Antonio Martino: There are only least invasive possible. trailers on my site. In fact I wanted to put all of them, but because of a Alessio Galbiati: Maybe invisible… problem with the webmaster and of some technical problems, the thing Antonio Martino: The most invisible hasn’t still been possible. Then I’ve possible, which enables me not to been contacted by Carta, who edits a freak the people out, not to invade weekly and a monthly (Carta and them, not to attack them. Above all Carta etc.) who’s visioning my when you speak of certain things. If material right in this moment; you go to a fisherman on the Lake of towards the end of december they Aral, in the meanwhile you already will pass it on Eco Tv (www.ecotv.it) know that you are a species of an Pancevo_mrtav grad, while seeing the alien for them, as they don’t see any Gara de Nord_copii pe strada… western for at least twenty years… There is every once in a while some tourist, which stops for half a day and then immediately escapes because it’s all sand… where can he go? When you come next to this fisherman, with your video camera, with your clothes very different from his, you have to enter in relationship with his idea of journalism and his way of relate himself with the video camera, to his idea of the television and . appearance… It’s very complicated to success; you have to prepare it a little Alessio Galbiati: I saw that it was bit… At the end it takes patience and available on clipscorner.net. time, which are not always possible… Antonio Martino: Exactly! Or you can To sum up, it’s all very complicated. also find it on the site of Rai, I believe Risk of life, quality of images, content it’s available on RaiClick. Obviously, of the enquiry: all in relation you can also see my works in various

96 festivals and reviews which I Alessio Galbiati: So we can say that participated to and they are really too there is still time to wait, but anyway many. the production of your works in DVD is something that you are working Alessio Galbiati: So a DVD distribution on… of your works doesn’t exist? Antonio Martino: Yes absolutely, but Antonio Martino: See, I had a contact surely within less than a year, I will put with the Ermitage from Bologna some all of them free on my site or on days ago, which was interested in the somewhere else on the web. Anyway I distribution of the Gara de Nord but still think these works of experiments, there is nothing sure yet. I have to be sincere. I feel that I have potential, but I don’t feel that I’ve Alessio Galbiati: Gara de Nord is your completely expressed myself yet, documentary, which obtained the therefore this phase is still, in some most number of awards and certain way, a game a juxtaposition of recognitions, even the production elements as exactly like how a vj or dj award of Ilaria Alpi 2007 does, something that you know well. Antonio Martino: In fact Pancevo In some of my works, for example in almost reached it, until today it has Gare de Nord, the creative process won 10 awards Gara de Nord, about has exactly been like this, I created 15 As far as the distribution is one piece at a time tying their image concerned maybe the length of my and sound. Now, instead, I am works is a little bit uncomfortable, cementing myself with the scripting, maybe they are too brief to be with trying to foresee a certain reproduced in DVD. amount of factors and above all trying to value their management. I search a maximum control on documentary, I’m not based on the emotion of the moment any more (or not only) but I would like to develop a work method always more professional, even though at the end it all remains as a game. Right in this moment, there’s producer from Rome who is strangely courting me, he encourages me, telephones me, he stimulates me to . write some projects of screenplay and as I’ve seen that he produced

97 interesting works, who works with the filmmaker hasn’t been that? Grifi was television and most of all offers a a poor starving guy; I am saying this certain concreteness, I am thinking of with my maximum respect. And he trying to go along with him, made very beautiful things. I filmed professionalizing this attitude of mine. the Pancevo in 2007, I’ve studied 20 Anyway I try to maintain a certain days before departure and I been on- spontaneity and creative freedom site about one month and then I’ve which these dynamics always risk been in the montage for 20 days, it plastering. can be said that I’ve made the film in two and a half months. Sending the Alessio Galbiati: You had told me of film to the festivals I’ve earned this experience with RaiNews24, something more than ten thousand clearly manifesting your refusal with euros of prizes; I’ve worked for two respect to certain dynamics… and a half months and I’ve earned twelve thousand euros, a number Antonio Martino: At the end I am a which consented me to live in that precarious filmmaker, but which period.

98 that instinct to narrate a story and separate from the economic contingencies and from benefits.

Antonio Martino: Maybe the reasoning of mine is too much optimistic, I’m not sure if I will be able to obtain the money to make a certain kind of living one day, neither it matters to me, but… a minimum! I

. know I have a talent and I know that with this system of life I can live from Alessio Galbiati: This is a thing, which day to day and I don’t feel lost. had striken me when we knew each Obviously, the question of Arpa has other. I remember asking you how happened and I’ve moved, same with you’d invested the money obtained this producer… I can make one and thanks to the Ilaria Alpi award, another. But I felt very constrained, if believing that those money served the thing doesn’t make me feel good I you for the next project and instead, don’t make it for work, most of all if to my enormous surprise, you had the thing is very personal. At the same told me that those money simply time, I move around many things served you to live. I believe that this mostly those are new and fact should be a good story, a experimental, I am really fascinated something that describes better than by the network, the network and all many words the dimension of those the new technologies. who decide to be a filmmaker today much. Making an independent film is already a miracle in itself, so if one comes to an economic recognition www.rapportoconfidenziale.org one might as well use it for the normal http://www.myspace.com/antoniom existence because the production is artinodoc uniquely based on the passion, on

99 In Video Collaboration

Giulia Baldi

goal was clear: to bring down limits, political, social, cultural and geographic barriers – be they real or imaginary – through the direct and shared experience of art, including digital art.

10 years on the concepts of collaboration, universality, sharing of topics and languages could not be more topical, and those good fellows Towards the end of the ’90s, long at Furthernoise/Furtherfield couldn’t before the whole world found out be more active. Digicult has recently about web 2.0, social networking and interviewed them ( Digimag 35 – co-creation online, http://www.digicult.it/digimag/articl Furthernoise/Furtherfield, a collective e.asp?id=1183 ) and visited them again of activists and radical artists that was during the media art, HTTP founded in the UK by Marc Garret and exhibition/event that took place a few Ruth Catlow, focused their activity on weeks ago at their London concepts such as horizontal gallery/workshop . The title of the collaboration, sharing, involvement, show: “Whereof one cannot speak, openness, co-creation. In short they thereof one must be silent” . The were turning the culture of artists: the Israeli/ American video- individualism and D.I.Y. (do it yourself) artist Doron Golan, the English into a culture of community and multimedia artist and educator D.I.W.O. (do it with others), and Michael Szpakowski. The works on artistic collaboration from contextual show are digital videos by both into relational. authors, some are personal, others the result of the long-lasting online Technology was still a limited, but collaboration between the two… who rapidly evolving phenomenon, their met for the first time at the opening resoluteness was endless and their of this exhibition.

100 screened on opposite walls, their works create an environment that is simultaneously intimate and alienating, cosy and disheartening they are far away and yet communicating. After all, this is how they have been collaborating for years: from a distance, yet constantly in creative touch.

.

The matter of the artists are digital videos and films: hyper-realistic, yet surreal and psychedelic, rarefied or low-resolution, in slow motion or fast-played, invariably transformed into something else. Both artists experiment with language and technique, using programs such as QuickTime and Shockwave. Doron . Golan films daily life scenes in the Middle East (he often picks seemingly Since besides sharing, communication neutral subjects in order to send out is another key factor of the group’s clear political messages) and screens philosophy behind HTTP, the short passages in loop and with live- installation is accompanied by a brief recording audio, transforming the (and unambiguous) essay by the seeming absence of a focus into the electronic and hyper-literature art most captivating one. critic – and creator of the site/hub hyperex.co.uk – Edward Picot. In Michael Szpakowski shoots daily life short, Picot points out that the art of scenes, such as details of his back- Golan and Szpakowski is a product of garden, and transforms shapes, full the digital revolution. Without such a and empty spaces, surfaces, colours revolution, their expressivity wouldn’t and shades, dark and light zones, into have taken shape. Picot also points an original pictorial stuff, out that the two authors have had a accompanied by a minimal, repetitive significant share to this revolution. and hypnotic music that he himself has composed. Here, simultaneously They started by experimenting with

101 digital films, the films were replaced . by files, that they have then shared online to create dvblog.org, an online If Youtube and other video-files community of artists devoted to the sharing platforms are the genre. The activity on the site/blog concretization of this possibility, with has turned out to be vital to its positive and negative aspects, the widespread the concept of file and ideal cooperation between Doran and ‘push and pull’ collaboration, to Michael is one of its first and most spread one’s own content and comprehensive expression. simultaneously receive the content developed by others, versus the previous idea of actively pushing one’s www.http.uk.net/ own content towards a passive audience. www.the9th.com/ www.somedancersandmusicians.com /

102 Link index

Exploding Cave http://cox18.noblogs.org/

Alain Thibault: Elektra From Past To The Future http://www.elektramontreal.ca/2009/

Material Hybridization The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button http://www.benjaminbuttonfx.com/site.html

Valerio Adami And The Pictorial Sound Esther Manas and Arash Moori: Sound and Sculpture http://www.arash-moori--esther-manas.blogspot.com/

Giacomo Verde: Action Beyond Representation

/digimag/article.asp?id=1362

Marc Didou: Resonances http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f2P7M7jiz74

Chris Woebken: La Gioia In Divenire http://www.woebken.net/

Cybercultures 4: A Journey In Virtual Space http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/critical-issues/cyber/ http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/critical-issues/cyber/

Vittore Baroni: From Mail Art To Web 2.0 http://dododada.ning.com/

Darwin From The Microscope

103 http://www.almanacco.cnr.it/base_tutto_cnr.asp?ID_rubrica=1

Pathosformel fever http://www.pathosformel.org http://www.myspace.com/pathosformel

Psybody Design Antonio Martino, The Reflexive Stalker http://www.rapportoconfidenziale.org/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/Rappor to_Confidenziale-numero10-low.pdf http://www.myspace.com/antoniomartinodoc

In Video Collaboration http://www.digicult.it/digimag/article.asp?id=1183 http://www.http.uk.net/ http://www.the9th.com/ http://www.somedancersandmusicians.com/

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