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) Printed and distributed by Lulu.com E-publishing development: Loretta Borrelli Cover design: Eva Scaini Digicult is part of the The Leonardo Organizational Member Program TABLE OF CONTENTS Claudia D'Alonzo Otolab Method ............................................................................................................. 3 Carla Langella Biological Strategies At The Service Of Design ..................................................... 19 Silvia Bianchi Graphic Design With Momomaker .......................................................................... 27 Matteo Milani Trevor Wishart: Chemistry Of Sound ...................................................................... 33 Marco Mancuso Generative Nature ...................................................................................................... 43 Tatiana Bazzichelli Anna Adamolo: Practical Critique Of Ideology ...................................................... 51 Bertram Niessen Milano 2009: Where Are You Culture? ................................................................... 62 Lucrezia Cippitelli Eduardo Navas: Track Me Not, Please! ................................................................... 71 Donata Marletta Transmediale 09: The Berlin’s Paradoxes .............................................................. 80 Gigi Ghezzi To Give Shape To Social Networks ......................................................................... 83 Marco Mancuso Cada: Did You Say You Wanted An Evolution? ..................................................... 87 Francesco Bertocco Matthew Barney: Contemporary Mythologies ..................................................... 95 Monica Ponzini You Tube And The Accidental Videoart ............................................................... 100 Otolab Method Claudia D'Alonzo worlds and generate them. An open and complex system, in which the mutual relationship of every element causes something unexpected and unpredictable. A spontaneous and changeable complexity, made up with the members’s different experiences and attitudes, that otolab transformed into a method: a relational and creative method, a laboratory audiovisual-experience method, an The interview to Otolab is a result of approach to technological tools and the event that was organised on to an interaction with the audience. January 16 th by the O’ Gallery of Milan, in collaboration with Marco An audience which is the reflexion of Mancuso, Digicult curator. During that otolab, an aggregation and mixture of evening, some members of the origins and contexts. A composite Milanese collective (which has come audience, as well as the one that was at its eighth year of life) could meet, at the soirée in the Galleria O’, a varied have talks and watched the national crowd that converged there for the exclusive preview of some of their same interest in the collective. The recent creations, such as “Circo purpose of this meeting was to keep ipnotico”(Hypnotic circus) and two completely different live “Giardini neri” (Black Gardens). together, Circo Ipnotico and Giardini Neri, to produce the heterogeneous A few hours together transported the product of the group, compare two otolab phenomenon into the gallery absolutely different poetics and event room: not only an artistic entity, experiences of audiovisual live yet also and above all a means to performance. The analogical digital improve interpersonal relationships improvisation, the audiovisual trip and sharing. That is the heart of the violence of Circo Ipnotico, as well as collective, which has been configuring the almost cinematographic inner trip itself as a rhizomatic core that can tag of Giardini Neri. along and connect, cross different 3 fathom to desert landscapes commuted by sounds. Till the final implosion given by water. The vision of the liquid element, from 3D synthetic realism, suddenly breaks into its graphic structure, a breach made into the mind and the shape, towards an optical tunnel, a perceptive unconsciousness. An initiation to a new lie for the image, a . perceptive resurrection which marks a double limit, a transformation walking “Giardini Neri” is a new component in concurrently on two levels: the formal otolab production, and not only from one related to the image, from the the chronological point of view; it is figurative to the optical side, and the an experience that moves away from symbolic one that goes past into an a style whose main topic is to reduce inner and individual state. The 3D visual patterns. The last live image of the water, a realistic kind, performance leads one’s eyes through suddenly opens towards its frame. All a tridimensional journey, and lets the this can be read as a revelation of the spectator find vegetal elements image’s nature, of what looks like real where the scene is plunged in but that heeds a synthetic structure, atmospheric evanescences, filtered and at the same time as lights mirrored on water. An abandonment familiar perceptive immersion into darkness, which both environments; the real frame moved environmental and internal. Otolab to pure vision, broken and arranged hasn’t explored this aspect of into an elementary geometry of black narration as story, of the environment and white. born to reflect an inner life. So, “Giardini Neri” is the starting point Many works by otolab act through for an interview to otolab for Digicult, audiovisual stimulation inside the because a meeting between these observer, and they lead him to two realities is needed, as both otolab experience the perception of his self. and Digicult have run after common The trip of “Giardini Neri” is instead an directions over the years, have emotional emanation, the senses are collaborated, have come across the transported through suspended as professional and personal spheres. well as obscure suggestions, images 4 following a common fully detailed project. The means of particles and fluids wasn’t only used for a technological or algorithmic purpose, but it was needed for the development of some elements during the final touch. Most of the project was by that time completed, but some forms of expression of the situation were missing. Mud: As far as I worked alone, Giardini Claudia D’Alonzo: Let’s start from Neri was still a series of audiovisual “Giardini Neri”: could you tell me how images, yet without a structure, a it was born, how did the production of complete narrative pressure. It was this project develop? rather a series of rooms, that is a series of successive areas. The Xo00: It originated from Mud’s mental upheaval came by the time I had disease, which kept expressing itself dropped the project for some months. during our tour in Mexico: he shut I put it on the table again to prepare a himself into his house for a week, in new live performance and I asked the sunniest place in the world. He Dies_ to give me a hand to take could do anything, and instead he decisions on the audio. Dies_’s stayed inside the house for a week contribution was very important for just to depict the idea he had in his the story. mind. In fact, the project comes from Mud both for the audio and for the Xo00: However there was a basic video. It was later integrated by other idea, that was a journey into the otolab members. Androsyn, Dies_ and gardens of the soul. The rooms me needed a connection, a unique trip that went through them. Mud: Androsyn has enormously contributed to the 3D creation in all the most complex parts. The fluids, the particle systems, were possible thanks to him, because he had very specific competencies absolutely unusual in otolab. Androsyn: My intervention was 5 . less clear in some others. What is the difference between the narrative Claudia D’Alonzo: Did the other otolab structure in Giardini Neri and other step in at that moment? creations? For instance I’m thinking about Op7, where the construction of Mud: Exactly. In the audio I used some the different phases in the live of Dies, Scrub and Chiara Frantini (a performance is still reachable by the trainee of mine) audio samples, by observer, or other works like Circo giving them a frame. From the Ipnotico, where the narration is less audiovisual point of view, apart from clear… the musical structure the point was to yield a valid story in a dramaturgical Xo00: Between “Op7″ and “Giardini sense. We felt that this sequence of Neri” I don’t see much difference, rooms, be they beautiful or apart from the creation procedures. In subjectively interesting, needed a “Op7″ we worked all together from the breach. That was an opportunity for very first moment, the entire further considerations: through the collective took part into the concept water, we thought we glimpsed an and to the structural building as well, element giving access to the endless which was divided into very precise world. The optical drift of the end chapters. “Giardini Neri” comes represents the gateway towards the instead from a project that Mud had absolute, from a figurative and already been developing on his own, contextual world to an unlimited so there was a storyboard on his dimension.