On Digital Creativity. The Mask of Time

Video still from The Mask of Time
Performance at the Teatro Verde © Fondazione Giorgio Cini
The Teatro Verde © Fondazione Giorgio Cini
Video still from The Mask of Time
Video still from The Mask of Time

key details

29 September 2022
Onsite at Fondazione Giorgio Cini
4pm — 6pm (CET) 

Reference

about

“The Mask of Time” (La Maschera del Tempo) is the first digital artwork commissioned by Fondazione Giorgio Cini and elaborated from the data of the three-dimensional digitisations of the Teatro Verde (Island of San Giorgio Maggiore) and the documents of the Iconographic Archive made available by the Institute for Theatre and Melodrama. Experimental technologies were used to create this film, such as Midjourney, an image-to-text generator derived from Open AI’s DALL-E and Unreal Engine 5.

Maria Ida Biggi, Director of the Fondazione Giorgio Cini’s Institute for Theatre and Opera, gives us an overview of the history of the Teatro Verde and its artistic events over time.
Mattia Casalegno and Maurizio Martusciello also known as Martux_m, authors of The Mask of Time, dialogue with curator Ennio Bianco about the creative process of their digital artwork, following the preview screening.

Lecturer

Mattia Casalegno

He is an Italian multimedia artist, based in Naples and New York. Since 1999 he has exhibited his work in several solo and group shows and in galleries and festivals, such as MACRO, Netmage Festival, Sant’Arcangelo dei Teatri and the Romaeuropa Festival in Italy, the Mutek Festival in Canada, the Kuandu Museum of Fine Arts in Taiwan, the International Symposium of Electronic Arts (ISEA) in Gwangju, the Chronus Art Center in Shanghai, the Cimatics Festival, Nuit Blanche and Update Biennial in Belgium, Le Cube Contemporary Art Museum in France, OFFF in Spain, ARTES in Portugal, and LACMA and Untitled Art Fair in the USA.

Martux_M

Maurizio Martusciello aka Martux_m is an Italian composer and producer of electronic music. He has performed and collaborated with many national and international musicians and groups. He has played at the Villette Numérique, Paris (2004) and the Venice Music Biennale and has participated in the MUTEK Festival, the Sonar Festival, the Romaeuropa Festival and the AltaRoma Festival. From 2003 to 2005, he was curator and artistic director of Sensoralia, an audiovisual electronic art exhibition staged at the Teatro Palladium, Rome, as part of the Romaeuropa Festival.

Ennio Bianco

He is an eclectic figure in the field of contemporary art. He has alternated his work as an entrepreneur in the ICT sector with his roles as an artist — he was part of Renato Barilli’s Generazione Elettronica as Bianco & Niero in the 1980s — and later as a curator. He has presented among others: an exhibition of the Korean video artist Nam June Paik (1993), the first internet and social media exhibition held in Italy “Atelier d’Artista n. 22” (1996) by Franco Vaccari, a series of conferences on digital art “Digital Dreamers” (2017) at the PUK Gallery in Castelfranco Veneto and “Intersezioni digitali” (2018) as part of the “Alta Percezione” event in San Martino di Lupari.

Maria Ida Biggi

Associate professor at Ca’ Foscari University in Venice and director of the Fondazione Giorgio Cini’s Institute for Theatre and Opera. She is curator of exhibitions and author of numerous books, essays and articles on the history of theatre and set design, theatre architecture, directing and the history of the actor. Her research deals with the history of stage design and theatre architecture and is an expert of prominent personalities such as Eleonora Duse and the theatre actresses of the 19th and 20th centuries.

Digital Training, Creativity and Museum Communication. The New Professions for Cultural Heritage

Example of digital exhibition layouts © Cristina Barbiani
Example of digital exhibition layouts © Cristina Barbiani

key details

23 June 2022
Online on Zoom
4pm — 6pm (CET)

about

Cristina Barbiani, scientific head of the Digital Exhibit Master’s course at the IUAV University of Venice, will introduce the new possibilities of digital technology for the creation of multimedia and interactive systems, combining knowledge and technologies related to ‘computer vision’ and aimed at the creation of museum displays, for design, architecture, multimedia and performing arts.

Lecturer

Cristina Barbiani

She is an architect with a PhD in History of Architecture and the City, Science of the Arts and Restoration at the School of Advanced Studies in Venice. She holds a degree in Design and Production of Visual Arts from the IUAV University of Venice. She is the scientific head of the Master Digital Exhibit at the IUAV University of Venice. She has a transversal education between architecture and multimedia and performing arts completed by study periods at New York University and MIT in Boston.

Art as a Method of Experimental Preservation

The Ethics of Dust: Doge’s Palace as exhibited in the Arsenale, 53rd Venice Art Biennale, Jorge Otero-Pailos, 2009
Dirt, Dust and Ruins, exhibition at Tin Sheds Gallery, Sydney, Jorge Otero-Pailos, 2013
The Ethics of Dust, exhibition at the Museum of Yerba Buena, San Francisco, Jorge Otero-Pailos, 2016
Distributed Monuments, latex and dust, Jorge Otero-Pailos, 2022

key details

7 October 2022
Online on Zoom / Onsite at ARCHiVe
2pm — 4pm (CET)

about

This talk discusses Jorge Otero-Pailos’ approach to art as a method of experimental preservation and argues for its relevance in imagining a future for the existing built environment centred on mutual care. Jorge Otero-Pailos draws from a series of recent works in which he employs material residues of buildings and sites – including airborne atmospheric dust, waterways, traces of sweat, and body sounds – to render their invisible meanings visible. In particular, he focuses on his Ethics of Dust series, explaining how he uses art as a method for the experimental preservation of dust, the kind the atmosphere deposits on buildings. This important historical and environmental record usually goes unrecognized. The artworks in The Ethics of Dust series isolate dust and make it tangible by transferring it from the surface of buildings onto translucent casts. Jorge Otero-Pailos also presents a selection of dust casts taken from the Doge’s Palace, Westminster Hall, and other buildings around the world, and discusses the unexpected histories that each of them unveils. He connects the dots between these punctual histories to outline a larger concept they all contribute to, namely that of atmospheric heritage.
The talk is also a presentation of Jorge Otero-Pailos’ book Historic Preservation Theory: An Anthology, Readings from the 18th to the 21st Century.

Lecturer

Jorge Otero-Pailos

Director and Professor of Historic Preservation at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation, he is an architect, artist, and theorist specializing in experimental forms of preservation. His work as an artist has been commissioned by and exhibited at major heritage sites, museums, foundations, and biennials, including Artangel’s public art commission at the UK Parliament, the Venice Art Biennial, Victoria and Albert Museum, Louis Vuitton Galerie Museum, Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary, SFMoMA, Hong Kong’s Tai Kwun Centre for Heritage and Arts, Frieze London, and the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts

Computational Museology: Cultural Heritage and the Digital Museum

Double Truth, Sarah Kenderdine, 2021
Jazz Luminaries, Montreux Jazz Digital Archive, Sarah Kenderdine, Andrew Quinn, Davide Santini, Kirell Benzi, 2019
Travelling Kungkarangkalpa, Sarah Kenderdine, Peter Morse, Cedric Maridet, 2017
Look Up Mumbai, Sarah Kenderdine and Jeffrey Shaw, 2015

key details

4 April 2024
Online on Zoom
3pm — 5pm (CET)

About

Computational museology is a scaffold that unites machine intelligence with data curation, ontology with visualisation, and communities of publics and practitioners with embodied participation through kinaesthetic interfaces. Computational museology empowers cultural organisations to link all forms of culture and materiality: objects, knowledge systems, representation and participation. Research at the Laboratory for Experimental Museology (eM+) reaches beyond object-oriented curation to blend experimental curatorship with contemporary aesthetics, digital humanism and emerging technologies.

This lecture curated by Sarah Kenderdine explores key themes including interactive archives and emergent narrative, deep fakes and blockchain sovereignties, embodied knowledge systems and performative interfaces and scientific visualisation for museums in the age of experience. She will also give an overview of EPFL Pavilions exhibitions and focus the discussion on Deep Fakes: Art and Its Double.

Lecturer

Sarah Kenderdine

She researches at the forefront of interactive and immersive experiences for galleries, libraries, archives and museums. In 2017, Sarah was appointed professor at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Switzerland where she has built the Laboratory for Experimental Museology (eM+). Sarah is also director and lead curator of EPFL Pavilions a new art/science initiative. In 2020 and 2022, she was named in the top 10 of the Museum Influencer List by Blooloop and in 2020 and 2021, Switzerland’s Top 100 Digital Shapers by Bilanz. In 2021, Sarah was appointed corresponding fellow of The British Academy. Her upcoming book is Deep Fakes: A Critical Lexicon of Digital Museology (2024).

Creative Access and Digital Innovation

© Carolyn Lazard, A Recipe for Disaster (still), 2018
© Liza Sylvestre, Captioned-Channel Surfing (still), 2016
© Kamran Behrouz, Avatars and faces - creature comforts, 2022

23 January 2024
Online on Zoom
4:30pm — 6:30pm (CET)

Curator

  • Virginia Marano | University of Zurich and MASI Lugano

About

The event features four professionals and experts in the fields of accessibility and emerging digital innovations: Virginia Marano (University of Zurich and MASI Lugano), Nina Mühlemann (Artist, Bern Academy of the Arts), Kamran Behrouz (Visual artist), Saverio Cantoni (Visual artist) and Georgina Kleege (University of California, Berkeley). The event explores the role of new digital technologies from an artistic and academic perspective, delving into issues related to digital knowledge and spatial fruition. Guests and the participating group will have the opportunity to discuss and initiate a discussion on the points of convergence between art, scientific research and digital innovation with a view to new strategies for accessibility and inclusion.

The online panel discussion is curated by Virginia Marano, a Fondazione Giorgio Cini fellow in the PNRR–PEBA project for the Removal of Physical, Cognitive and Sensory Barriers in Cultural Sites (EU-funded grant – NextGenerationEU).

The class is held in English and has live American sign language (ASL) interpretation by First Choice Interpreting Service.

Contributors

Virginia Marano

Holds a PhD in art history from the University of Zurich. She is the coordinator and co-founder of the research project “Rethinking Art History through Disability” at the University of Zurich. Currently, she is fellow researcher at the Fondazione Giorgio Cini in Venice and works as curatorial assistant at MASI (Museo d’arte della Svizzera italiana), Lugano.

Kamran Behrouz

They are a Non-binary Visual Artist, born and raised in Tehran, currently working, and living in Zurich. Their PhD, entitled ‘Cosmopolitics of the Body’, uses posthuman critical theory as a navigational tool to examine the boundaries of bodies and humanity’s embedded and embodied cultures. Kamran saturates the Queer Identity throughout their art, in order to draw a cartography of belonging and displacement.

Nina Mühlemann

Is an artist and scholar based in Zurich. They are currently working as a postdoc on the SNF-funded research project “Aesthetics of the Im/Mobile” at the Bern Academy of the Arts, researching im/mobile practices of disabled artists. In 2020 Nina Mühlemann and Edwin Ramirez founded Criptonite, a crip queer theatre project that centres an aesthetics of access.

Georgina Kleege

Is a blind writer and disability studies scholar who recently retired from the University of California, Berkeley, and now lives in New York City. Her recent books include: Sight Unseen, Blind Rage: Letters to Helen Keller and More than Meets the Eye: What Blindness Brings to Art.

Saverio Cantoni

Is a white-passing cyborg, disabled –oral Deaf– artist based in Berlin. Situating their practice in the sonic space, Saverio is working through the lenses of crip theory, queer theory and disobedient archives, with the aim to destabilize existing power structures and to rethink the normative understanding of sensorial experiences. Saverio is actively participating in the Sickness Affinity Group (SAG), a group of art workers and activists who work on the topic of sickness/disability and/or are affected by sickness/disability.

On Digital Application

Adriano Olivetti e la bellezza exhibition, 2018-2019 © Cristina Barbiani
© camerAnebbia
© Klaus Obermaier
Tríptiko. A vision inspired by Hieronymus Bosch, Rino Stefano Tagliafierro, 2019

key details

6, 11, 13, 18 October 2022
Online on Zoom
4pm — 6pm (CET)

the course

The four lectures represent an illustrative sample of the many possible declinations of digital applications in the various fields of arts and culture. The intention is to show the different practices, the different creative and production processes, and the tools used behind these different types of artistic products.
The lectures range from the theme of digital installations for the valorisation of Cultural Heritage, to the creative and artistic approach aimed at narration and storytelling, passing through different forms of creativity and artistic expression, always starting from innovative tools and experimental techniques.

Programme

October 6, 2022

Navigating Art Archives

  • Matteo Cellini

Matteo Cellini, part of the CamerAnebbia collective from Milan, explains how some of the many interactive installations are produced from museum archive materials, incographic and documentary sources, and works of art from some of Italy’s most important collections. The lecture explores the techniques used to generate visual landscapes, through retouching, post production and real time rendering techniques, which can be used through touch screens and large-scale video projections.

October 11, 2022

From Classical Art to Digital Art. New forms of narration

  • Rino Stefano Tagliafierro

The lecture focuses on the presentation of a number of multimedia works – short films, commercial projects and video installations – in which a story is told through the use of digitally processed works of classical figurative art. All stages of production, from the conception of the project to the final realisation, are then addressed and explored.

October 13, 2022

New tools, new ideas. Interactivity between the Digital and the Physical

  • Klaus Obermaier

The appointment with artist Klaus Obermaier is dedicated to investigating how digital tools can be used as an exploratory medium for artistic research, and how new technologies can generate forms of interactivity that somehow relate the physical dimension of the body to the digital dimension of artistic creation.

October 18, 2022

Digital exhibits. Multimedia and interactive devices for Cultural Heritage

  • Cristina Barbiani

Cristina Barbiani, scientific head of the Master Digital Exhibit at the Iuav University of Venice, explores in this lesson the different technologies behind multimedia and interactive installations, which allow, through a work of visual ‘translation’, to narrate and return scientific investigations, historical research data and results of archaeological surveys, through some realised examples.

Lecturers

Cristina Barbiani

She is an architect with a PhD in History of Architecture and the City, Science of the Arts and Restoration at the School of Advanced Studies in Venice. She holds a degree in Design and Production of Visual Arts from the IUAV University of Venice. She is the scientific head of the Master Digital Exhibit at the IUAV University of Venice. She has a transversal education between architecture and multimedia and performing arts completed by study periods at New York University and MIT in Boston.

Matteo Tora Cellini

Born in Florence and raised in Brussels, after graduating in design at the Milan Polytechnic and a metrise in Sculpture at La Cambre, he trained at Studio Azzurro. There he met Marco Barsottini and Lorenzo Sarti, with whom he founded camerAnebbia in 2014, investigating the relationship between art, science and new technologies. This research leads to the creation of immersive and interactive interventions that live in the spaces of numerous cultural institutions including Fondazione Querini Stampalia, Gallerie d’Italia, Mudec, Muse.

Stefano Rino Tagliaferro

Born in 1980, he lives and works in Milan. He graduated from ISIA d’Urbino and IED-European Institute of Design in Milan. Over the years he has had experience as art director, visual artist, graphic designer, animator and 2D composer to realize video art, commercials, short films, fashion videos, videomapping, videoprojections and videoinstallations for exhibitions, museums and special events. In 2013 he cofounded KARMACHINA, a studio of visual design. He has taken part in several contemporary art exhibitions in New York, Paris, Sapporo, Moscow, Berlin, Milan receiving international awards in many festivals.

Klaus Obermaier

Since more than three decades interdisciplinary artist, director and composer, he creates innovative works with new media in performing arts, music and installations, highly acclaimed by critics and audiences. His inter-media performances and artworks are shown at festivals and theatres throughout Europe, Asia, North and South America and Australia. He is visiting professor at the University IUAV of Venice and at Babes-Bolyai University in Cluj-Napoca (Romania) teaching interactive arts and performances.

Giacomo Verde (1956-2020). From the techno-artist’s archive to book, exhibition and movie

Renzo Boldrini with Giacomo Verde and a friend © Giallo Mare Minimal Teatro Archive
Portrait of Giacomo Verde
Scene from "Il gatto con gli stivali. Un racconto per il digitale" © Campsirago Residenza
Giacomo Verde/Giallo Mare Minimal Teatro, "Hansel & Gretel Tv" © Giuseppe Murador and Giacomo Verde Archive

key details

9, 16, 23, 30 November 2022
Online on Zoom
4pm — 6pm (CET)

lecturers

  • Anna Maria Monteverdi | Università Statale, Milano
  • Tommaso Verde | Game Designer
  • Flavia Dalila D’Amico | Università di Roma La Sapienza
  • Vincenzo Sansone | Università Statale, Milano
  • Raffaella Rivi | Videomaker

the course

Giacomo Verde (Cimitile 1956 – Lucca 2020) in forty years of artistic activity has dealt with different languages such as street theatre, video art, painting, drawing, performance, Net Art with the idea of investigating contaminations between media to create works in which different artistic techniques coexist in an “artivist” spirit.

Programme

The course, curated by Anna Maria Monteverdi, is structured in 4 meetings and is held in Italian.

November 9, 2022

L’archivio di un artivista. Giacomo Verde (1956-2020)

  • Anna Maria Monteverdi
  • Tommaso Verde

November 16, 2022

Attraversamenti: le ultrascene di Giacomo Verde

  • Flavia Dalila D'Amico

November 23, 2022

Giacomo Verde: il teleracconto e i suoi doppi. La reinvenzione di una tecnica videoteatrale per bambini.

  • Vincenzo Sansone

November 23, 2022

Dall'archivio al film

  • Raffaella Rivi
1/4 L’archivio di un artivista. Giacomo Verde (1956-2020)
2/4 Attraversamenti: le ultrascene di Giacomo Verde
3/4 Giacomo Verde: il teleracconto e i suoi doppi. La reinvenzione di una tecnica videoteatrale per bambini.
4/4 Dall'archivio al film

Gazing Machines

Quayola Pleasant Places, Glow Festival Eindhoven
portrait of the artist with red digital background
Quayola Portrait © Skino Ricci
Quayola, Sculpture Factory, Paradise Art Space, Asymmetric-Archaeology, Seoul_South-Korea, 2018-2019
Quayola, Remains, HOW Art Museum, Asymmetric Archaeology, Gazing Machines, Shanghai, 2019

key details

12 December 2022
Online on Zoom / Onsite at ARCHiVe
4pm — 6pm (CET)

about

A lecture by Quayola, artist who employs technology as a lens to explore the tensions and equilibriums between seemingly opposing forces: the real and artificial, figurative and abstract, old and new. Constructing immersive installations, he engages with and re-imagines canonical imagery through contemporary technology. Landscape painting, classical sculpture and iconography are some of the historical aesthetics that serve as a point of departure for Quayola’s hybrid compositions. His varied practice, all deriving from custom computer software, also includes audiovisual performance, immersive video installations, sculpture, and works on paper. His work has been performed and exhibited in many prestigious institutions worldwide including V&A Museum, London; Park Avenue Armory, New York; National Art Center, Tokyo; UCCA, Beijing; How Art Museum, Shanghai; SeMA, Seoul; Palais de Tokyo, Paris; Ars Electronica, Linz; Sonar Festival, Barcelona and Sundance Film Festival.

Also a frequent collaborator on musical projects, Quayola has worked with composers, orchestras and musicians including London Contemporary Orchestra, National Orchestra of Bordeaux, Ensemble Intercontemporain, Vanessa Wagner, Jamie XX, Mira Calix, Plaid and Tale Of Us. In 2013, Quayola was awarded the Golden Nica at Ars Electronica.

Lecturer

Davide Quayola

Born in 1982 in Rome, he quickly tried to get away from the Italian capital and its historical iconography, choosing to move to London at the age of 19 to seek new subjects, a new language and a new way of expression. In 2005, he obtained an art degree from the University of London. Through his enigmatic videos, Quayola creates hybrid spaces of animated painting and sculpture. Using a procedure of audio-visual performance, drawing, photography and software programming, he explores a fine line between the real and the artificial.

The Third Thing. On Digital Photography

Jaipur #8 © Ljubodrag Andric
Bundi #1 © Ljubodrag Andric
Villa Farsetti, Treviso #12 © Ljubodrag Andric
Venezia, Fondazione G. Cini #9 © Ljubodrag Andric
Japur #30 © Ljubodrag Andric
Napoli, Casa Morra #11 © Ljubodrag Andric

key details

26 April 2023, 4pm — 6pm (CET)
27 April 2023, 9am — 1pm (CET)
Online on Zoom / Onsite at Fondazione Giorgio Cini

about

Two days dedicated to the digital image and its role in the contemporary world, through the work method of photographer and artist Ljubodrag Andric. His research investigates the relationship between space and architecture and revolves around the re-contextualisation of the urban landscape.
The programme includes a lecture and a photographic promenade around the spaces of the Fondazione Giorgio Cini on the Island of San Giorgio Maggiore, Venice.

Programme

April 26, 2023

On Digital Photography

Starting from an investigation into the technical evolution of photography in the digital era, Ljubodrag Andric proposes a reflection on the current over-production of “weightless” photographic images, as much due to their ephemeral nature as to their lack of adherence to a narrative of reality.

April 27, 2023

Photographic Promenade

Symposium around the Island of San Giorgio Maggiore, in order to explore the methodological part of the artist’s work and the themes raised during the previous lecture from a practical point of view.

Lecturer

Ljubodrag Andric

Born in Belgrade, Yugoslavia in 1965 into a family of artists, Andric started his involvement with art and photography at the age of 15. He studied humanities at the University of Belgrade, then dedicated himself entirely to photography in 1987. At age 21 Andric received his first professional commissions of mostly architectural photography. He had his first exhibition – at the gallery of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Belgrade – at the age of 23. In 1987 Andric moved to Rome, Italy where he had successful studio practices in both Rome and Milan over the following 15 years, before moving to Canada in 2002. He won numerous international awards.

 

On Digital Photography by Ljubodrag Andric