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TECHNE I

   
T e c h n e
         

1st EDITION

ART AND TECHNOLOGY

A JOURNEY THROUGH THE WORLD OF VIDEOINSTALLATIONS

November 19th 1999 - February 27th 2000

TECHNE: art and technology - A journey through the world of videoinstallations, conceived by Massimo Cecconi, Romano Fattorossi, Ludovica Fonda and Giuseppe Manzoni, was born with the aim of exploring the new forms of 'marriage' between art and technology. "A buried, sometimes conflictual tie", according to Gianni Verga, Director of Culture- Province of Milan, "but always richly significant". A tie which opens up a new perspective, the one of the art of "'situations' and installations, which invites the viewer to emerge from pure contemplation and enter instead the experience of the work and the process of constructing meaning"; the art that "has adopted the most modern techniques available, from those which can now be considered canonical, such as video, to those ever more sophisticated, like computers, the Internet, bio-medical sensors".

WORKS

Robert Cahen Paysages - passage

Eighteen monitor screens placed in a double curve that reminds us of the rails of an evanescent track, or of a river marked out by the transparent containers and lightweight tables which support the monitors, on which landscapes "pass". Not just because they go by on the screens before our eyes in a captivating, mantra-like flow of variation and reprise, but also because the oscilloscope transforms and deforms them, removing them from the familiar form of the journey and turning them into landscapes of the memory, disturbing perceptual challenges.

Mario Canali E.mX

The viewer/participant is invited to explore, touch, caress the air. The sensation of being able to handle the void is of course illusory: the space will read the position sensor on the hand and react to it like an immaterial virtual body, with lights and voices, expressing pleasure or irritation, amusement or sadness. If the sensibilities of man and machine are well-matched, the voices will mutate into utterances, sighs and shouts, the erotica of nothingness, the poetry of the unsayable.

Piero Gilardi Pulsazioni  

Synthetic fossils, perhaps from the distant future, tune into our pulse and dance a discrete halting dance, jumping and vibrating. Seven rocks spread over a red carpet, a console, a seat. An earphone monitors the visitor's heartbeat, and a pulsator transmits it to the rocks, amplifying the beating of the heart. The space is animated, comes alive, responding to the rhythms of our body and transforming itself with it.

Studio Azzurro Frammenti di una battaglia

Faithful to the idea that electronic technology does not mark a clean break between mankind and the experience of nature and to the construction of a "narrative" dimension dependent on reconstruction and elaboration by the viewer/participant, Studio Azzurro present an interactive installation inspired by Paolo Uccello's painting 'La Battaglia di S. Romano'. The holes dug in the ground from which immaterial objects emerge, drawn by the voices and noises of the visitors, are the locus for a perceptual transfer which releases emotions and narrations, as well as an appalling comprehension of the folly of war.

Steina Vasulka Machine Vision

Eight video cameras, each with its particular effects, join with mechanical devices such as a revolving sphere of mirrors to restructure the space and return it to the monitors dismantled, analysed, shaken up. The perceptual disorientation suffered by the viewer reveals the absurdity of the single point of view, of any claim on the part of vision to be able to grasp and dominate the universe.

Perry Hoberman Faraday's Garden

From a techno-artist as always interested in showing us just how far technology has penetrated into our collective imagination, an installation made up of slide projectors, radios, phonographs, tangles of electric cables, switches, plugs: piled up on the floor of this installation is an electric landscape, a veritable "Faraday's Garden". These objects carry with them the whole history of the 20th century, as if on a weird and nostalgic journey through time. As the visitor walks through, unseen pressure pads trigger slides that animate the communication tools, which come to life and seem to inhabit a living machine.

Giacomo Verde X - 8 X 8 - X

An interactive loop generated at the centre of this installation by projection in the space with mirrors and video projectors, images that merge with others generated by computer and with those from a website in which reflections on art and technology are accompanied by information on non-government organizations. Interaction is not just a characteristic of digital technologies and a pathway to be explored by art, is a modality of social relations, the substance of human experience.

An exhibition edited by: Romano Fattorossi, Ludovica Fonda and supported by Region of Lombardy - Direzione Generale Cultura, Province of Milan President: Ombretta Colli, Director of Culture - Province of Milan: Gianni Verga, Manager Settore Cultura: Giuseppe Manzoni, Manager U.O. Cultura 1: Massimo Cecconi, Manager U.O. Cultura 2: Angelo Cappellini | Organization (general): Maddalena Pugno | Organization (technical): Cristoforo Massari, Mario Quadraroli | Secretarial staff: Caterina Aurora, Lucia Cataldo | Technical assistance: Medialogo - Servizi audiovisivi | Press officers: Marco Piccardi, Pinuccia Merisio | A.I.A.C.E. - Invideo | Project for the preparation of the exhibition: Luciano Gatti | Preparation of the exhibition: Colombo L.&C. | Folder by: Antonio Caronia | Graphic Design: Anne Makinen (AchilliGhizzardiAssociati) | Translations: John Young Technical | Sponsorship: JVC