DigiMade - The Digicult Agency - Digital Art, Digital Culture, New Media Art

The research of audiovisual horizon
(critical text)

The multimedia work ‘op7’ by otolab - the experimental electronic audiovisual collective - is an artistic hybrid, born as a multisensorial livemedia show, also able to express its potentialities through the modalities and codes that are typical of the audiovisual installation or of the exhibit.

‘Op7’ is an ontologically important work, a link between the Italian project tradition and the present research around expressive codes in audiovisual synaesthesy. A cortical centre between accultured electronic music and the modern practices of sampling and digital sound synthesis. A transposition, according to mixed media practices, of the deconstructivist theories of the last century in an interdisciplinary ambit. Commissioned by the Mixed Media Festival in 2006 in Milano, ‘op7’ originates as a reinterpretation of a conceptual work of art, the monumental “I Sette Palazzi Celesti” (The Seven Heavenly Buildings) of Belgian sculptor Anselm Kiefer, to reach its representation using electronic instruments and expressive codes derived from an audiovisual intepretation of optical art.

The seven tunnels, the seven paths and gates that separate them, are, in fact, the often cluastrophobic optical element, into which the spectator is forcedly immersed in order to begin a ‘trip’ that lasts approximately 50 minutes. Otolab surprises us when the bidimensional flatness of the image on the screen is destroyed by moving often-three-dimensional visual elements. As for the theories of Masters Victor Vasarely and Mead Schaeffer, ‘op7’ begins when going beyond the flatness of the projecting surface, transformed in retinical strain, so as to reach a psychological involvement of the spectator. Otolab expands the process experimented by the above-mentioned Masters when, confident about the usage of new digital technologies, dissolves the screen and distributes perceptive stimulation in space. The work of art is not static any more and the movement is not only an optical illusion derived from the composition of the shapes. The work is, itself, a three-dimensional optical and audiovisual animation, distributed in a three-dimensional environment. The line, multiplying and transforming itself, becomes volume, thus an immersive trompe l'oeil. As shown by the prints in the exhibit, representing stills from the digital video material, able to project the spectator on a specific point of focus of a hypothetical electronic horizon.

Critical Text (Eng)
Testo Critico (Ita)