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Monthly Pubblication:
Digicult Produzioni
Editing/Photo Editing:
Marco Mancuso
Cover: Redazione Digicult
Contenuts:
Marco Baravalle, Lucrezia Cippitelli, Claudia D'Alonzo, Alessio Galbiati, Luigi Ghezzi, Salvatore Iaconesi, Marco Mancuso, Alessandro Massobrio, Annamaria Monteverdi, Oriana Persico, Monica Ponzini, Barbara Sansone, Silvia Scaravaggi, Massimo Schiavoni, Giulia Simi, Valentina Tanni
Translations:
Virginia Cavalletti, Chiara Resmini, Francesca Magnaghi, Ornella Pesenti, |
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//Marco Mancuso
NET ART
//Valentina Tanni
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MARC GARRET & RUTH CATLOW: NET VISIONS
Txt: Marco Mancuso / En: Francesca Magnaghi
Area: Networking
 Let's talk again about Marc Garret and Ruth Catlow , two people that don't need to be introduced in the context of networking and mailing list about new international media art. Marc Garret and Ruth Catlow promoted many on-line debates, through not only their channel, NetBehaviour , many art networking projects, and they've been working for ten years on their project Furtherfield.org . They already wrote an important text of reflections and theories about art, that was published on Digimag 33 – April 2008 . And they promised us to be interviewed; let's see what they answered. If you didn't read the article, my advice is to read it: now I don't want to digress too much. The text you'll read is a long description of their art activities, their thought and their experiences. The Furtherfield project is obviously as crucial as other few on-line projects. And now we can talk about it at Digicult, and this discussion was really interesting...
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Txt: Valentina Tanni / Eng: Ornella Pesenti
Area: Net Art
 Being original is a vexata quaestio for all the art critics. Every art studious knows that sooner or lather the question will have to be faced, willy-nilly. And, in the majority of cases, the points on which art studious lean on are predictable: Walter Benjamin, Jean Baudrillard, Rosalind Krauss and so on… The territory is slippery and even too huge: it is possible to create space-time flight, combine philosophical concepts and market analysis, produce conceptual escalations that points right to the dissolution of the art concept itself. This is the importance of the idea of “originality” for a work (that is sometime also related to “origin” and “originality”). The technological development, who exponentially augmented the “reproducibility” of art, complicates more and more the situation, turning the opposition between “original” and “copy” into an impossible data to manage. In the époque of contents sharing through the Net, in fact...
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HACKTIVISM
//Marco Baravalle
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MILITANT ART, CULTURAL SUBVERSION
Txt: Marco Baravalle / En: Francesca Magnaghi
Area: Hacktivism
 “Arbeit macht kapital”: this is what says the neon work by Claire Fontaine , at S.a.L.E.-Docks in Venice, a space for the promotion of contemporary art and cultural production. It was open last October and it is self-managed by a group of students and militants with a background in community centers. Arbeit Macht Kapital (work makes capital) is the detournement by Claire Fontaine of the slogan placed at the entrances to a number of Nazi concentration camps. It is a detournement that invites us to reflect on the capital valorisation processes of cultural production and creativity in this Post-Fordism era, that means a production model where languages, affections, relationships and, last but not least, creativity are used to generate exploitation, uncertainty and new kinds of alienation. herefore, Claire Fontaine's work introduces a new perspective of the (really serious) problem of political impasse in the field of contemporary art production, and it also introduces the theme of capital valorisation of cultural production and, most of all, of that subversive power that can be represented by the metropolis cognitive work. These political problems promoted “Multiversity, or the Art of Subversion”, the event that took place at S.a.L.E.-Docks between May 16th and May 18th. The event can be seen as an important stage of a project that is not only an artistic exhibition project because, on the contrary, it has a militant nature in Venice, where the field of cultural production is becoming more and more important. However, it is not a localist perspective; indeed it underlines the fact that every kind of knowledge, including the artistic one, must be used, in fighting situations, to take a stand (as Michel Foucault said) and to be tested every day in the real world.
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SOFTWARE ART
//Marco Mancuso
MMORPG
//Monica Ponzini
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THE WONDERFUL IDEAS OF THEODORE WATSON
Txt: Marco Mancuso / Eng: Ornella Pesenti
Area: Software Art
 Theodore Watson is the classical man in the shadow. The genie of the lamp, the one who turns the impossible into possible, that transforms an idea into reality. No matter how hard or ambitious it is. Because of my character, because I'm fascinated, I'm always shocked by those kinds of people: great technique, enormous ability in code writing, genial ideas among interaction design and generative art, complex systems for simple interactions, often funny, surely effective. There must be obviously a reason why they're not so well known. Maybe they've a lack in the conceptual point of view; maybe they're hard to classify both in the design and art world that barely recognize hybrids and ambiguous languages dictated by the potentialities of the machine code. The “case” of Theodore Watson, let me say, is a little bit different. I think you could use the word “ingenuous”, if it's true as it is that lots of his code has been used...
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THE GRIEFERS: SABOTANDO SECOND LIFE
Txt: Monica Ponzini
Area: Mmorpg
 Guerriglia digitale organizzata, sabotaggio virtuale, o, peggio, terrorismo della Rete. E' come viene definito il fenomeno dei griefers, letteralmente coloro che vanno online con il solo intento di creare grief, dolore, dispiacere, agli altri utenti della Rete. Nella fattispecie, i griefers si muovono nei mondi virtuali organizzati come Second Life e nei massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs), semplicemente per operare atti di sabotaggio e disturbo agli altrui Avatar. Un'imprevista devianza – o una libera reinterpretazione creativa – degli intenti con cui i giochi online e le realtà virtuali sono stati creati, che sta diventando sempre più diffusa e organizzata. Nato alla fine degli anni '90, il fenomeno gode di ottima salute e, riassumendo le diverse dichiarazioni d'intenti dei suoi fautori, si può ridurre nel concetto-base dello spingere gli altri giocatori – gli Avatar omologati e omogeneizzati...
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VIDEO ART
//Claudia D'Alonzo
VIDEO ART
//Alessio Galbiati
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THE LAST SUPPER:
SOUVENIR FROM MILAN
Tx: Claudia D'Alonzo / Eng: Chiara Resmini
Area: Video Art
 “Behind the scenes there is a cultural turmoil of anxiety, trouble, phone calls, institutional activism (which characterizes me and has involved me a lot) to obtain from the Ministry the already granted and then revoked authorization to Greenaway to elaborate his reading, animated with lights and sounds, of Leonardo da Vinci's Last Supper, exactly like he admirably did with Rembrandt's Night Watch and he is going to do with Picasso's Guernica.” With these words, Vittorio Sgarbi, who at that time was the Milan culture councillor, presented the reading of Leonardo's Last Supper by Welsh director Peter Greenaway. It is an installation of lights and sounds, which was inaugurated last 16 th April in Milan , in the week of the Furniture Fair; through his interpretation, the artist wanted to give life and voice to Leonardo's wall painting again. Not to belie the rotten habits of the Italian institutions, the intervention was the occasion...
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I'M NOT DAVID LYNCH. PALESTINE IN MILAN
Txt: Alessio Galbiati / Eng: Francesca Magnaghi
Area: Video Art
 “I'm not David Lynch... but I think I deserve a better space... I've been working for forty years in the underground... I am an underground artist!... but since some years I'm considered an important artist. Why Triennial Design Museum of Milan doesn't even meet me? Nobody greeted me, nobody welcomed me... my video exhibition, and it is really rare, is relegated in a marginal room of this fucking structure, with too much light and in one hour's time... What can I do in one hour? Thirty five years ago I started to film my performances in Italy... in the 1970s we came here from the U.S.A. because you had a fertile ground, a really interesting cultural excitement... you were in the lead: what's happening to you? You should complain to your Institutions, to the Triennial, that is your space... I tell you this because it is your city”. These were the words of Charlemagne Palestine at the presentation of his video exhibition on Sunday May 25 th 2008...
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//Alessandro Massobrio
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SONAR 2008: ADVANCED MUSIC & CINEMA BEYOND
Txt: Alessandro Massobrio / Eng: Chiara Resmini
Area: Electronica
 The presence of Spain at Sònar 2008 is very important, with a third of the music schedule presenting more than ninety artists including composers, DJs and producers. At the centre of the festival there is also a tribute to the creative advertising communication on the Internet, from the fake to the self-promotion through MySpace. Starting from the coordinate image of Sònar 2008, conceived at first as a series of short amateur videos in which strange genetic experiments are filmed, in a mysterious place, by mixing animals and talking human heads; the anonymous broadcast of the videos on YouTube and through a false website caused an incredible response with hundreds of thousands of hits in few hours. The three days of the festival will offer, as always, a comprehensive panorama of the international scene and of the favourite trends of electronic music, by focusing on the latest development of Eurodance and the fiesta , with a lot of surprises for the most curious people. Among the famous artists there are Pan Sonic, Clark, Matmos, Goldfrapp, Jeff Mills, M.I.A., Róisín Murphy, Soulwax, Chloé, Frankie Knuckles, Hercules and Love Affair, and Kalabrese; among the most interesting groups there is the Spanish group Q'AA, who presents psychedelic atmospheres with long drones of guitar, bass and pedals, or aggressive pieces of noise and guitar saturations, accompanied by the disconnected rhythmics of the drums. Cabo San Roque with their musica a maquina usually perform in costume within improbable sets made up of toys, washing-machines, tracks for toy cars, aquariums and strange sound pieces, creating romantic sounds and borderline. They are very original and often indefinable during their concerts and they play unconventional, alcoholic, melodramatic and, at the same time, enjoyable music, which reminds us of the atmosphere of the circus and of less known Pink Floyd.
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AUDIOVIDEO
//Lucrezia Cippitelli
LIVE MEDIA
//Giulia Simi
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THE CINEMATIC EXPERIENCE OF BORIS DEBACKERE
Txt: Lucrezia Cippitelli / Eng: Chiara Resmini
Area: Audiovideo
 Boris Debackere is an artist and sound designer; he teaches at the Sint Lukas Academy in Brussels , where he leads the Transmedia department. He studied at the Image and Sound department at the music academy in The Hague , which trained a generation of artists who devote themselves to experimentations mixing image and sound and who work above all in the Netherlands and in the Flanders . This input was probably one of the experiences that brought him to “think in a multimedia way”, as he told us during our conversation. He collaborated with several artists, among which Marnix De Nijs (with whom he created the “Run Motherfucker Run” interactive installation), Brecht Debackere (with whom he created the “Rotor” live cinema performance”), Herman Asselberghs (with whom he won the Transmediale prize for “Proof of life” in 2007). He works and lives among Brussels , Antwerp , Rotterdam and Amsterdam...
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KOAN01+OOTCHIO,LANDSCAPES FROM A PAST FUTURE
Txt: Giulia Simi / Eng: Virginia Cavalletti
Area: Live Media
 After three editions dedicated to great masters such as Cunningham, Glass and Bertolucci, the fourth edition of FUTURO PRESENTE festival opens up to the broader theme of the links between arts and new technologies: the legacy of the great experimenters, the dreams and utopias of the greatest twentieth-century protagonists revised and developed by artists who employ the latest technologies as lenses through which to observe and shape the world. Around the MART and its striking dome, the festival gathered together many names of undisputed importance, what with artists and critics: from Derrick De Kerckhove to Maria Grazia Mattei, from Studio Azzurro to Joshua Davis, from Forsythe to Fennesz and Mouse on Mars – just to mention a few. The festival is an undoubted opportunity to reflect and sum up the situation of contemporary culture linked to new media. A specific space was reserved to audio-video...
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ARTIFICIALINTELLIGENCE
//Salvatore Iaconesi
TECHNOLOGY
//Luigi Ghezzi
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WE ARE NOT ALONE - PART 2
Txt: Salvatore Iaconesi e Oriana Persico
Area: Artificial Intelligence
 Having achieved presence, the research systematically proceeded through the study of identity, following two directions: on one side the inversion of the strategy designed for “Talker” and “Talker Performance” and, on the other side, the creation of a totally virtual identity. Ex-novo. “Dead on SecondLife” inverts the process created for “Talker Performance”. The direction changes: body shifts towards virtual.The technological engine behind the “Talker” is used to bring famous, iconic, characters from the past back to life in Second Life's virtual world. The texts (in their native languages) by Franz Kafka, Carl Marx e Coco Chanel have been gathered and loaded in the “Talker”'s linguistic engine; avatars have been designed to look as closely as possible to the selected characters; a software has been designed to allow the avatars to independently move through the virtual world and to interact with other avatars...
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L'INVISIBILE NELLA SCIENZA
Txt: Luigi Ghezzi
Area: Technology
Non è ancora stata scritta una storia dell'”invisibile” nella scienza eppure i presupposti ci sarebbero, perlomeno per una storia culturale, se non, ancora meglio, una storia metodologica. Se la condizione dell'invisibilità di un oggetto è quella che lo rende impossibile da essere visto, il fascino e il timore per l'invisibile sono spesso sintomi di insicurezze epistemologiche provocate da nuovi mezzi o tecniche di visione della realtà che minano le certezze della nostra percezione. Visto il suo successo nei prodotti della cultura popolare, l'invisibile costituisce certamente un concetto soglia nella storia della scienza: tra attualizzazioni magiche e desideri dell'immaginario è sempre al limite con le parascienze, come la parapsicologia o l'occulto del paranormale e quindi un classico tema della fantascienza e della letteratura fantastica. Non è un caso che Lynn Gamwell, direttore dell'Art Museum dello stato di New York abbia intitolato la mostra sull'invisibile dal Romanticismo al XX secolo “ Exploring the Invisibile. Art, Science, and the Spiritual ”.
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AUDIOVISUAL DESIGN
//Annamaria Monteverdi
GRAPHIC DESIGN
//Barbara Sansone
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MARIANNE WEEMS: DIGITAL DIVIDE AND THEATRE
Txt: Annamaria Monteverdi / Eng: Virginia Cavalletti
Area: Audiovisual Design
Marianne Weems is the founder of American techno-theatre ensemble The Builders Association, specialised in theatre exhibitions exploiting the richness of interactive digital technology and panoramic screens. In 2004, they brought to RomaEuropa the multi-awarded Alladeen , winner of an Obie Award, a not so much fairy-tale story about employees in a call centre in Bangalore . Technology is always there, both concretely and as subject of the shows: the technological gap between civilised countries and the third world, the exploitation of workers by means of outsourcing, media simulation of events, technological mediation invading all actions in people's life, electronic control. We witness a genuine example of politico-technological theatre, continuously played within exceptionally self-evident and visually effective theatrical scenography. Supervision is their latest production; three stories describing...
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OFFF IN LISBON: SAUDADE POST-DIGITALE
Txt: Barbara Sansone / Eng: Chiara Resmini
Area: Graphic Design
 This year OFFF moved to the wonderful Portuguese capital. Considering its huge international public, it probably matters very little where the very loved festival of “post-digital” culture takes place. Young and creative people from all over the world, experts of graphic arts, supporters of cultural holidays, hunters of events and excuses to break out of the routine for some days, combining business with pleasure, brought also this year to an early sale of all the tickets, because they have been bought on the Internet; moreover, people took advantage of the low-cost flights. And now they are walking around Lisbon streets, exploring its steep alleys, refreshing in cafés, crowding small hotels with a view; then, they meet again at midday at LX Factory to share passions, experiences, emotions. This is the distinctive feature that will accompany OFFF forever, since it is written in its public's DNA....
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PERFORMING ART
//Silvia Scaravaggi
VIDEO THEATRE
//Massimo Schiavoni |
CONFINI TTV
Tx: Silvia Scaravaggi / Eng: Francesca Magnaghi
Area: Performing Art
 Digicult is a media partner of the 19 th edition of Riccione TTV Festival , the biennial event of theatre, visual arts and new media, running from June 12 th to June 15 th in Riccione, with unusual and significant locations in the city. TTV is a unique and world-famous event in Italy, with a twenty-year-old tradition, that since 1985 – when it was created, under the direction of Franco Quadri – stood out for its concern about research and experimenting in the context of hybrids of theatre, visual arts, videos and television. In the new festival edition, “ Confini ”, what stands out is the interest in experimenting, different kinds of languages and innovative and heterogeneous works, that are not new but contemporary, able to analyze the different realities of art and human contexts. The places carefully chosen for the festival are different from each other to show the different aspects of the city: an old holiday camp, the rooms...
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A SHOW ON FRIENDSHIP
Tx: Massimo Schiavoni / Eng: Virginia Cavalletti
Area: Video Theatre
 Nico and The Navigators tornano in Italia da assoluti protagonisti di quel teatro immagine capace di conquistare spazi di pensiero, riflessioni concepite su quelle “analisi del dramma sociale” analizzate già nel saggio Performance in Postmodern Culture da Victor Turner e capaci di mostrare al pubblico un approccio creativo fra improvvisazione e rituali assurdi e maniacali. Ecco i punti di crisi che Nico riesce via via ad estrapolare reintegrandoli, e cambiare quella sorta di condizione dove c'è bisogno di un riassestamento dell'intero schema drammaturgico. Così da evidenziare peculiarità già note a Charles Hockett e Goffman ma con ironie e quotidianità sempre curiose; pantomime, giochi di parole e doppi sensi costruiti ad arte, estranianti rituali bizzarri propri delle nostre manifestazioni, su noi stessi e con l'altro-persona. Il nuovo spettacolo Obwohl ich Dich kenne // Sebbene ti conosca - Intelligenti nemici e metà migliori...
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NEW MEDIA
//Salvatore Iaconesi
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DEGRADARTE @ LPM 2008
Txt: Salvatore Iaconesi e Oriana Persico / Eng: Virginia Cavalletti
Area: New Media
 28th May 2008. On the eve of the fifth edition of LPM (Live Performers Meeting) , the beautiful pavilion of the former Mattatoio (Slaughterhouse) in the district Testaccio in Rome, is invaded by trolleys, cables, equipment, people quickly moving from side to side with tools and things to do, people that, arrived one day in advance, chat and laugh, meeting or meeting again, looking forward to the days of the meeting. LPM is a meeting, a converging point for experiences and productions of hundreds of visual artists and VJs, who have in common their participation to the international community built around FLxER, an Open Source software for VJing, and live audio and video performances, produced by Flyer Communication. The effectiveness which LPM proposes the characterization as a meeting with, and not just as a mere performative event, is possibly the only black mark we could notice during our (beautiful and satisfactory) stay at the Mattatoio. The incredible number of participants, almost 250 artists from all over the world, and the consequent need to carefully organise the sequence of performances, were the partially disorienting element for both performers and public. The former, at times, were forced to present their performances in very short periods of time. The latter were a bit lost in the attempt to follow the various performances. On the other hand, the essence and quality of LPM, and the technical and organizational preparation of the staff contributed pretty well to the creation of a positive and fascinating experience, which helped forgive these little imperfections
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