Matteo Zamagni: interrelations: nature/technology

Roxanne Vardi

Matteo Zamagni is a multi-disciplinary artist who works across the visual arts, electronic music, multimedia installations, and film production. Using analytical geoscientific tools, VR/AR/MR, real-time generative imaging, photogrammetry, and CGI techniques Zamagni explores the complexities of the different crises that define our contemporary age and society. Zamagni’s artistic production is characterized by the exposure of the interrelations between nature and technology through machine-driven visual artworks.

Matteo Zamagni is represented by Gazelli Art House, and has exhibited works at international exhibitions and festivals such as the Barbican Centre, V&A Digital Futures, and Torino Film Festival. In conjunction with the release of Matteo Zamagni’s artcast on Niio titled Experiences of Synchrony we spoke with him about his artistic practice, and his work on the project titled “Unison” for Paraadiso, the new audiovisual collaborative project from producer TSVI, and visual artist and producer Seven Orbits. The audio-visual artworks included in this artcast induce altered states by presenting works which are played out as hypnotic journeys of sound and visuals.

Many of your video works include a sound element as a fundamental focal point. Could you please elaborate on your ongoing exploration of combining the visual and the auditory?

Music has always been a driving force for my works since a very early stage; over the years I have been working with many musicians and producers collaborating on music videos, short films, live visuals and installations, and more recently after delving into music production myself I began exploring real-time audio-visual experiences through the following projects ‘seven orbits’ and ‘Paraadiso’ which were released on Shanghai-based record label SVBKVLT. Through these projects I wanted to develop a tool that seamlessly connected Film, CGI and Audio into a real-time, audio-reactive and interactive environment, where logic systems connect and bridge communication between multiple softwares, informing one another. The project Paraadiso, created in collaboration with TSVI marks the first goal towards the realization of such a tool. This system is autonomous yet can function alongside user input, in this sense, it combines light and sound together using an ecosystem of softwares that enables seamless communication and interaction between the 3D/2D environment and the soundscapes. This approach opens up a sea of possibilities in the creation of real-time video and 3D-based content fully synchronized and triggered via sound, resulting in highly dynamic, ever-changing works. Moreover I can see a lot of potential in creating highly stimulating works which could lead the viewer into deeper states of consciousness.

In the near future, I’m hoping to expand this body of work into a 1-hour long CGI film combining my music production as seven orbits together with CGI shots created inside a game engine.

Matteo Zamagni, Unison – 02, 2022.

As the title suggests, your audiovisual collaborative project Unison, aims to create a communal energy as a collective physical experience. What is it that you would like your viewers to gain from this experience?

While we were making the album we were fascinated by how the combination of light and sound in a space would influence the people inside of it; heightening the senses and sometimes, given the right circumstances, conveying a sense of relatedness and care for one another. Human interaction is profoundly social, our everyday life does not take place in isolation but constantly requires our engagement with other people. This feeling of relatedness, reciprocal care and collectivity, is rare and not normally experienced on a day-to day basis especially among strangers and in big cities; The Project Unison references sacred functions and rituals by indigenous populations globally. In ceremonies, it is common to find elements of sound, light, dance and singing which would sometimes throw people into a heightened state of consciousness, sometimes even transcendental. There’s also a strong sense of community and interrelatedness felt within those groups, not only between humans but across the living kingdom, including other animals, plants, biomes and the cosmos.

Many of your artworks are created through a combination of different imaging tools and techniques such as AR, generative imaging, CGI techniques, analytical geoscientific tools and many more? Could you walk us through this complex working process of bringing these elements together into one final piece?

Since I have been quite fluid from an early age I naturally developed a diverse toolset which I reflected in my approach to navigating my diverse interests. Working with technology has deepened my knowledge and skillset by granting me access to accessible tools and resources that could be applied to a wide range of outputs spanning across augmented, virtual and mixed reality to projection mapping, live visuals, virtual production, Interactive Installations, and traditional screen-based work. The creation of a work in my case, is usually aided, informed and mediated by technology; As initial ideas start to materialize they morph and shift based on the environment they’re being developed in.

Matteo Zamagni, Unison – 06, 2022.

You have stated that you would like your works to contribute meaningfully to the broader field of environmental activism. In your opinion, what is it about the use of digital tools that can assist us in critically exploring complex planetary issues?

I am incredibly fascinated by the crossover of tools from computer graphics with forensic investigation or geoscientific surveys. Nowadays thanks to the accessibility of software for physics simulations of fluids, sounds, rigid bodies coupled with photogrammetry 3D reconstructions, and publicly available databases online the tools that are commonly used in a VFX pipeline can be ported into a forensic investigative studio. To critically and methodically reconstruct events of various types: from climate-related disasters to cases of social injustice. Inversely you could use geoscientific tools normally used in scientific surveys as a base to develop creative ideas.

Further along this line lies the combination of the ever-increasing power of GPUs (hardware initially designed for CGI) coupled with AI and machine learning, bringing unimaginable leaps forwards in virtually every existing industry but especially crucial in tackling the ecological crisis. What  used to take years to simulate now takes minutes.

Matteo Zamagni, Unison – 01, 2022.

Many of the sound elements in your works resemble alterations of microscopic sounds which would be heard out in nature such as a caterpillar cracking out of its cocoon. How are these sounds accumulated?

It’s funny that you mention this, it probably came out completely unconsciously. This reminds me of foley recording, a technique used in cinema to recreate the sound of things as well as SFX by recording the sounds of seemingly unrelated objects which allude to the original sound. I can see some similarities between foley and the creation of sounds in our album; Even though we mostly created the sounds digitally rather than physically. Our sample library consists of various techniques spanning digital synthesizers, granular synthesis, and distorted samples.

Depicting the impossible: Eric Lerner’s Virtual Worlds

By Roxanne Vardi

This interview is part of a series of three editorial articles that dive deeper into the different software, technicalities, and processes that go into creating digital artworks, in order to offer our readers a deeper understanding of digital art as a medium.

We speak to Eric Lerner as part of a collaboration with Render Studio, a collective creative experimentation for a digital reality. Render Studio is inspired by art, design, nature and technology and aims to explore dimensions of virtuality, interactivity and motion. Eric Lerner’s series Tokonoma is featured on Niio this month.

Eric Lerner is a new media artist, animation director and professor at the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design where he teaches art and animation for video games.

Part of your artistic practice deals with 3D animation. Could you give us an in-depth analysis of this digital art technique? Where do you see 3D animation going in the next five years?

3D animation or CGI animation refers to many different techniques and values but often will have similarity within the use of virtual “polygons” to calculate and produce an image. This constantly evolving technical practice has seen use in practically every modern art form; from film to games, graphic design to art. It is an extremely wide and flexible field of techniques that can produce a limitless variety of different styles, therefore It is difficult to lay clear borders or boundaries to 3D as an art form.

For me, the ability to create realistic looking imagery of physically impossible scenarios is where the true power and interest lays. This has of course been in use for cinema and VFX for many years but the types of narrative popular cinema usually portrays very often lacks the type of deep meaning and context that art makes possible; through more complex forms of expression, new fantastical realities can be created and used to invoke and provoke thought and experience, and with the democratization and  wide availability of 3D tools, artists anywhere are free to explore their style and visual expression in new and exciting ways. However, as the benchmark for quality rises, the entry level for artists to find their initial steps within these techniques rapidly becomes less achievable, requiring extensive study and practice; this might distance newcomers to the media. I would suggest to them that exploration of unique, even unconventional style, would be more important than technical prowess.

Eric Lerner, RedBrickWall1, 2022.

We are currently seeing a huge advancement in real time 3D rendering which allows for interactive media. To achieve the visual fidelity of what recently was only available to highly resourceful creation agents through pre-rendered processes only. This is already providing the gaming industry with hollywood style visuals for video games, but also has huge potential for art installations and exhibitions to create extremely immersive experiences that engulf viewers in an alternative reality.

Looking even further, I believe we’ll see these tools become available in more mobile setups such as smartphones and small headgear combinations. Furthermore, the interactive possibilities and AI generated content will be able to provide real time creation of completely unique experiences; entire detailed worlds created by direction of artists and then explored by viewers and users, possibly even as a one of a kind, single use experience – quite similar to our own reality.

Eric Lerner, Tokonoma I, 2022.

“For me, the ability to create realistic looking imagery of physically impossible scenarios is where the true power and interest lays.

Towards the creation of many of your artworks you create 3D animations which you then turn into live action videos? Could you elaborate on some of the complexities of this practice and your use of a handheld camera technique?

A process I’ve been researching and expanding on involves first shooting a live action clip, usually of empty (of people) urban or forest areas. Later I will “track” the footage (this is a process that follows hundreds of points of movement in a video in order to mimic the original movement of the camera, through a mathematical process of figuring out the parallax strength in the scene, thus producing a sort of “depth map” of the film scene). With a digital copy of the original camera movement, I can “film” 3D objects within CGI creation environments using the same exact movement of the original, often handheld footage. This eventually produces the illusion of the 3D object being present during the original shoot, even if the object itself doesn’t appear realistic in its own nature.

While this technique has been long used in film VFX, I find that it can bring to life many different types of narrative (with my favorite being surreal imagery) and its magic is quite captivating. While a relatively high end technique, it can still be produced by a single artist, and its creative possibilities are extremely interesting; it brings to life impossible objects and affects the mind very effectively, producing a magical realism that can turn everyday scenes into dreamscapes.

Eric Lerner, Pools of Reflection I, 2022.

Could you share some of your early experiences working in the NFT space, and provide us with your anticipations of NFTs as an accepted traditional art medium?

When NFT first started getting attention in the art world, I was very excited by the prospect that it promised a new form of livelihood for artists, specifically for more left-field, alternative arenas of art (alternative to fine arts, mostly). Unfortunately, it quickly became apparent that a lot of people were entering the field as a quick cash grab and a lot of artists were being exploited, had their work stolen or just became obsessed with the financial aspect of this new “business” as a “get rich quick” scheme. While the technology itself was interesting, it was being used in poor taste and the original promise was mostly lost.

I feel the technology can eventually be used in decent (morally) ways but i’m not sure we are there yet. As more and more companies jump on the NFT bandwagon to use in their services, products and promotions, it’s unclear where the public’s view of NFTs will end up, but for art, either fine arts or more broad, alternative fields of art, there is still a hopeful promise for creators and collectors but more importantly, experiences of art that are yet to come to be.

Eric Lerner, Pools of Reflection II, 2022.

In Modernist Painting, Clement Greenberg suggests that the role of the Modern Artist is to bring attention to the flatness of the surface because the essence of visual arts is the optical experience. Today, through advanced technologies and softwares artists are able to create three dimensional pictorial spaces. Is it your opinion that contemporary artists working in the digital space should create experiences of visual worlds within themselves pushing our everyday reality into new realms introduced by web3 and the metaverse?

Yes, as I previously stated, the advancement of technology and its ability to create believable and emotional 3D experiences, for example, might be the starting point for a new breed of artwork where the experience is far from a single image or even a single interactive experience but rather a unique and personal experience each time it is activated, with a much broader scope than previously imagined.

That said, and pardon the controversial statement, but I find currently web3 promises to be extremely familiar, reminding me of grandiose promises made when web 2.0 was “introduced”. The main difference being the actual possibility of these ideas to come to life with technology reaching a point where they become possible. But to be truly interesting, I find these ideas need to go deeper into realms of data that might not be completely acceptable by the masses meant to enjoy them – either because they are built upon personal data or because they expose hidden truths; either way i believe these experiences have got to be personalize to be effective, otherwise they remain very 2.0 or just end up as good storytelling, which isn’t new but always very, very effective.

“I will often learn a new technique, and my immediate thought would be: How can I use this in a surprising way?.”

Eric Lerner, Gabriel in the Dreamscape, 2022.

You have stated that in the creation of your artworks you wish to explore the craft of art making in itself, and that through this investigation you are able to push the boundaries of what is possible. Could you elaborate further on this process in which your subject matter comes from technical ideas and your aims when creating new artworks?

When looking at this process in its truthful form, it is mostly a process of using the technical boundaries as limitations in order to create a “fenced” playground, which counterintuitively very often brings creative freedom. I will often learn a new technique, and my immediate thought would be: “How can I use this in a surprising way?”. For me, this usually directs into areas of magical realism where impossible events are plainly portrayed; So I will often use a technique to create unexpected yet [hopefully] intriguing moments, a tiny bit of awe for the viewer.

Unfortunately, this will often not do much in terms of context or narrative, areas which I find only inspiration derived from other narrative sources or life experiences can bring any meaningful context. This is where having your head stuck in a technical realm does little to help, or maybe even bring damage to the process. I aim to grow in these areas and I push my students to emphasize their efforts on these areas as I find them the most meaningful in a visual experience.

Shi Zheng: the screen as a membrane

Roxanne Vardi

Shi Zheng is a multidisciplinary artist based in Shanghai and New York. Shi Zheng’s works range from audio-visual installations and digital music to live performances. The artist’s body of work explores the overlapping space between the real and the virtual by creating immersive spaces, which resonate as meditative spiritual experiences. In turn, these perceptual experiences created by Shi Zheng open up spaces for deep introspection.

Shi Zheng’s two newly commissioned artworks by Niio expose the artist’s ongoing interest in technology, machine vision, digital voyage and ‘latent time’. Marvelous Cloud #1 and Marvelous Cloud #2 are part of Shi Zheng’s ongoing Nimbus series, which he started working on in 2015. Nimbus is defined as a cloud, an aura, or an atmosphere. In Latin ‘nimbus’ refers to a dark cloud. In Shi Zheng’s works, the clouds are made visible by light, which instills in them a sense of aura of gaseous floating. The Nimbus series represents the artist’s construction of virtual realities where virtual clouds live inside of the screen space, thus setting his viewers into imagined virtual spaces that mimic reality. However, here, the reality is entirely generated from virtual cameras of computer programs and noise algorithms. Ultimately, the viewer is able to experience the virtual landscape that computers share with human eyes.

Shi Zheng’s works have been exhibited at a wide range of galleries, museums and institutions including TANK Shanghai, MOCA Yinchuan, Ars Electronica, and Institute of Contemporary Arts London. In 2013, Shi Zheng, together with Nenghuo, Wang Zhipeng, and Weng Wei, founded the artistic new media art group RMBit.

In your works, through computer technology, you explore the possibility to extend your viewer’s audio and visual experience. Could you elaborate on this process and the anticipated result of the interaction with your artworks?

In my Audio-Visual installations, I’ve always thought that sound and image are the two sides of one being. They are intertwined and can’t be separated from each other. In these works, there is no discernible narrative. I did not intend to let the work convey a specific message or language. Instead, sound and image as two different materials, are presented to create a purely perceptual environment. So in my work, I hope to create an immersive space in which the viewer can generate thoughts through their experience.

Shi Zheng, Marvelous Cloud #1, 2022.

As an artist that creates both electronic music and digital imagery, what is it about these two artistic practices and their association that interests you most?

For me, the most exciting part is the space, where the acoustic field created by the sound and the light diffused from the screen are composed into an immersive space that surrounds the audience. So I often prefer to describe my video works as spatial installations. The audience can resonate with surround sound and projection when facing the visual content. If we imagine the screen as a membrane, this immersive audiovisual experience is an attempt to make the membrane disappear.

“If we imagine the screen as a membrane, this immersive audiovisual experience is an attempt to make the membrane disappear.”

Also, I feel it is very interesting to create sound and video simultaneously, especially when considering them as a whole. It’s like the sound is an echo of the image, or the image is some kind of generator of the sound. For instance, in the work Nimbus, although the work visually portrays an ever-changing “cloud,” the sound embodies another part of it. So in terms of this relationship, as I mentioned earlier, sound and image are two sides of the same being.

Your Marvelous Clouds series display whimsical lights of nature and trace their boundless metamorphosis. Could you dive deeper into the artistic techniques that are involved in the creation of these artworks?

Marvelous Cloud is inspired by the clouds in J.M.W. Turner’s paintings as well as the “sublime” embodied in his work. The images of clouds in his work often appear in different colors under the illumination of light. I often focus on the flow of things rather than the still images, looking at how these dematerialized gaseous objects are shaped by light under flowing motion. So when I simulate virtual clouds in computer software, different modules and algorithms can help me transform the original realistic clouds into more abstract ones. In addition, I can control the distance of the light in the virtual space, which gives me a lot of possibilities in terms of color.

Shi Zheng, Marvelous Cloud #2, 2022.

“Sound and image are the two sides of one being.”

The clusters of clouds and gas which originate from natural light in your Nimbus series can be interpreted as an aura, an ignis, or a fatuus which together generate a meditative almost spiritual experience. Can this experience be interpreted as intentional?

Yes. It was also the first time I tried to create this meditative spiritual experience in my work. During the creation of Nimbus in 2015, I had the opportunity to visit the Rothko room at the TATE Modern. Rothko’s Black on Maroon series was displayed in the dimly lit gallery, which immensely impressed me. When I returned to the studio to continue working on Nimbus, the intense spiritual experience continued to influence me, and I couldn’t help but bring them into my work.

Shi Zheng, Nimbus, 2015.

You have stated that you do not only see yourself as the creator of your artworks, which display computer-generated virtual worlds, but also as a wanderer wanting to share the experience of these lonesome lands with your viewers. Is there an attempt to connect to your viewers through this shared experience?

I have always felt that making art is a sharing experience and that artists have their own way of seeing the world. I started to learn about virtual worlds from Second Life, and since then, my work has always had a sort of “wanderer” perspective. Whenever I create a new work or build a new “world,” I feel like I’m in a “sandbox” environment. Imagining this “sandbox” as a glass container, I can observe the real world through this container and also reflect on ourselves through the mirror reflection. I suppose the superposition of the real and the virtual is what I want to share with the audience through my artwork.

“I started to learn about virtual worlds from Second Life, and since then, my work has always had a sort of “wanderer” perspective.”

Dagmar Schürrer: spaces of augmented consciousness

By Roxanne Vardi

Dagmar Schürrer is a digital artist who lives and works in Berlin. Schürrer works with the moving image assembling found footage, digitally generated animations and objects, sound, text and drawing to create video works and AR works that explore human consciousness and perception, late capitalist paranoia, projected utopian futures, and our relationship with technological developments in the digital space.

In the following interview Dagmar Schürrer provides us an intricate account and look into her goals as an artist working with advanced technological tools to question technological progress and to understand its effects. This interview is published in conjunction with the curated artcast Dagmar Schürrer: Parallel Realities.

Many of your artworks deal with human consciousness and the complex processes of the human brain. When did you start to become interested in this subject, and what is it about the digital medium that helps in the exploration of this subject matter?

I have always been interested in the natural sciences, in particular physics and biology, the latter I even studied for a few years before my Fine Art degree. To understand how natural interrelations in our complex ecosystem work, you learn to search for recurring patterns and similarities that connect all organisms including humans and other natural phenomena. The importance of even the smallest part for the overall system functioning is basic knowledge in this field. During my Fine Art degree at Central Saint Martin ́s College of Art and Design in London, I was focusing very quickly on working with time-based media, in particular interweaving found footage with abstract moving images and soon also theoretical text fragments. In removing figurative imagery from its specific context, I was aiming to extract general patterns and through juxtaposing the imagery with abstract content, an associative space opened, where unexpected similarities were established. The addition of text fragments set a theoretical framework, in which the viewer is guided through her/his interpretations. In fact, an examination and reflection of a theoretical essay and its expression in poetic language is still the starting point of my works today.

In the following years my moving images became less film-like but more and more digital and three-dimensional. My focus shifted from the experimental filmic image and its narrativity to digital tools, new technologies and spatial installations. The impact of digitalization and new technologies on both society and the individual are at the center of my artistic practice, always through the lens of the emotional and reflective individual.

My approach is to create meditative, almost personal spaces of contemplation. The aim is to allow the viewer to ponder the manifold challenges of a digitalized society on a theoretical, visual, and emotional level. I combine theory in a poetic guise – often as voice overs – with a painterly digital composition that merges figurative imagery with abstract patterns. I constantly alter and modify these forms along the border of abstract and figurative, organic and synthetic, and emotional and material, which hopefully leads to an ambiguous tension in the digital works, suggesting the presence of multiple dimensions beyond physically experienceable and comprehensible objectivity.

“My approach is to creative meditative, almost personal spaces of contemplation. The aim is to allow the view to ponder the manifold challenges of a digitalized society on a theoretical, visual, and emotional level.”

Dagmar Schürrer, We are already history, and we don’t know it, 2021.

Digitalization and new technologies are created by and are of course closely entangled with humans. I am fascinated by the change of human self-perception parallel to the increase of knowledge, scientific progress, and the advancement of new technologies. These developments seep into society and directly influence our interpretation of what it means to be human and how we live in this world, and at the same time feed back into technological, scientific, and artistic research. For me this is directly connected to human consciousness and the functioning of the brain. The brain has often been described by technological metaphors. In the past the brain was seen as a centralized machine that works from the top to down and controls all movement and behavior. In the digital age it resembles a computer running its programs. And with the rise of artificial intelligence, we will get another step closer to a better understanding of how the human brain functions and new metaphors will emerge. These metaphors also have a great impact on how we see the human in relation to society, the environment and even concepts like time and space.

While researching into the interrelation of consciousness and technological developments, I was studying the work of French philosopher Catherine Malabou, in particular her essay “What should we do with our brain?”. In it she discloses how contemporary metaphors used to describe the brain in neuroscience closely mirror the language used for technology, and as it is even the political and societal structures of a neo-liberal capitalist world: decentralization, networks, flexibility, fluidity, simulation, etc. She argues in favor of using the term “plasticity” – the lifelong ability of the brain to develop, to influence the environment around it and to be formed by constant inputs – which allows for active involvement and exchange. The brain became the central subject of my media installation We are already history, and we don’t know it. Within three animations and an augmented reality (AR) application a voice over contemplates the analogies between the organ and contemporary technologies, juxtaposed with computer generated imagery reminiscent of cell structures, neuronal tissue, or electric wiring. The virtual additions of the AR app connect the animations and invite the user for a spatial exploration of the installation.

In Dreaming is the mind left to itself I deal with similarities between different states of consciousness – the waking reality, the digital realm, the dream world, drug induced conditions, spiritual meditations – and our feeling of individual presence in them. Each of them having their purpose and allowing humans to access different constructions of reality. In particular the role of dreaming has fascinated artists and researchers for a long time. The neuroscientific theory “The Overfitted Brain Hypothesis” (OBH) compares dreaming to a certain aspect of Artificial Intelligence (AI). For AI to deliver meaningful results it needs to be fed with a sufficiently variable dataset. To increase variations, it can be interspersed with noise and glitches. OBH draws parallels to the purpose of dreaming and argues that it works as a similar noise injection, so our brain can cope with the many self-repeating patterns during waking world. The AR video installation “Dreaming is the mind left to itself” leads the visitor through abstract dreamscapes and digital environments, focused through a vignette reminiscent of Virtual Reality glasses. The imagery becomes more and more enmeshed, suggesting the dissolution of the parallel realities.

Dagmar Schürrer, Dreaming is the mind left to itself, 2022.

“I am fascinated by the change of human self-perception parallel to the increase of knowledge, scientific progress, and the advancement of new technologies.”

Can you dive a bit deeper into your interest in Augmented Reality as a critical tool to question the future, specifically in terms of technological advancements?

Augmented Reality (AR) is the first visual tool, with which you can truly merge the digital and analogue space and blur their borders. I am excited about the possibility that my computer-generated environments can literally leave the screen and mingle in our daily environment – the analogue realm. AR allows new forms of presentation of art outside the white cube. It is easy to access AR works at places like home or in public space, as many people have a compatible smartphone or tablet. Quite a lot of the pioneering AR works were created in an activist spirit – logo hacking or museum hijacking – as you can communicate on an invisible meta layer, which you need to know how to activate. In the future AR-glasses will gain importance, at the moment they are still very expensive and also slightly restrictive in their visual quality. The glasses will increase the immersive experience and digital content could seamlessly blend into every day’s life. The more the technology advances the more it will be integrated in our routines and have an impact on many aspects of society. Therefore it is important that artists explore new technologies, and don’t just leave them to commercial corporations and big tech. We can learn about the impact of these tools when we create with them, use them, and reflect about them without commercial objectives. This allows both creators and viewers to train their media competence and technologic languages to develop the skills to critically question technological progress and understand the effects. In an ideal world an aware society could implement ethical and responsible use of these technologies.

In some sense, do you fear that technology will outsmart the human brain? That the post-digital age is not only a mirror of society but a warning sign to what is to come?

Maybe I can’t think that far ahead, but I am not really concerned that technology will outsmart us. What is more worrying is the distribution of power and access among humans. Who can use technology for what, and how can we regulate that without cutting individual and creative freedom. The programming of technology is done by humans, including both positive and negative perceptions. Of course, technological tools are somewhat addictive, and it is easy to get lost with and in them, which obfuscates their far-reaching effects on many meta levels. Media education is really important to be able to navigate through this complex and subtle process of development.

Pierre Levy, author of Becoming Virtual, Reality in the Digital Age, argues that the Virtual is not the destruction of the personal but in fact a transformation, thus it will not replace the Real, the Possible, and the Actual. Do you agree with Levy’s proposition? How do you see the Virtual differentiating from the Possible in line with Pierre Levy’s belief?

The ideas elaborated in “Becoming Virtual, Reality in the Digital Age” were the starting point for my AR Video installation “Virtualized”. Levy proposes that one should not think about the Virtual as the supplement or even the opposite of the Analogue, but rather its continuation, and proposes to overcome a dualistic way of perception. He circumvents this problem by introducing four modes-of-being: Reality, Possibility, Actuality, and Virtuality, as well as the various transformations between them. This allows us to see the Virtual not as imaginary or illusory, but as a full-fledged state of existence beyond the immediate physical presence. One could say that the Real and Potential contain manifest things, while the Virtual and Actual can be rather seen as dynamic events, or “a continuously reviewed problem rather than a stable solution”. Reality implies a material embodiment, a tangible presence. The Possible is the same as Reality, only missing physical existence. The Virtual on the other hand is detached from the here and now, cannot be precisely located, is nomadic and dispersed and has no stable point of reference. As Levy puts it, “virtualization comes as a shock to traditional narrative”.

“Becoming Virtual, Reality in the Digital Age” was written already in 1998, so I think it is quite visionary to label the different digitized states-of-being as separate entities with their own parameters and characteristics. In my work Virtualized I was trying to translate these rather complex theories into an audiovisual manifestation. The two thoughts I was mainly focusing on were on the one hand dispersion and fragmentation, fitting well with my method of establishing patterns and similarities by creating an associative narrative and visual space, and on the other hand the question of physical materiality. Only one of the four modes-of-being is manifested in the physical, what does that mean for the importance of physical presence and, what is non-physical materiality? How can materiality and the idea of haptics be communicated in the digital?

Your work, GALAXY, presents to its viewers a story about an encounter of love and disappointment told and generated by an algorithm. Could you elaborate on the creative process here and what rules are given to the software to generate this narrative?

GALAXY is in a way quite different to my other works of the last few years, as the text is not written solely by me and the analysis of narrativity takes a central role again. It is a nice bridge to my earlier works in experimental film. The story is created with a fairly straightforward text writing algorithm. You feed the generator the essential parameters: some key words you want to include, what kind of genre you aim for, the overall mood of the story, if it should have a bad or happy ending, etc. The result is a simple and not very sophisticated short story. The exciting thing was, that it was quite a “bad” generator, the algorithm was not very successful in simulating a meaningful structure of sentences. It showed weird deviations in the language and the narrative logic, and it fabricated great obscure sentences like: “They looked at each other with quiet feelings, like two shy snakes stroking at a very gentle stream, which had electro music playing in the background and two noble uncles swiping to the beat.” For me the glitches and imperfect simulation were certainly the strength of the generator. As soon as the illusion is perfect, it becomes pretty boring.

Andreas Nicolas Fischer’s Ambient Art

Roxanne Vardi

Andreas Nicolas Fischer is a multidisciplinary artist from Berlin. Fischer started his artistic career as a traditional artist working mainly with painting and drawing, but became interested in generative art upon his visit to artist Casey ReasProcess/Drawing exhibition in 2005 at DAM Gallery in Berlin. 

At the time he discovered Reas’ work, Fischer was interning at ART+COM, founded by Joachim Sauter, who also later became a professor at the Berlin University of the Arts. Fischer learnt Processing from the very first people who worked on the creative coding environment conceived and developed by Casey Reas and Ben Fry in 2001. While he did not have a background in computing, Fischer was motivated to teach himself code and started creating animations with Processing. He also worked briefly with fabrication and sculpture to adapt to the demands of the market at a time when the interest in digital art was not yet mainstream. However, he considers himself a purist and likes to create systems that operate autonomously, something that he can achieve by working with generative algorithms. 

In the following interview, that took place on the occasion of the artist’s solo artcast The Art of Hypnosis on Niio, Andreas Nicolas Fischer unfolds the motivations and techniques behind his work.

How would you describe your art practice today?

My practice is mostly generative pure abstraction. I do some narrative 3D animation philosophizing about the end of the world, but my main focus is generative systems and aesthetics and abstractions; developing these systems over time and translating them into different means. My personal preference is to create art that is self-contained, and doesn’t take data from the outside. I used to work as an art director to make a living, making 3D animation as this was a bigger market, but I didn’t want to be part of that career where artists need to receive grants. I always wanted to have a hard skill, with a foot in the industry, but I like my work to be more dynamic where I learn something and then apply it. This is what I did for ten years, but then I started to receive commissions, until at some point my art practice and commercial practice merged. Today I don’t work for agencies and I don’t work as a freelance artist. I do my own work. My main focus is generative systems and aesthetics and abstractions, developing these systems over time and translating them into different means.

My main focus is generative systems and aesthetics and abstractions, developing these systems over time and translating them into different means

Andreas Nicolas Fischer, Nethervoid 07 L 2180, 2022

You have described some of your latest works as ‘Ambient Art’. Could you please elaborate on this concept?

I have been doing more real-time work in the past few years, I like to call it ambient art, it’s not narrative and it’s not super intrusive. You don’t need to pay attention to the work all day, but it’s a small intricate development with its own pace. I really like when you get drawn into the work. In this way I like to see my work as hypnosis, I hypnotize people through the work in a sense. I do this for myself, because I like the process of viewing my own work, but I have also observed that in my audience, some people tell me that they get lost in the work. And that’s what I like, changing people’s state, changing their psychological state. We all have a perceptual system, but you can influence that. I like changing someone’s state of mind with my art overtime. It’s an introspective process, there are no demands, it’s more subtle. In a sense I am not saying anything. I make my work for myself but also for other people.

Many of your latest series such as Nethervoid and Infinite Void also contain a sound element that feels crucial to the works. Is this another way for you to influence your audience’s perceptual system?

There are sound frequencies that you can use to influence one’s perceptual state, which I started looking into. I create some of the sounds with other artists, while others I find and modify myself using generative code. Composers hear so much more than we do, that’s the beauty, to be able to collaborate with sound designers because it enriches the artwork and we learn from each other.

On one of my works, I worked with a friend of mine, David Kamp, a composer and sound designer. I had sent him a rough cut for this work and I literally almost cried when I got it back from him. There are not many things that move me, but when I got that [sound design] back it was very powerful, it was so subtle. It was like listening to 70’s progressive rock on a good sound system, there is just so much there. 

Andreas Nicolas Fischer, Feeder-01-2160p, 2022

I like changing someone’s state of mind with my art overtime. It’s an introspective process, there are no demands, it’s more subtle.

Can you tell us more about your involvement with creating video sound installations which make the work immersive and create a dialogue with an environment such as The Origin of Quantum Dot, established in collaboration with Samsung?

That was a unique and special project. I co art directed it and created the content for those screens, but the sculpture was made by Christopher M. Bauder and Schnelle Bunte Bilder, a studio of visual art in Berlin. But this is not something that you can do every day.

In 2021 we were commissioned to create an installation in Washington DC.  It was such a powerful experience as the end result resembled an animated James Turrell, playing with light, where the sensation of the room completely changed according to the light.

What is it that draws you into creating digital art or software-born art created with code?

What I like a lot about the process is creating something from nothing, just from text and code. Of course the whole programming environment and the libraries were created by someone so it’s not nothing-nothing, but what I like is that you have something that is a pure instruction and you can create something new from it that has so much depth and richness . This  is so powerful. I love 3D animation and coloring and shading, but 3D animation is an insane amount of work. What I like about software is the leverage that you have, making systems autonomously while you are running the code, it’s also a flexible medium. With AI and generative systems you have a lot of leverage and you can control these machines to do something, I appreciate that on a conceptual level.

You start with pure instruction and you can create something new from it that has so much depth and richness. This is so powerful!

When you use found data in your generative artworks, how important is it for you that people know the origin of the source material? 

It depends, in the past I would use found images to create some of my works, but now I generate my own procedural compositions. I like both but I am not interested in where it came from, and visually it’s far enough removed from the original image that I don’t feel guilty about it. The machines give you power to create some things that you cannot create by hand.

Andreas Nicolas Fischer, Infinite Void 13A L 2098, 2022

You have also experimented with AI. What is your take on working with generative adversarial networks?

I had a brief and romantic relationship with AI. People talk about the end times of machines and the domination of AI. There are reasons to be concerned about that. I received a few DALL·E invites which I intentionally gave out to people who are not versed visually, but what I found is that if you don’t have good taste or that trained eye, what you produce with the AI is not going to be that interesting. This is what I concluded from my sample experiment. These tools on the one hand are very helpful for certain things, but also very biased because as soon as you get specific about things, what it hasn’t seen, then it gets harder. In the beginning when I got it I was completely sucked in, I sat there for a couple of days and hit the ‘dopamine button’. 

As an artist everything you do is a dopamine loop, that warm fuzzy feeling is something I am trying to reproduce. But the thing is once you have an image prompting machine to create things that are visually pleasing, things one can do without a huge effort, your receptors shut down, and the satisfaction is that you don’t feel good or accomplished with yourself. It’s like TikTok, after half an hour of scrolling if I would ask you what you remember about it, it wouldn’t be very much. I see AI going where you can turn yourself and other people into dopamine junkies, it’s visual stimulation on steroids. The thing with all of technology is that it’s only going to get stronger, sowe need to find a way to deal with it.’. Today I mostly use AI tools to up-res all of my older videos by adding more detail to them. To me, this is the beauty about it, to increase the fidelity of the content.

I see AI going where you can turn yourself and other people into dopamine junkies, it’s visual stimulation on steroids.

Can you dive deeper into your use of the term ‘void’ in describing or naming your works?

Using the term void is intentional, coming back to wanting to hypnotize or affect people’s mental state through the works. The void is more of a meditative void, a mental void. Of course it’s visually very full, but for me meditation is hard, I don’t have a solid practice but sometimes my work can help me with it by producing that mental void.

Digital Art at the Venice Biennale

Installation View, Scotch Tape and DAP DAO Collab NFT: Portrait of Max Ernst, Decentral Art Pavilion.

The 59th International Art Venice Biennale, curated by Cecilia Alemani, its satellite pavilions and shows mark a strong emphasis on the advancements of digital art as a rightful art world medium. This article explores the different digital art focused exhibitions displayed at the Venice Biennale Arsenale & Giardini, and satellite events.

The 2022 Venice Biennale titled The Milk of Dreams takes its name from a book by Surrealist artist Leonora Carrington in which she describes a magical surreal world where life and living beings are reinvisioned through imagination. In her book, Carrington takes the reader on an imaginary journey that redefines humans and their bodies. In parallel to the Biennale, the Peggy Guggenheim Collection currently exhibits a show titled Surrealism and Magic: Enchanted Modernity, which displays sixty artworks that offer an overview of the entire development of the Surrealist movement, including works by Leonora Carrington.

The history of the Venice Biennale dates back to 1895 as an international cultural exhibition. It is only since the mid 1970’s that the Venice Biennale’s board and members appoints an artistic director, among a professionalized field of curators, who oversees the exhibition and initiates an overarching theme for the edition. Historically, visitors were more accustomed to seeing and experiencing more traditional art forms and mediums at the Venice Biennale such as painting, sculpture and drawing. Since several years it has become more common to experience digital-born artworks at the Venice Biennale, specifically video and sound installations. However this year marked a great leap for the new media arts, artists and practices as the 59th Venice Biennale can be seen as a celebration of the digital, setting the placement of the digital arts side by side with traditional respected mediums. This article explores the different new media works and exhibitions displayed at the Arsenale & Giardini, and will then take the reader on a journey through this year’s Biennale satellite exhibitions.

Installation View, Francis Alÿs The Nature of the Game, Belgian Pavilion.

The Belgian Pavilion exhibits Francis Alÿs’ The Nature of the Game. A video art installation curated by Hilde Teerlinck. The Nature of the Game presents a selection of films from the artist’s Children’s Games series which started in 1999 and is an ongoing project. Included in the selection are video works filmed between 2017-2022 ranging in location from Hong Kong, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Belgium, Mexico, and other countries. The installation of the different screens and films bring attention to the complex realities of children around the world, and the interaction of children with their surrounding environments.

Installation View, Orchidelirium. An Appetite for Abundance, Dutch Rietveld Pavilion.

The Estonian Pavilion exhibited inside the Dutch Rietveld Pavilion presents artworks by Kristina Norman and Bita Ravazi in collaboration with curator Corina L. Apostol in which the artists developed a multi-layered installation including two video works. The pavilion takes as its focal point the life and work of Emilie Rosalie Saal who made her mark internationally as a colonial botanical artist and traveler. Between 1899-1920 the artist and her husband writer and photographer, Andres Saal, lived in Java, Indonesia, then colonized by the Dutch. The exhibition brings attention to the abuse of power exercised by the colonizers and with that the erasing of the perspective and knowledge of the indigenous.

Installation View, Sonia Boyce Feeling Her Way, British Pavilion.

The British Pavilion presents a show composed of video works as installation by artist Sonia Boyce. The exhibition titled Feeling Her Way exposes the artist’s interest in the potential of collaborative play as a route to innovation. The main work at the exhibition is also the first which the viewer experiences upon walking into the British Pavilion that exhibits a work displayed on three large LED screens of Black British female vocalists embodying feelings of freedom, power, and vulnerability.

The Canadian Pavilion curated by Reid Shier is a two-part show by artist Stan Douglas. The exhibition displayed at the Canadian Pavilion is titled 2011 ≠ 1848 and displays four large-scale photographs. In this project, the artist combines and contrasts news footage from London’s 2011 Hackney riots with footage from the global Arab Spring uprisings of the early 2010’s, and images from the Occupy Wall Street protestors on New York’s Brooklyn Bridge. These are then compared and contrasted to historical events from 1848 in which middle and working classes in Europe rose up against a lack of democratic liberty and the hegemony of the elite. In this exhibition, the artist brings attention to how generational differences in the dissemination of information can influence the course of a revolt, and the global frustration with social systems. The second show ISDN displayed at the Magazzini del Sale No. 5 is a two-channel video installation that explores music as a cross-continental cultural resistance. It focuses on two musical genres: Grime music, originating in London, and Mahraganat music which originated in Cairo. In doing so, the artist represents and transmits feelings of international interconnectedness.

Installation View, DESASTRES, Australian Pavilion.

The Australian Pavilion exhibits DESASTRES, an experimental noise project which combines a video installation with a sound work performed live with an electric guitar by Marco Fusinato. The images displayed on a large LED wall are sourced via a stream of words that have been put into an open search across multiple online platforms and exhibit disparate and disconnected randomly generated images.

The Cameroon Pavilion compares four Cameroonian artists with international artists and pays special attention to technology exploring the emerging world of NFTs. The exhibition titled The Time of Chimeras displays an assemblage of paintings, sculpture, video works, and for the first time ever at the Venice Biennale art NFTs.

The Egypt Pavilion Eden-like Garden presents works by Mohamed Shoukry, Weaam El Masry, and Ahmed El Shaer. The exhibition displays an immersive experience of sculpture, installation and video works that rapture the human being and in doing so bring attention to the redefining of humanity.

As the Netherlands lent its pavilion to Estonia this year at the Giardini, the Dutch instead used the Chiesetta della Misericrodia to display Melanie Bonajo’s video installation work titled When the Body says Yes. The installation, commissioned by the Mondriaan Fund, is part of the artist’s ongoing research into the current status of intimacy in our increasingly alienating society.

Artist Monica Heller’s artworks for the Argentine Pavilion comprise of fifteen 3D animation works. Curated by Alejo Ponce de León, the exhibition explores the limits of the body, imagination, and cognitivity through the representation of anthropomorphic characters and objects taken from different stories and fables. Heller’s characters assume adult roles in complex relationships that connect the viewer to familiar representations.

Nan Goldin’s Sirens, 2019-2020 displayed at the Giardini appropriates film footage from thirty films to associate the beauty of the female body with the sensuality and ecstasy of a drug high. The work was conceived as an homage to Donyale Luna, the first Black supermodel who died from a heroin overdose in 1979. The video includes footage from Andy Warhol’s “Screen Tests” of Luna.

Installation View, Bruce Nauman: Contrapposto Studies, Punta della Dogana.

The Pinault Collection at the Punta della Dogana exhibits a solo show titled Bruce Nauman: Contrapposto Studies. The exhibition takes as its starting point a corpus of recent video installations from the Contrapposto series, curated by Carlos Basualdo and Caroline Bourgeois, which is contextualized through a selection of older works by the artist. ‘The show focuses on three fundamental aspects of Nauman’s oeuvre which are essential components of this series: the artist studio as a space where creation takes place, the use of the body in performance and the exploration of sound’. Contrapposto is an Italian term used in the visual arts to describe a human figure standing with most of its weight on one foot so that its shoulders and arms twist off-axis from the hips downwards in the axial plane. This sculptural scheme which originates from the ancient Greeks later became a major feature of Renaissance art. Nauman’s works which exhibit the artist practicing the contrapposto pose on his own body instill in the viewer an unsettling feeling which further destabilizes notions of the body, identity, and language. Nauman has stated that he wants his art “to be vehement and aggressive because it forces people to pay attention”. For Nauman creating art in his studio “became more of an activity and less of a product”. The works in this exhibition display the pioneering video artists’ interest in portraying films of the human body in live performance and manipulating pre-existing footage. Bruce Nauman began to explore the potential of video art in the 1960’s as part of his ongoing investigation of the possibilities of what art may be. By displaying himself in contrapposto poses and scenes the artist in a sense enlivens the static ancient notions of sculpture, now portrayed in a t-shirt and jeans. In these works there is also a clear allusion to age and how time unsettles the body.

The last rooms in the exhibition display Nauman’s studies with 3D developments which enabled him to further advance his interest in researching the human body, the studio, and the exploration of the sense of vision and visuality. Nauman’s work Nature Morte, 2020 comprises three 4K video projections each linked wirelessly to an iPad which the viewer can manipulate to virtually move around his studio and to discover its contents of artworks, notes, sketches, furniture, and other tools and objects.

The Decentral Art Pavilion at Palazzo Giustinian Lolin, curated and organized by Florencia S.M. Bruck, Javier Krasuk, Diego Lijtmaer and Simone Furian. The exhibition titled Singularity brings together over 200 NFT artworks from a diverse group of international artists, including Beeple, Kevin McCoy, Trevor Jones, XCOPY, and Ran Slavin, all who are ‘shaping the creative economy and NFT space’. Singularity dives into decentralized art with the aim to ‘educate, engage and enthrall the aficionado, the collector, and the public at large; in such a fast-evolving creative dominion’. Moreover, the exhibition is aimed to foster a dialogue around NFTs and their impact on the art world.

Installation View, Ran Slavin Newtopia, Decentral Art Pavilion.

The Decentral Art Pavilion exhibits a show that goes in line with the Biennale exhibitions with its outlook on the Grand Canal hosted in an exquisite Baroque style palace. Running in parallel with the Venice Biennale for the first 8 weeks. Highlights from the exhibition include Beeple’s Everydays: the First 5000 Days, Ran Slavin Newtopia, David Rodriguez Gimeno DEVELOP / MOV N1, and Trevor Jones’ ETHGIRL. Visitors to the Decentral Art Pavilion can even experience an NFT rendering of Leonora Carrington’s famous portrait of Max Ernst reinvented as an NFT by Scotch Tape in collaboration with DAP DAO.

As an icing on the cake, the Dior boutique in Venice is currently showcasing one of the first NFT handbags in its storefront near the Piazza San Marco.