Niio in 2023: Great art has no boundaries

Niio Editorial

This has been an exciting year, in which we faced challenging situations but also achieved great partnerships, made enormous progress in the development of our platform and apps, supported the work of amazing artists and galleries, and brought video and digital art to a rapidly expanding audience. Our hardworking, multitalented, international team is now celebrating the holidays with their families and looking forward to an even more active 2024. We believe that great art has no boundaries, and we work to make it possible for anyone to access quality artworks on any screen, adding to the efforts that so many art professionals do to integrate art into people’s everyday experience.

In this article, we present to you a quick look at what 2023 has been at Niio, with our heartfelt thank you to all the artists, galleries, collectors, curators, and art lovers who share and enjoy art with us.

Renz Renderz, After the Afterparty, 2022

Artcasts: the distributed exhibition

Through our curated virtual exhibitions we have been able to bring art to the screens of art lovers, collectors, galleries, and art institutions internationally, with unparalleled ease and flexibility. This year, we are proud to have launched 42 artcasts featuring the work of outstanding artists, as well as collaborations with galleries, art centers, and universities.

Here are some of our favorite artcasts this year, but you can find many more by browsing the Discover area in our app.

PHANTASMAVERSE

Niio proudly hosted a collaboration with artists and NYU professors Carla Gannis and Snow Yunxue Fu consisting of a group artcast featuring recent works by artists and NYU students Ren Ciarrocchi, Jessica Dai, Marina Roos Guthmann, James Lee, Tinrey Wang, Yuaqing She & June Bee, Shentong Yu, and Jerry Zhao

In addition to the artcast, we published interviews with the curators and the artists in our Editorial section.

“The Niio platform helps speed up the curation process and reach a wider audience that is different from a physical show curation.”

Snow Yunxue Fu

MACHINE CINEMA

A collaboration between Niio and Mèdol Centre de les Arts Contemporànies in Tarragona has brought digital art to the public space in the Mediterranean city. A curated selection of digital artworks by our Senior Curator Pau Waelder has been presented weekly on a screen at Plaça del Fòrum, featuring the work of Serafín Álvarez, Mark Amerika, Gregory Chatonsky, Alix Desaubliaux, Frederik De Wilde, Mihai Grecu, Jonathan Monaghan and Yusuke Shigeta.

DISØRDINARY BƏAUTY

A very special project we have been developing this year is a collaboration with the artist Domenico Barra on his exploration of beauty in art and the use of glitch as a means of creative expression. We conceived this project as an artist-in-residence format, in which Barra has configured an artcast as a work-in-progress and regularly published new artworks, alongside documentation and preliminary sketches. The project is ongoing and involves a conversation between the artist and our Senior Curator as a series of articles in our Editorial section.

Chun Hua Catherine Dong. Meet Me Halfway – part 1, 2021

Artists: unbridled talent

Supporting artists is one of the reasons why Niio exists. We created this platform to empower artists allowing them to keep and manage their portfolio, easily and securely sharing their work with art lovers, collectors, galleries, and institutions. We are also actively suggesting their work to our Art in Public program clients, showcasing their latest creations on our Curated Art program, and getting to know them better through conversations that we publish in our Editorial section. This year, we’ve launched more than 30 solo artcasts and a dozen group shows, as well as highlighted 47 selected artworks in our Artwork of the Week showcase on social media. In addition to this, we’ve published 30 interviews with the artists in our curated program, as part of our commitment to let our audience know the creators behind the art.

These are some of the artists we’ve showcased this year. We’d love to include them all here, but you can find them in our Discovery area.

LAURA COLMENARES GUERRA

Over the last two decades, the Brussels-based Colombian artist has carried out a consistent body of work in the form of interactive audiovisual installations and live performances. Since 2018, Laura is engaged in a series of artworks exploring the environmental impact of neo-liberal extractivist practices in the Amazon basin. 

See artcast | Read interview

JONATHAN MONAGHAN

An award-winning artist whose work is characterized by otherworldly narratives, Jonathan Monaghan introduces in his animations, prints, and sculptures a critical view of our contemporary society that aims at consumerism and our growing dependence on digital technology.

See artcast | Read interview

CHUN HUA CATHERINE DONG

Dong’s artistic practice is based in performance art, photography, video, VR, AR, and 3D printing within the contemporary context of global feminism. Dong’s work deals mainly with cultural intersections created by globalization and asks what it means to be a citizen of the world today.

See artcast

ANTOINE SCHMITT

Paris-based artist Antoine Schmitt describes himself as a “heir of kinetic art and cybernetic art,” aptly indicating the two main aspects of his work: the interest in all processes of movement, and the use of computers to create generative and interactive artworks.

See artcast | Read interview

YUSUKE SHIGETA

Japanese videographer Yusuke Shigeta (1981) has developed a body of work consisting of screen-based and multimedia installations for art exhibitions and museum shows. A Graduate from the Tokyo Graduate School of Film and New Media, he works in animation and has recently become involved in the NFT market, where he finds an additional channel of distribution for his work.

See artcast | Read interview

Ronen Tanchum’s AI Streamers installed at the Mondrian Seoul Itaewon hotel. Photo courtesy of Mondrian.

Public showcases: in the white cube and beyond

Collaborating with prominent contemporary art galleries and partnering with high-end business and hospitality properties is a crucial aspect of our mission to bring quality video and digital art to the best spaces and integrate art into people’s everyday life. We are proud to have developed strong ties with leading digital art galleries bitforms (New York), Galerie Charlot (Paris), and DAM Projects (Berlin), as well as with many other professional art galleries, and to provide curated art selections to some of the most prestigious brands and properties, such as Conrad Hotels & Resorts, The Mondrian Hotel Seoul Itaewon, PENN 11 New York, and many others.

Below are some highlights of a very busy year with wonderful collaborations and promising partnerships. You can find more about our activities on our LinkedIn and Instagram accounts.

Rob Anders presents Niio at the Talking Galleries Symposium 2023. Photo: Cesc Maymó

TALKING GALLERIES

Niio’s co-founder and CEO Rob Anders was invited to the Talking Galleries Symposium in Barcelona this year. The prestigious gathering of the most prominent contemporary art galleries celebrated a special edition dedicated to digital art and featured talks by outstanding guests Steven Sacks, founder of bitforms, Valerie Hasson-Benillouche, founder of Galerie Charlot, Wolf Lieser, founder of DAM Projects, and David Gryn, founder of DAATA. Our Senior Curator Pau Waelder helped shape the symposium’s program and moderated several talks.

REFIK ANADOL PRESENTED BY BITFORMS AT ART SG

Niio collaborated with bitforms in the gallery’s presentation of the latest artworks by Refik Anadol at the Art SG contemporary art fair in Singapore. The collaboration, following a model that we are recurrently adopting with galleries, consisted in extending the presentation of the artworks at the art fair with a limited-time artcast and the publication of an extensive article about Anadol’s work in our Editorial section.

Two artworks by Eelco Brand are showcased at the reception of the Conrad New York Midtown Hotel.

CONRAD NEW YORK MIDTOWN HOTEL

Initiating a partnership with Conrad Hotels & Resorts, a curated selection of artworks provided by Niio is being displayed at the reception and guest room’s screens of the Conrad New York Midtown Hotel. This stylish luxury hotel offers guests and unparalleled experience in the city which is now enhanced by the presence of selected artworks by acclaimed artists Eelco Brand, Daniel Canogar, and Antoine Schmitt.

Articles: a space for reflection

The section you are now reading contributes to the backbone of Niio’s activities by providing a space of documentation, reflection, and exchange with artists, gallerists, and art professionals, as well as a source of information and discussion around key themes of contemporary art. This year, the way AI is shaping artistic creativity, as well as the role of art institutions in creating a more sustainable art world were some of the main issues we addressed.

Read some of our most commented articles this year and find many more by browsing our Editorial section.

📝 What Is The Role Of Art Museums In The Anthropocene?
A reflection on sustainable exhibition practices in art museums with the contributions of experts Karin Vicente and Diane Drubay.

📝 Is There Gender Equality In The Digital Art World?
We asked ten outstading artists about their views on gender equality and visibility of women artists in the digital art world.

📝 It Was Never About Replacing The Artist: AI And Post-Creativity
Excerpt from the book The Meaning of Creativity in the Age of AI that focuses on the role of computers in artistic projects, from early algorithmic drawings to current AI artworks.

📝 Digital Art, Time, Painting, Sculpture And Consciousness
Essay by guest author Thomas Lisle, an artist with 30 years of experience in digital media who is exploring how painting transitions into a time based medium.

This is just a glimpse of what Niio has been in 2023. We look forward to doing much more in 2024, and we’d love to share our journey with you!

Kian Khiaban: building a space of peace and clarity

Pau Waelder

3D motion designer and visual artist Kian Khiaban has had an outstanding trajectory since he graduated from UCLA in 2015. Working early on with fellow artist Refik Anadol, he has closely collaborated with him in some of his studio’s most spectacular projects and is now part of the team at the world famous Sphere, a groundbreaking spherical screen with 580,000 sq feet of LEDs. Khiaban’s artistic work focuses on nature and abstraction, conceiving art as a way of addressing human emotions and engaging in healing processes.

The artist has recently presented a solo artcast featuring five artworks in which he creates fantastical landscapes that depict different emotions. In the following interview, he dives into what these imaginary spaces mean to him, as well as his creative process and his views on the current state of digital art. 

Dive into Kian Khiaban’s Emotional Landscapes

Kian Khiaban. Floater, 2021.

How did you get started in 3D animation? What interested you about this particular aspect of digital creativity?

I started doing 3D when I was thirteen. I got introduced to it through anime forums, actually. In the anime forums, every user would have their own design, which they called a signature, and they would teach people how to make their own signature. So through this I got introduced to Photoshop and 3D, and then when I went to university, I already had a whole portfolio of still images. They weren’t animations, they were just art. There I started to learn how to move the things that I had made. At UCLA I met Refik [Anadol], who was a grad student. He was using Cinema 4D, a professional 3D modeling, animation, simulation and rendering software. It was a good match between us, because we were both heavy C4D users, and then at some point Refik had an exhibition and I offered to help him, so we started collaborating and I worked my way up into his company and was part of its early establishment. This was around 2015, when I graduated.

“The way we worked [with Refik Anadol] is that he gave me a lot of freedom, maybe throwing an initial idea, and then I would go crazy with it.

You have created numerous animations for the studio of Refik Anadol. Can you tell us about your creative process within this context? What have you contributed and what have you learned from this collaborative practice?

Working with Refik mainly consists in that he would come to me with an idea, especially a visual idea and would say: “this would be really great if you can make something like this.” I was very good at iterating, so I considered myself, especially at that time, a remixer. I created a lot of the visuals of the projects we were doing at his studio. For instance, we had a project called Infinity Room. Refik said he had the idea of a room with mirrors on the top and bottom. So I experimented a lot, I did the sound design for it, made some animations, and gave it a particular character. Then Refik added some visuals onto it. In some projects he would take the lead, while in others I did for particular things. But the main characteristic of the way we worked is that he gave me a lot of freedom, maybe throwing an initial idea of what he was looking for, and then I would go crazy with it. Sometimes the project would develop in a totally different direction, but always with this ongoing conversation between us.

Kian Khiaban. An Open Heart, 2021.

On the other hand, I have also learned a lot from my commercial work, where I am given a style frame and I work on that, building an entire animation, and remixing it. I’ve gained a lot of technical knowledge and benefited from working with a team, which is something I love because it brings me multiple perspectives that widen mine. I would say that I’ve been lucky because in these jobs the clients have trusted me and given me a lot of freedom, and even allowed me to have some of my personal themes in my work. What I learn in my commercial work I later on apply it to my personal work. Working on one of these projects for eight hours every day, you get to experiment so much, and so I often develop things that seem perfect for one of my pieces, and then of course my personal work also inspires what I do for different clients.

“I love working with a team because it brings me multiple perspectives that widen mine.”

Currently I work at the Sphere in Las Vegas, in R&D and building the animations, and this is a very challenging type of shape because it is seamless. And you know, 3d animators don’t design in a seamless way. In addition, the form has to be a spherical camera, so there are a lot of little things you have to adjust for. But to be honest, I’m good at coming up with a lot of ideas, and then making things a bit prettier with each iteration. That’s what I do.

3D motion design by Kian Khiaban at the Sphere, Las Vegas, 2023.

The animations you have created have been displayed in very large installations and on the facades of famous buildings. How do you work on them when considering such a large scale, and an interaction with architecture?

The process starts by making a 3D model or a miniature of the building, because you need to be able to feel what you’re doing. If we don’t have the possibility of building a miniature version of what we’re doing, we do a VR version, building the space in 3D and then applying the projection. That gives you a starting place to experiment. But besides that I like to first consider where the building is located, in what city, what kind of environment is there around the building, what form does the building represent, and so forth. Then I try to build on top of that, but it depends on the project.

For instance, in WDCH Dreams, at the Walt Disney Concert Hall in LA, there was the almost impossible task of mapping the shapes of Frank Gehry’s building, for which they had had developers working for years. We used 42 large scale projectors that were able to display 50K resolution images. We used the entire facade as a screen, applying the visuals I created to a 3D model in order to adapt to the undulating shapes.

Kian Khiaban. Long Walk, 2023.

Your personal work is often characterized by an interest in nature (real or imagined) and mesmerizing visual effects in which light has a critical role. What attracted you to creating these fantastic worlds and the lively activity that takes place in them?

I’ve always liked hiking a lot. When I was a kid, there was this one place I went to that brought a lot of peace in my mind. When you go into a natural setting by yourself, it becomes a way of finding yourself because you’re getting this new clarity and simplification. You can actually hear your own thoughts, and to me that is very relaxing. So I like nature because it has that healing quality of bringing clarity, lowering the volume and allowing a space for reflection.

As for the dream-like quality of my work, I believe it is related to who I am. I was a big daydreamer as a kid. I would play out scenarios a lot in my head, and I also spent many hours, year after year, in front of the computer. Playing video games and searching the Internet took me to a distant place, away from daily reality, and I think what I do now is a more sophisticated version of that. I’m building this space for myself to bring me peace and clarity, the same way when there was chaos around me, I could go to a video game and be taken into that fictional world.

“I like nature because it has that healing quality of bringing clarity, lowering the volume and allowing a space for reflection.”

In the artworks we now present on Niio, a common denominator is the depiction of emotions through digital landscapes. What do you find interesting about representing emotions in this way?

Maybe I should talk about why I always have a light in the center of each artwork. I don’t want to impose my intentions on the viewer’s interpretation of the artwork, but I think it is worth explaining this. The light represents the hope of getting out of a hard situation, the objective you try to follow to achieve that, and that makes you very focused. I feel that what has helped me survive in my chaotic environment all these years is being really focused. The light obviously has other meanings, it can be the sun, that so many civilizations have praised as a God, or the light that people having near death experience say they have seen in a pleasant field, and that has brought them the most peaceful feeling they’ve ever felt in their life. So what I mean is that these artworks are for me a way to express something personal, even intimate, in a more abstract form. For instance, one of my latest pieces is called Adrift at Sea, and it refers to the feeling of having to choose among different values and not being sure what to pick, which made me feel a bit lost.

Kian Khiaban. Wisdom, 2020.

Despite this personal connection with a human experience, there is generally a lack of human figures in these landscapes, why is that?

I want it to feel lonely. It’s that feeling I get when I go into nature, there’s no one around me. But it is not about loneliness: I can think of having people there, but it would change the whole dynamic of the piece. It can become about them, and I am not interested in representing people in these landscapes, which would take you into figuring out what they are doing, but rather to express a feeling that you can only experience looking at this landscape where there is no one else but you.

“These artworks are for me a way to express something personal, even intimate, in a more abstract form.”

From your perspective as an artist involved in acclaimed large scale projects, what is your opinion about the current perception of digital art? Do you think it has finally become a widely accepted form of contemporary art?

Generally speaking, it is much more respected than before, partly because of the NFT boom. However, NFTs also brought negative associations, with purely financial speculation and lack of quality. On the other hand, 3D animation is now much more popular because it is widely used in advertising. Another thing I find that is more present in digital art is this blending of fine art and commercial creativity, which is pretty much connected to what Andy Warhol did, or now Takashi Murakami and Jeff Koons, for instance. For someone like me, who works with commercial projects as well as my own artistic practice, this is quite interesting, and to be invited to a fine art exhibition as a digital artist is something that the 13-year computer gamer in me finds really amazing. Digital art is definitely becoming art. It should have happened 20 years ago, but it’s okay.

“I think Niio is great. I feel that you have a deep appreciation and understanding of art.”

How do you see a platform like Niio contributing to this popularization of digital art?

I think Niio is great. I’d say that’s why we connected so well early on, because I felt like you had a deep appreciation and understanding of art. And if you’re guiding this platform, you’re gonna take it in the right direction. The way the artwork descriptions are written, the way everything is laid out, is the way a gallery would lay it out. I also value that the artist’s opinion, or vision is involved in the process. I’ve been approached by other platforms, but I didn’t say yes to a lot of things because I felt like they were mainly a business. Too much of a pure business approach to art. And I think that what you all are doing at Niio is really what the artists are trying to do.

Kian Khiaban. Lone Night, 2021.

Antoine Schmitt: Clinamen

Pau Waelder

On the occasion of Clinamen, Antoine Schmitt‘s first solo show at DAM Projects, I wrote the following text that can be found in the gallery’s press release and is now available on Niio Editorial courtesy of DAM. The exhibition runs until January, 2024 at the Berlin gallery.

Antoine Schmitt. Pixel Single, 2021. Generative installation. Photo: Quentin Chevrier

According to Epicurus (341-270 BC), the universe consists of atoms constantly falling down, carried by their own weight into the void, like drops of rain. This endless cascade of billions and billions of atoms, ordered in neat columns, might be beautiful and dull but no one would see it, because nothing would exist. Epicurus explains that thanks to a slight swerve in their trajectory, the atoms collide with each other and, through chain reactions, create all matter. This subtle deviation from a perfectly straight path is what he calls the clinamen, a term that ignited the imaginations of Dadaists and Pataphysicians alike, and that now finds itself as the title of Antoine Schmitt’s first solo exhibition at DAM Projects.

Antoine Schmitt. Cascade Grand Oblique Video Recording, 2018. Code based art.

A programming engineer specializing in Human-Computer Interaction and Artificial Intelligence, Antoine Schmitt is a unique visual artist who distills inspiration from kinetic, cybernetic, and abstract art into a body of work that often appears unapologetically minimalistic: the square dominates his abstract generative artworks, sometimes with the authoritative presence of Malevich’s Black Square, sometimes integrated into a vibrating multiplicity of shapes as in Vera Molnar’s (Des)Ordres series, but more often as a humble pixel transiting a black void. However, representing purely abstract entities is not Schmitt’s goal, as his interactive installations attest: he is interested in people, societies, the ego, the Superego, and the laws of the universe. Rather than a mathematician, he sees himself as a physicist who, as Epicurus, uses his imagination to seek an explanation of reality and provide a representation of it. 

Antoine Schmitt is a unique visual artist who distills inspiration from kinetic, cybernetic, and abstract art into a body of work that often appears unapologetically minimalistic

In this room, we are looking at black squares made visible by their absence, pixels gracefully dancing in strange choreographies, messing around, hurriedly crossing to the other side of the screen, or falling in cascades, carried by their own weight. Their movements are mesmerizing precisely because the artist has programmed a clinamen that gently deviates their trajectory and leads them into a seemingly chaotic, but also beautifully synchronized, behavior. Order and chaos are key to the work of an artist who does not “animate” the pixels, but creates situations and rules using code, and then lets the program run on its own. A series of performative events carried out by machines, the artworks build realities that exist in front of us in real time, mirroring the physical, social, and informational systems we are a part of.

Antoine Schmitt, Clinamen, 2023, exhibition view. Photography by Ea Bertrams. Courtesy of DAM Projects

A single pixel, hanging on the wall, pulsates at irregular intervals. It is trying to communicate its own source code, to replicate itself, if not as a physical entity or picture element on a screen, then at least as an idea. A Duchampian bachelor machine, it fails in its task. But ultimately it acts as a mirror of the person who observes it, reminding us that we are the pixels in these endless flows. And that we are, in turn, made of atoms that once, fortunately, strayed from their path and collided with each other.

Explore Antoine Schmitt’s artworks on Niio

Kaya Hacaloğlu: cinema as a containing medium

Pau Waelder

Kaya Hacaloğlu (Ankara, Republic of Türkiye, 1975) is an artist who works in video and photography, experimenting with live cinema, documentary, and video painting in individual projects and collaborations with other artists and creators, combining video with literature, poetry, music, painting, and performance. With a group of artists he developed the projects Mugwump and Cotton AV, consisting of live cinema performances combining found footage with electro/acoustic and atmospheric music. His work has been exhibited in international art festivals and biennials in Istanbul, Zurich, Rio de Janeiro, Berlin and many other cities. 

Hacaloğlu recently presented on Niio the series Pensive Tree, a photographic project that merges images from a plane tree standing at the entrance of the Süleymaniye Mosque in Istanbul and a madrone tree in Austin, Texas into an ever-changing, flowing abstract composition that evokes multiple states of matter. Hacaloğlu chose the term Agâh to describe this morphing shape, a word that in Turkish and other languages means “aware,” or “knowledgeable.” In the following interview, he discusses his video and live performance work, the making of Pensive Tree and the inspiration he has drawn from legendary filmmakers.

Explore the Pensive Tree series by Kaya Hacaloğlu

Kaya Hacaloğlu. Pensive Tree Fluffy Tissue / Agah, 2022

Your background is in cinema studies. How has the cinematic narrative influenced your work? What has driven your transition towards abstract or semi-abstract works and to video paintings?

The cinematic narrative gave me a taste, an ability, and an interest to comprehend a ‘language’ which comes with a long history of collective creation. It opened a door which influenced me to get together with other cinephiles and people of interest in creating work. 

I regard cinema as a containing medium. 

The quintessential auteur who has made the leap from cinema to the lands of deconstructing his own visual narrative films and projecting them in rooms and cisterns  would be Peter Greenaway, whose techniques and abilities are particularly influenced by art history and classical paintings. Other filmmakers that have profoundly influenced me are Chris Marker, Derek Jarman, and Jean-Luc Godard. Marker’s approach into making a film, for instance La Jeteé, is made of a series of still photographs as opposed to filming them with a film camera by taking 25 photographs a second. He therefore plays with the sense of motion in film (although motion appears one time and only briefly at a certain point in the film.) Marker started in the movement of Cinema Verité, which takes video journalism approaches to everyday street life in Paris. Godard’s and Anne-Marie Miéville’s ways of editing and implementing found footage, archival images, sounds, music and narration, add a sense of belonging and nostalgia to the cinematic narrative, connected to a certain moment of the history of the 20th century. Jarman’s methods of multi-layer editing using video-synthesizer and his experimental approach into dance, queer cinema and his brave character have made him a landmark in Cinema culture. And of course Guy Debord and his slogan “le monde a été déjà filmé, il s’agit maintenant de le transformer:” The world is already filmed, it is time to change it. All of which I believe belongs to the tradition of filming and projecting that is part of the influences of cinema in my work.

“As Guy Debord once said: The world is already filmed, it is time to change it.”

Working a little bit at the University’s local television station channel 2 and watching displays of student works of the video art department’s ASTV is what drove me to study cinema and later take video classes at the Art School. The works I have come up with during my first years of learning were not exactly abstract works, at least the ones which got completed, but planned-constructed scripted works which were made in the university’s facilities. These works were very structural with usage of intellectual property. My transition from the realm of cinema into studies of non-narrative video making came after a work I have made mixing super8 and miniDV footage through the use of my digital NLE station at home in 2001.        

Cotton AV at Mute Club, 2011

In your video work one sees an attention to everyday life but also experiments with overlaying of images that lead to quasi abstract compositions, particularly Cotton AV which seems to be a precursor of the series we now show on Niio. Can you explain the process behind Cotton AV? How would you say this work relates to Pensive Tree?

Cotton AV  and its precursor Mugwump were made, as you say, by combining materials taped by Ozan Akıncı and myself and materials from public archives and footage from movies. Clips were created, looped in the most perfect possible way which were later fed to a software running on a laptop connected to a projector. By the time we started Mugwump none of us owned a laptop, and as the music was also live: there was a band of two musicians on stage, Şevket Akıncı and Korhan Erel, and a vocalist. We recorded the finished material on a DVD and connected a DVD player to the projector. As the band was playing live, starting and pausing at a certain time was crucial to keep the music synchronized with the images, which we had to do manually. We played mainly on a theater stage in Galata called Perform. Ozan got himself a laptop and as I was already used to being on stage and feeding loops, downloading loads of materials through eMule for my VJ mentor Exiled Surfer, we started using a software called Grid quite quickly. As we moved on I had a laptop and a V4 Edirol video mixer and were able to cut and fade between each other’s machines and mixes. Cotton AV had its last show at VJFest in 2012 organized by Burcu Gündüz, and ended after having performed with Gevende

Cotton AV and Pensive Tree may seem to be connected but are in fact quite different in their production and concept. Cotton AV is a group performing live on stage, whose visuals are created on-the-fly and whether or not they are being recorded they are just like live-music, which means they will never repeat themselves the exact same way but have been improvised. Pensive Tree is a series of works. Each work is a continuing display which starts and ends. And is not necessarily a loop. It is not a collaboration but made during a different time, in the presence of Leyla Atavi who was there as both a muse and an inspiration, she is a graphic designer. 

I first saw Framed digital art at a coffee shop in Moscow in the year 2010 at the commemoration of the famous poet Nazım Hikmet as we were performing with the team that created Mugwump. The screens were as big as iPads and were framed. Various softwares were also coming along and methods of projections in clubs especially had moved along which were tiresome, at times. I had an idea of using a screen as a mirror and implementing algorithms to create effects similar to those on Instagram, but that didn’t progress. By the time I started working on Pensive Tree I found people who created their own software, used RasberryPi microcontrollers and provided complete instructions on woodcutting and fitting a monitor into a frame for displaying still or digital video. There have been previous encounters such as the famous fireplace video which I first saw in Switzerland. 

“Photography is a containing medium, an archive of a certain moment a fragment of a place in time. It has a natal relation with reality.

Your photography work is strongly inspired by nature and also plays with textures and blurs to deconstruct the image and suggest a painterly composition. Which is your approach to photography? How does it relate to your video work?

Photography is a containing medium, an archive of a certain moment a fragment of a place in time. It has a natal relation with reality. It is made to replicate what the camera is seeing, thus what one eye is seeing is shaped to be seen and interpreted by many. I think of it as a womb which contains the infant prior to giving birth and where its child comes into encounter with light, as the most extreme example one can give as its relation to reality. As being begotten with the source of light. Just as, in some eastern cultures it is treated so sacredly. My brother during his trips to the Far East told me of some people who wouldn’t let him take their pictures as they thought their souls would be stolen. My relation with the camera and especially the question with the subject has somehow become an ethical matter, and questions about quasi experiencing the present, the happening has led me to nature and visual compositions.

I do not have a certain approach in photography. Looking and capturing is a certain skill which has to do with the correlation in respect to the human senses and the refinement of the experience and the person who experiences. The subject behind the works in the Pensive Tree is a photograph of a tree. The essence is a photograph started progressing through circular motion, and advanced its way with changes of the image’s pixel points and alterations in the duration and colors of the pixels that gave its textural and blurry forms and painterly character through the utilization of computer software.  

Kaya Hacaloğlu. Pensive Tree Dervishes Adrift / Agah, 2022

You have collaborated with different artists, including writers, poets, musicians, and performers. Can you describe these collaborations? How have they contributed to shaping your artistic practice and the subjects you address?

The collaborations helped me to enhance my skills in editing and shaped my personal approach to the creation of later works. They have given inspiration and also reasons and responsibilities. It would have been impossible for most of the underground or non-mainstream works in Türkiye to be made if it was not for the sense of solidarity and companionship here in Türkiye.

An example of a collaboration I would like to give is from a performance that I have organized for the ending and closure of the first screenings of the works of Pensive tree. The exhibition took place in 2019 at the Taksim Art Gallery, an ancient water cistern, as part of the Istanbul International Art Biennial. The renowned Istanbul Biennial, which is sponsored by the municipality, features the work of numerous artists, mainly in the form of painting, sculpture, photography, fabric art, and installations. The new Taksim Mosque was being newly built right across the Ataturk Opera House. The closing performance consisted of guitar player Şevket Akıncı, musician Özün Usta who improvised music and artist Eymen Aktel who painted on a canvas while I was projecting or mixing works of the Pensive Tree series. A line I wrote, “I hug where you stand out, in the shadow of what is called admiration, I rest.” was read by Eymen who improvised spoken word along the show.  

“I would say that the video and digital art scene in Türkiye has evolved into a very rich and confident art scene.”

Can you tell us about the video and digital art scene in Türkiye? What is it like, how has it evolved in recent years given the growing presence of art fairs and international events? 

The video art scene started with a few people many years ago who voluntarily curated artists who had limited ways of displaying their works. This was before Youtube. I would recall VideoIst, and other collections such as Turkish Delight by Genco Gülan and other camps back in the 2000’s where shooting and editing video was taught and required collective work such as Barış için Sinema (Cinema for Peace.)

Displaying digital video requires expensive display equipment like a Digital Panel or a Digital Projection. Along the years many organizations with panels with artists and curators, and solo shows the scene has made its peak I would say with the help of sponsorship. Many Turkish artists are in the international arena. Mappings, public projections to historical monuments and the usage of ancient spaces are being organized for exhibiting digital artwork.

 

Kaya Hacaloğlu. White Tree.

Your work is present in several online digital art platforms. What is your experience with the digital art market? Which opportunities and challenges do you see in the way art is distributed and commercialized nowadays?

My experience with the digital art market is due to the medium’s properties, the ownership, “re-production,” and maintenance of the artist’s rights of the “original” artwork. It is a challenge for the art market to introduce digital artworks as there is a strong competition from “static” artworks such paintings and sculptures. But I believe the growing acceptance of digital art is coming through large installations in public spaces, and not only in ticketed entry shows. The main issues for the future of digital art, in my view, are the accessibility to the artworks, the fairness in remuneration for artists, and of course that the art is properly presented.

Digital art can be treated as wall art or framed art now and it is making its way into homes. I remember one platform which displays the works of painters throughout the history of art on a vertically mounted ‘television’ and this example only can show us how much it has evolved throughout the history of print making.

“The issue for the artist is to have their work exhibited and recognized. The way digital art can be distributed is already here, it is a technical matter for it to be installed and displayed almost anywhere.”

The opportunity is for the art is to be visible. The invention of NFT granted the digital artwork an ‘original’ status because of its copying properties being hundred percent undetectable, a digital artwork becoming a digital token marks it as valuable.

The issue for the artist is to have their work exhibited and recognized. The way digital art can be distributed is already here, it is a technical matter for it to be installed and displayed almost anywhere. The challenge is how will it be creating a revenue for the artist and how will the preservation of the work be possible. Is it ok for some works to be available publicly or do they belong to private institutions, as video art has been treated and distributed as videotapes or film?

Kaya Hacaloğlu. Plane Tree.

Disordinary Beauty, a Work in Progress (Part 2)

Domenico Barra and Pau Waelder

DISØRDINARY BƏAUTY is an ongoing art project by Domenico Barra that explores ugliness through glitch art. The project has been developed as a series of NFTs, with a new phase taking place on Niio as a work in progress, in which the artist will periodically upload new artworks and accompanying documentation. Here in the Editorial section, we are publishing email exchanges bringing light into Domenico’s creative process and the ideas and influences behind this project.

Follow Domenico Barra’s work in progress on your screen in DISØRDINARY BƏAUTY: art canon

Domenico Barra, DB a̶r̶t̶ ̶c̶a̶n̶o̶n̶ | s̶e̶l̶f̶-̶p̶o̶r̶t̶r̶a̶i̶t̶, 2023

Second ɛʍǟɨʟ exchange

This exchange took place shortly after the NFT sale “Natively Digital: Glitch-ism,” which was scheduled to take place at Sotheby’s from March 24th to the 31st, was cancelled due to the backlash caused by the absence artworks by women artists in the selection presented by the auction house. Sotheby’s is currently working on re-launching the sale with the inclusion of artworks by women artists who have explored the aesthetics of glitch.


from: Pau Waelder
to: Domenico Barra
date: Mar 29, 2023, 10:03 AM
subject: Continuing our conversation on Niio Editorial

Hi, Domenico!

This time I’d like to ask you three questions:

  1. Why did you choose these two portraits that make the Disordinary Beauty series so far? In Artvee there are many famous paintings, including the Portrait of Eleanor of Toledo that is depicted on the cover of some editions of Umberto Eco’s History of Beauty. There are also avant garde artworks, which already “glitch” the notion of beauty. Why then these two relatively unknown portraits?
  2. Continuing with Eco and the eternal question of beauty, which reflections have you extracted so far from your experiments in glitching beauty?
  3. You have recently expressed on Twitter your disappointment at the lack of understanding of glitch art and how it is becoming trendy in the NFT space. Can you elaborate on this discussion? Would you say that artistic expressions like glitch art are often ignored and then suddenly launched into mainstream attention in a superficial way?

I hope these questions are interesting!


from: Domenico Barra 
to: Pau Waelder 
date: Mar 30, 2023, 1:07 AM
subject: Re: Continuing our conversation on Niio Editorial

Hello Pau, 

RE:1 (Why did you choose these two portraits that make the Disordinary Beauty series so far?)

My selection of paintings for my ongoing glitch art video series, Disordinary Beauty | Art Canon for Niio Art, was motivated by several factors. Firstly, the choice of format dictated the selection process, as I wanted works that required minimal cropping to retain their original integrity. The video format I had to adhere to was 9:16, and I sought paintings that would complement this format and still showcase the unique and peculiar features of the original pieces.

Domenico Barra, DB a̶r̶t̶ ̶c̶a̶n̶o̶n̶ | a̶ ̶b̶e̶a̶u̶t̶y̶ ̶i̶n̶ ̶v̶i̶o̶l̶e̶t̶, 2023

I chose Portrait of a Lady as Diana, also known as A beauty in violet by Paul Quinsac because the author came from a generation of artists who received rigorous academic training and went on to pass this academic training to the following generation of artists. Quinsac contributed to the transition from grandiose art to modern art that still respected classical tradition, and this dedication to building a legacy with the past during an artist’s contemporaneity is what I aim to challenge, this strong tradition that persists over time is where I want to create a conflict with my work. It’s this sense of beauty, as idealized by classical academic education, that I wish to disrupt through my glitch-alterations of the painting.

“It’s this sense of beauty, as idealized by classical academic education, that I wish to disrupt through my glitch-alterations of the painting.”

One more feature influenced my choice, the beauty of the painting itself and the classical reference to Diana, the Roman goddess of wild animals and the hunt. This drew me to this piece too, the ideal beauty of the divine, the myth. It was also fortuitous that the painting had been sold at Sotheby’s, an art institution known for its traditionalism and now venturing into the futuristic world of art with NFTs and crypto art. It’s a cunning coincidence that Sotheby’s screwed their first glitch art event sale

Oona featuring Stellabelle, ITS A BEAUTIFUL DAY!!!!!! (2023). NFT created in response to Sotheby’s all-male Glitch Art sale.

I picked Carl Joseph Begas’s self-portrait as the second work of the series because of my interest in the self-narrative format of selfies, a precursor to which the self-portrait can be considered. Selfies are very much influenced by rigid photographic standards that follow specific rules to seduce the viewer’s attention and algorithms’ ranking priority. I wanted to put the self-portrait in dialogue with selfies, also because selfies are the raw material I use in the other collection series of the glitch art project Disordinary Beauty, what I like to call “Beauty is Chaos”. Begas’s classical academic training and work in Italy where he focused on biblical themes, a classic in art tradition, and his eventual specialization in portraiture, all piqued my interest in this artist. 

“I believe what also needs to be disrupted is the attention we center on some artists who are always at the center of every reference to art history, past and present, and leave other artists out.”

I decided to showcase less popular artists and works to encourage further exploration of art history through my works. I like the idea of serving an educational purpose with my art. I believe what also needs to be disrupted is the attention we center on some artists who are always at the center of every reference to art history, past and present, and leave other artists out, maybe this serves also as a message of inclusivity. Do you know what I mean? Who knows, I never thought about it this way but now that I am writing, I like to read the motivation for the choice of these less-known artists in this way too. 

Maybe I am still influenced by the Sotheby’s Glitch Art events of the past weekend, but inclusivity is something I am very fond of, this is why I started the project White Page Gallery/s, to create a decentralized and distributed network of spaces to experiment a new practice for curating online art but also the narration of the state of the art of digital art where less known artists are offered more spaces, making the circle larger, fitting more people in the narrative of what digital artists are making, giving value to more voices, more stories. I stop as I do not want to get off topic but I wanted to share this with you. 

RE:2 (Reflections on glitching beauty)

My experiments in glitching beauty have led me to ponder the eternal question of beauty in the context of contemporary culture. Glitches have become increasingly popular and are now ubiquitous in popular culture. That glitches were going to get mainstream was also predicted by Rosa Menkman in her Glitch Studies Manifesto. We kind of expected it, and it happened. The “aesthetic” of glitches appeal has been commodified and incorporated into glamorous content such as ads, music videos, fashion, video games, sports, and film trailers. It’s as if glitches have become sexy, appealing to the contemporary generation influenced by technology. I am also thinking of the modern heroes, the myth of the rebellious hacker, as portrayed in Hollywood. Therefore, I believe that glitching classical beauty only enhances its appeal to the contemporary sense of beauty.

Rosa Menkman, Glitch Art Studies Manifesto (2009-2010)

“I believe that glitching classical beauty only enhances its appeal to the contemporary sense of beauty.”

This is why in my works for Disordinary Beauty | Art Canon I am more about challenging the viewer’s experience of the artwork. I aim to create a sense of vertigo, subverting the expectation the viewers have, that of a polished and rendered image with striking definition. I seek to alter the viewer’s expectations by targeting classical canons that primarily focus on my intention to corrupt that ideal of harmony in those artworks of classical tradition where the artists, and the public, expected that sense of harmony, peace, and a delightful view. I am also targeting the context of the digital screen, that by common use influences the expectation of the viewers, a beautiful viewing experience. When glitching, I concentrate on the glitch sequences, layer on top of the layer but especially the flow, pushing them beyond the limits, and exaggerating to create a sense of dis/harmony. 

“I am also targeting the context of the digital screen, that by common use influences the expectation of the viewers, a beautiful viewing experience.”

RE:3 (Lack of understanding of glitch art)

This is a topic I am very fond of. In response to your question, I want to stress that the commercialization and superficial commodification of glitch art is a disappointing trend that threatens to reduce its cultural and artistic value. While the popularization of glitch aesthetics has brought the art form to the mainstream, thank Kanye West for that, it has also created a myopic focus on the superficial aspects of the work, ignoring the depth and complexity of its technical and cultural implications. Unfortunately, many people reduce glitch art to a mere visual effect, failing to recognize its broader cultural and artistic significance.

Still from the music video of the song Welcome to Heartbreak by Kanye West. Directed by Nabil Elderkin (2009)

Furthermore, I believe that the technical process behind glitch art is often overlooked or ignored, reducing it to a mere novelty. Rather than focusing on the true complexity and potential of the art form, people frequently resort to using shortcut apps and plugins that are readily available. While these tools can be useful in creating an initial foundation for the art, a first step into more technical and engaging practices, they often fail to capture the true depth and complexity of the work.

“Glitch art is not just a niche interest for computer art nerds, but rather an art form with broad cultural and social relevance.” 

It’s important to recognize that glitch art is not just a niche interest for computer art nerds, but rather an art form with broad cultural and social relevance. It can help increase digital literacy and awareness of the technological landscape, a creative way to explore it, and has the potential to address a wide range of important topics, from inclusivity to feminism, and security. I always tell during my classes and talk that glitch art is not just of interest for computer art nerds, but it should be of interest to everyone using technologies as glitch art is a way to gain more digital literacy by exploring the digital landscape through its imperfections, through the abnormal behavior of machines, the atypical hidden functions. 

Learn more about the development of glitch art in this article by scholar Carolyn L. Kane, published in Invisible Culture Journal

Glitch art can help to spread more awareness, not just about topics related to technology. I introduced the metaphor of atypical machines’ behavior, a story of autism, and the life of a family: the glitch poetic can help to address many topics.

“Glitch art can be so much more than a mere trend or visual effect, and it’s time for us to recognize and embrace its full potential.”

Overall, the failure of institutions like Sotheby’s to fully embrace the cultural and artistic significance of glitch art is a missed opportunity, one that could have elevated the art form and brought it to a wider audience in a more deserved way. Glitch art has the potential to be so much more than a mere trend or visual effect, and it’s time for us to recognize and embrace its full potential. 

I might sound biased but I made glitch art a way of life, my sort of philosophy to hack/decode life events and its short circuits. I am an imperfectionist. 🙂

Sincerely,
d0/\/\!

Confused? Try this quick intro to Glitch Art:

Carlo Zanni: e-commerce, identity, and the epic of our times

Pau Waelder

An early practitioner of net art, Carlo Zanni is among the first artists to explore the nascent opportunities for the online art market and reflect on how the web would impact on our sense of identity and privacy. With a painter’s vision, he has seen in the development of online platforms and graphical user interfaces a space of visual compositions in which the computer desktop becomes a landscape, and everything in it is a fiction. 

He has also developed new forms of storytelling through web-based projects such as the “data cinema” trilogy: The Possible Ties Between Illness and Success (2006), My Temporary Visiting Position from the Sunset Terrace Bar (2007), and The Fifth Day (2009). In these online films, he combined a pre-defined narrative with data collected in real time from the same users who were watching the film, or from a distant webcam, or from different sources describing the social and political conditions of Egypt. 

Carlo Zanni, The Fifth Day (2009)

Explore Zanni’s data cinema artworks

Embedded in his work as an artist, his research on alternative models to sell digital art has led to pioneering yet unrealized projects such as P€OPLE ¥ROM MAR$ (2012), an online platform dedicated to selling video art and fostering a community of creatives based on shared revenue, or ViBo (2014-2015), a “video book” aimed at facilitating the sale of video art at affordable prices in unlimited series. He collected his experiences with these models in the book Art in the Age of the Cloud (Diorama Editions, 2017).

Niio is proud to present two selections of artworks by Carlo Zanni: Data Cinema Anthology, which brings together the Data Cinema trilogy and an additional artwork, and Save Me for Later, a code-based artwork recently presented at Zanni’s solo exhibition Accept & Decline at OPR Gallery in Milan. In the following interview, the artist discusses the artworks presented in this exhibition, which can be visited until April 28th.

Carlo Zanni, Check Out Paintings, 2022. On view at OPR Gallery, Milan.

In this latest series you have come back to painting as a medium, after a long career focused on web-based art, but you keep exploring the same subjects. Can you take me through the main ideas in the Check-Out Paintings?

This cycle of paintings is part of a long-term investigation of the social and psychological role of eCommerce in our society. It stems from the memories of the eCommerce check-out pages: a final destination we all are funneled to, in every online buying process. The check-out pages of eCommerce sites represent a highly symbolic limbo that precedes the dopamine rush where we all hope to find shelter. A form of addiction, but as shown during the pandemic, also a lifeline. 

“Our identity bounces between the happiness for buying, and the sense of guilt for having bought.”

Buying online is both a sort of pursuit of happiness as we have been taught by our society, both a way to escape reality, procrastinating any possible confrontation with ourselves. Our identity bounces between the happiness for buying, and the sense of guilt for having bought. Between the satisfaction of an increasingly frictionless, user-friendly, fast, and on-time experience; and the anxiety, and also the shame, for what this transient fake happiness often entails on a social, work, and human level for thousands of people: directly (shifts and working conditions, small local businesses), and indirectly (tax evasion of mega-corporations and environmental impact).

Unlike early works such as DTP Icons Paintings (2000), here you do not look for a realistic representation of the interface, but rather create almost abstract compositions, why is that?

True, because here is more about inner feelings than simple representation. It’s not witnessing from the outside but feeling from the inside, then trying to show a glimpse of it, if possible, in the real world.  So the rationalist layout, typical of these pages, fades into memory, it turns into a dreamlike experience, into a psychological post-image, while some details of the transaction, such as measures, prices, and quantities, emerge from the background when one gets closer to the surface of the painting: they bring us back to reality.

The subtle color fields of these paintings make them very difficult to be mediated or “seen” online (e.g. on Instagram, or on a PDF), instead they open up and expand in front of the viewer when experienced for real. While our society continues to demand fast, easily communicable images, these paintings are slow, almost invisible, non-existent images, and they ask for something very precious: our time.

Carlo Zanni, Check Out Paintings, 2022. On view at OPR Gallery, Milan.

How did you achieve this faded effect in the canvases?

The color used in these works is acrylic mixed with water and in some cases acrylic medium. This way tones are soft and they mesh one into the other when seen from a certain distance, vaporizing the memory of the whole picture. I take advantage of the cutting plotter to write numbers and other “technical” details. I cut the letters in vinyl (negative) with a size that allows me to draw inside them with a sharp pencil without touching the vinyl edges. This way the sentences and the lettering look “straight” and “guided” from a distance, and handmade from a closer inspection.

“When you stick your nose onto the canvas, the work transforms from an abstract field into a condensed epic of our times.”

Formally speaking, the style of these paintings was born in response to a period of social isolation due to the pandemic, during which, as a balance, we have tried to mediate all the possible human activities: meetings, purchases, employment, leisure, study, culture… I felt the need to go the other way, working on something that could be only appreciated when seen in person.

If you want to find some roots, these works echo the mature practice of artist Agnes Martin, in the use of pencil and subtle water-based colors, but here all the “modernist” and “minimalist” values of the time are almost gone. So all the pencil details and most of the color fields are only visible when you stick your nose onto the canvas, and the work transforms from an abstract, almost white, field, into a condensed epic of our times touching themes such as anxiety, desire, happiness, fear, gender identity, pandemics, politics, tragedies, wars.

While the paintings look almost abstract, they also contain references to the present, as is frequently found in your web-based artworks, what role do these references play?

The paintings dig into our daily culture and politics, for instance by discreetly showing disclaimers referring to the current Ukraine war. (Since February 2022, many eCommerce added such disclaimers for multiple reasons: from giving updated shipping info to giving their support to the Ukrainians). I see these paintings as a vehicle for meditation, an attempt to temporarily alienate ourselves from this endless moment of upheaval and unrest; while being violently dragged back to reality when we get closer to the surface: they are a way to extract some time from our hectic lives to sense the delicacy and fragility of our body and the transience of happiness while diving into our time.

While they are very different artworks, I would point out to Average Shoveler (2004) as having a similar approach in terms of its meditative aspect and the connection to real life events. In that work, which was commissioned by Rhizome, I created an online video game in which the player controls a man who has to shovel the snow falling on the streets of New York. Each time he does, several images taken from CNN and other news outlets in real time pop up and disappear. Additionally, some non-player characters stop and speak out news headlines. The main character invariably ends up dying of exhaustion, unable to shovel the incessant amount of snow. But the game also includes some secret spaces meant for the player to relax and just observe the scene, distanced from the gameplay. In a way, these paintings also provide that distanced space of observation while having these subtle hooks to reality.

Carlo Zanni, Average Shoveler (2004)

Talking about hooks, you describe some elements in the paintings as “clickbait,” can you elaborate on that?

Yes, the dark dots and solid-colored shapes (lines, rectangles, circles) that appear in some of the paintings are what I call “clickbaits” for one’s eyes. Seen from afar these canvases look pretty white and empty, but these dots stand out and catch your attention. They work similarly to how advertising plays with colors, double meanings, and impressive images to stand out in a visually saturated landscape.

They also remind of the so-called “dark patterns”, which are interface design strategies quite common in e-commerce pages, that are meant to fool the user into doing what the vendor wants them to do, such as sign up for a newsletter, add an extra service, or choose the most expensive option among several choices. In my paintings, the shapes intend to lure you into looking closely at the painting and finding what it is actually about. However, I would say that while clickbait is content that over-promises and under-delivers, in my paintings I under-promise and over-deliver 🙂

Carlo Zanni, Save Me for Later (2022)

Save me for later (2022) is also an intriguing artwork in the sense that it is not what it appears to be, and it connects with a concept you have explored over the years, which is the computer screen as a landscape

“Save me for later” is actually a bot browsing Amazon.com, continuously adding products to the cart that is visible in the right sidebar. When the cart reaches its limit, it automatically moves products to the “saved for later list”, making room for the new freshly added ones. The bot embeds a floating window with the webcam stream framing me while performing. This repetitive and almost hypnotic performance, with apparently no beginning and no end, speaks of the type of procrastination we all carry out while browsing e-commerce sites, looking for products that will bring us happiness and make our lives better.

As with the paintings, the experience of isolation during the pandemic was key to conceiving this artwork, in which the computer screen becomes a landscape, a place of escapism and daydreaming. The performance is consciously slow and cryptic, and as it is playing out in real time, in the real Amazon website, the items that appear reflect our present time just as the subtle writings on the paintings take us back to the world we are living in. For instance, when I first ran the program, the bot frequently picked up COVID-19 self-tests, which at some point were very much in demand and right now are almost forgotten. 

“This repetitive and almost hypnotic performance speaks of the type of procrastination we all carry out while browsing e-commerce sites, looking for products that will bring us happiness and make our lives better”

I see this project also as a vehicle for meditation, an attempt to alienate ourselves momentarily from our daily lives and our anxieties (so the title “Save me for later”). And behind the activity itself, what you see on the screen that is apparently me browsing the Amazon site but is in fact an automated process carried out by a computer program, is an interesting exchange of data. Data collected by the Amazon site about this meaningless routine (constantly adding items to the cart without ever checking out), data displayed by Amazon about the articles on sale, data that is processed by Amazon’s algorithm to display new items related to previously selected products. 

See a two-hour excerpt of Zanni’s endless automated performance on Amazon

Data is for me what gravity probably was for Bas Jan Ader. “The artist’s body as gravity makes itself its master.” These mysterious words were used by Bas Jan Ader to describe his short films Falling I (Los Angeles) and Falling II (Amsterdam) when he showed them in Düsseldorf in 1971. He was playing with gravity, he was becoming gravity, accepting its outcome: failures, fragilities, spiritualism, poetry, meditation, ascension. 

I feel that I use data in a sort of similar way, accepting the fact that most of my works will cease to exist quite soon after their birth. By using data from media outlets such as CNN, tools from Google, data collected from users, and so on, I consciously open my work to a vulnerability as the price to pay for creating a work that is always connected to the present and fed by data that circulates online. Then, an API is changed, a tool is discontinued, and the artwork cannot exist anymore. Sometimes you can fix them, sometimes you just don’t want to do it. 

Other times you start again from scratch as recently I did with Cookie Portrait (2002-2022), a work about online identity and privacy that had to be rewritten when it was launched at OPR Gallery last year, 20 years after it was first created. This work is based on the same cookie technology that is used – for instance – for the internal session management of an eCommerce site and more generally for user profiling and marketing activities. This work reminds us that, in our online existence, we are made of data. The body is thus the sum total of your data, the artwork is a temporary and transient experience of something elusive, like our own existence is.