\nENVIRONMENTAL MONITORING SYSTEM \/ <\/span><\/strong><\/span>
\nQUASI-OBJECTS \/<\/span><\/strong><\/span>
\nSOFT BODIES<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n
ENVIRONMENTAL MONITORING SYSTEM<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n “Environmental Monitoring System”, 4-channel AV installation, full-HD Pal, color, stereo, 06:00 mins each, infinite synchronous loop, ed. of 4+1 AP, 2016, courtesy the artist.<\/p><\/div>\n Environmental Monitoring System<\/strong>\u00a0(2016) is a four-channel AV installation \u2013 accompanied by two sets of limited edition prints \u2013 conceived as a simulation of a multi-camera monitoring system aimed to document the real time dynamics of four complex ecosystems.<\/p>\n Produced with 3D modeling \/ animation software and digital sound generation tools, the project aims to be a further reflection on the relationships between ecosphere, technosphere, and biological \/ sensorial \/ cognitive mutations; more precisely it takes back and reelaborates the path I have undertaken with the \u201cQuasi-Objects\u201d cycle (2003 \/ on-going) and, more recently, with the \u201cPolymorphic Systems Studies\u201d (2012, 2014 \/ 2015), concerning the progressive relativization of the life-forms \u2013 and of the concept of life itself \u2013 as notable consequence of techno-biological evolution.<\/p>\n In \u201cQuasi-Objects\u201d I worked on redesigning organisms and ecosystems, exploiting the synthetic and combinatory genesis of the CGI as an operative advantage that \u2013 subordinating the classical theory of representation (its \u201coptical-discursive apparatus\u201d) to an aesthetics of process in which the sensorial outcome refers to the anoptical procedures that made it available \u2013 led to state the opportunity of thinking the living being as a dynamic topology of relationships between processes, as an abstract and transitory product of an organizational dynamic independent by any physical, material component.<\/p>\n Toward the same direction with the \u201cPolymorphic Systems Studies\u201d I introduced the concept of polymorphism \u2013 seminally investigated between 2001 and 2003 with the 20 photographic panels belonging to the \u201cSample-Kit\u201d series. Looking at the overcoming of the mutationselection balance model as leading cause of the evolution process, in favour of a pluralistic \/non-gradualistic point of view, that interpret the evolutionary discontinuity as product of the complex iteration between different systems, between geological and ecological hierarchies, and by means of processes of hybridization with alterity (symbiosis, co-evolution, biomachinic contamination, …), other figures of subjectivity, as mobile \/ recombinant assemblage of heterogeneous entities, have been proposed.<\/p>\n In \u201cEnvironmental Monitoring System” I took back and re-developed the previously mentioned issues, working at the same time on the spatial- temporal dimension (with interventions on the simulation syntax) and on the architecture, the dynamics, the morphologies of the ecosystems and of the actualized synth-organisms. On the one hand the simulation of an environmental monitoring system, in addition to influences \u201cquantitatively\u201d the device operational capabilities \u2013 that works in an iterative mode, since what is simulated are both the system itself and the virtually monitored space-time portions \u2013 regulates \u201cqualitatively\u201dits semantic value, referring to a specific instrumental practice of documentation \/ control of reality (optic, \u201cobjective and objectifying\u201d); on the other, actors and synthetic sceneries are shaped and articulated (animated, soundtracked) in order to reinforce the connoted perspective and, overall, to optimize potentials sense paths.<\/p>\n \u201cEnvironmental Monitoring System” is therefore intended as a contribution to a reflection on the epistemic statute of synthetic imagery opening up to wider questions regarding the relationships between sensorial orders, levels of rationality, figures of subjectivity, cosmologies.<\/p>\n My invitation is to reconsider the weight and implications of a scenery in which the \u201cinformatic image\u201d can be seen as an unstable intermediation area between convergent systems. Not only immaterial abstractions of increasing complex- ity and plausibility which finds in technology their theoretical development limit, but liquid interfaces of connection \/ conversion between domains of (co)existence, between \u201crealities\u201d whose distance (difference) gets progressively blurred, contributing to reveal the impracticability and inadequacy of those anthropocentric cosmologies that, for a long time, are relentlessly deconstructing themselves in the relationships with sciences, technologies and everyday experience.<\/p>\n In this direction, the abandonment of the classical epistemological framework \u2013 based on a mechanistic-representationist model \u2013 in favour of a systemic-constructivist approach through which to leave the complexity reduction apparatuses that still dominate the different disciplines and the common thought, opening up to perspectives that are alternatives to any teleology of modernity, it\u2019s a prerequisite for the practices of a techno-social ecology that allows our species a conscious coexistence with alterity.<\/p>\n It\u2019s not (only) a matter of putting the human within a complex and heterogeneous net of fluxes and relations but, rather \u2013 assuming the reciprocally constitutive relationship between observing and observed systems, the erosion of the boundaries between subject and object, the combinatory role played by technologies \u2013 to finally distract him from its own epistemological, ontological, ethical supremacy, bringing him back to the same side of the other living beings, and of the \u201cobjects without soul\u201d, as terminal of a constructed and pluriversable multiverse, not embraceable with a single gaze.<\/p>\n QUASI-OBJECTS<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n “Quasi-Objects \/ C-Study #59”, Lambda print, ed. of 5, 2008, courtesy the artist.<\/p><\/div>\n Quasi-Objects<\/strong>\u00a0(2003\u2013 ) is an ongoing cycle of works generated with 3D modeling and animation software, actually made of by ten videos \/ video installations and over onehundred prints and preparatory studies. In earlier works my interest had been directed at the process of complexification of the contemporary universes of sense, focusing the attention on the semantic shifts intervened in the subjects\/objects relationships through its \u201cpre-figurations\u201d in multiversal forms of existence as output of a process of bio-machinic contamination (\u201cSample-Kit\u201d, 2002\u20132003) or in a multilayered vision of body geographies achieved by means of the plastic coexistence of object based and project based instances (\u201cOperative Systems\u201d, 2003). \u201cQuasi-Objects\u201d followed the same research path processing its \u201csynthetic combinatory genesis as an operative advantage within a practice of organic re-design intended to stimulate thought about the progressive relativization of natural forms of life as result of techno-biological evolution.<\/p>\n As entities coming from numerical procedures \u2013 through which the signification process is given in the non-existence of ontological referents \u2013 synthetic images, by shifting attention from the \u201cimage\u201d itself to its embodied \u201cknowledge-quota\u201d (from output to process) contributes to make us aware of our relationship with the “reality”, looking at the meaning of life in terms of a real and autonomous process disjoint from any specific material manifestation, a generative grammar independent from the holding (s)object. \u201cQuasi-Objects\u201d concerns data actualization, the production of biologically a-functional (biopolitically dysfunctional) occurrences, dealing about life without regard to the outcomes it recognizes, transient outputs of an operative practice: aesthetics of process.<\/p>\n SOFT BODIES<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n “Soft Body #02”, digital C-type print, ed. of 3+1 AP, 2016, courtesy the artist.<\/p><\/div>\n Soft Bodies<\/strong>\u00a0(2016\u2013 ) is an ongoing series of digital c-type prints coming from some hi-poly 3D modeling studies I made from 2015 onwards. From the beginning of this year I started the production \u2013 still in an experimental phase \u2013 of 3D printed sculptures \u201cin-formed\u201d by some of the series\u2019 3D modeling files.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/metamorf.no\/2020\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/img_Work01_EMS-1024x585.jpg\")
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/metamorf.no\/2020\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/img_Work03_QuasiObjects-1024x731.jpg\")
\nThe given title \u2013 borrowed from “Nous n’avons jamais \u00e9t\u00e9 modernes” by Bruno Latour (which in turn refers to some reflections advanced by Michel Serres in “Le Parasite” and “Statues”) \u2013 reflected my intention to do precise reference to that “regime of ontological undecidability” that remodeled (progressively and definitively, at least from the second half of the last century) the order of \u201cmen and things\u201d, our relationship with nature, looking for a nondialectical way of reconciliation with alterity, beyond any stable\u00a0representation that preserves the proliferation of difference.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/metamorf.no\/2020\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/img_Work02_SoftBodies-1024x1024.jpg\")
\nThe aim of the project is to continue \/ deepen my research on synth-organic morphologies by generating a set of detailed, hi-res prints digitally\u00a0colorized during the post-production phase to achieve a better photorealistic effect.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/metamorf.no\/2020\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/img_Portrait-bw-300x300.jpg\")
Lorenzo Oggiano<\/strong> (b. 1964, Padua) is an italian interdisciplinary artist working in new media, video, video installation, photography, assemblage, sculpture.<\/p>\n