projects Archives

Photosynthetic You

Photosynthetic You workshop and participatory action
project 2022

Concept and design
Vanessa V

with
Max Viale (sound designer)

and
Irma Milanese (PhD student in plant physiology)

Technical Assistant
Enrico Turletti

This workshop was presented at Ars Electronica 2022
and in the Program What is life? of Noema Journal (Pier Luigi Capucci) – Urbino Art Academy 2022

If you are interested to know more about the narrative behind the two projects that Vanessa V created around the idea of Human Photosynthesis (Photosynthetic Me and Photosynthetic You), here you can find a long article in the Academic Journal Surprize n°4 by Noema Media and Publishing (curated by Pier Luigi Capucci) noema.media What is life 2022.pdf (pp. 43-48 ITA+ENG).

Max Viale is a well-known Italian sound designer, producer and music composer in the field of media art and cinema. Together with founding and directing the music collective Gatto Ciliegia against the Great Cold (10 albums realized), Max won many important awards including a David di Donatello and a Silver Lion (Venice Biennale Cinema in 2021), and a Golden Ciak Awards (Best score) in 2018. She also teaches at the Civica Scuola di Cinema “Luchino Visconti” of Milan.

Irma Milanese. After graduating in Biology, she specializes in the field of plant biotechnologies, with a keen interest in environmental and bioenergy issues. Now she is a PhD in Physiology of the interactions between plants, microorganisms, and the environment at Trento University.

go to Photosynthetic Me

06 December 2022

Photosynthetic You is a workshop and a participatory action that carries on the idea of human photosynthesis that Vanessa V started to explore in 2020 (S+T+Arts Prize For Social Good winner 2021) with the installation Photosynthetic Me.
It investigates fundamental ethical and political questions related to the renewed debate on genetics reaching as far as the hypothesis of being able to exchange our human genes with those of other species (plants) using innovative systems such as CRISPR/Cas. What if we can all decide, paradoxically and in an extreme, mass democratic act, to become thin and motionless like leaves, energetically self-sufficient like plants, feeding only on light and solar power? How can we imagine a world in which we all are hybridized with plants?
In the workshop, participants are invited to undertake a training and learning trail guided by plants and mediated by technologies.
The idea behind this path is that humans must be domesticated and colonized by plants in order to activate an evolutionary path that will mutate people into photosynthetic and plant-like hybrid organisms, self-sufficient for food and energy requirements.

The workshop was presented for the first time as part of the “What is life?” program curated by Prof. Pier Luigi Capucci at the Academy of Fine Arts in Urbino.
In September 2022 it was presented at Ars Electronica.

photosynthetic self-sustenance

Tutorial. How to produce the chlorophyll
(this tutorial is part of the workshop)

Photosynthetic You workshop and participatory action
project 2022

Concept and design
Vanessa V

with
Max Viale (sound designer)

and
Irma Milanese (PhD student in plant physiology)

Technical Assistant
Enrico Turletti

This workshop was presented at Ars Electronica 2022
and in the Program What is life? of Noema Journal (Pier Luigi Capucci) – Urbino Art Academy 2022

go to Photosynthetic Me

180°

180° Multimedia Installation
project 2011

Directed by Mabel Palacin
Executive Producers Vanessa V and Hiuwai Chu

01 September 2011

Directed by Mabel Palacin
Executive Producers Vanessa V and Hiuwai Chu

Through a picture that becomes multiple, It deals with issues such as the city, characterized by the simultaneity of perceptions and events, and the image, the point of view and the position of the viewer. The creation of an image reproduced virally is proposed, multiplied and jumping from one format to another, transforming to exist. The project shows this process of transformation: the tension that is created in an image that appears suspended between several media at the same time.
180° takes its name from what in cinema is known as the 180 degree rule, whereby the camera, taking shots and counter shots, should not jump off the imaginary line of 180 degrees, as this would create confusion about the spatial position of the characters. The camera must choose one side of the “axis of action” so that the characters remain on the same side (left or right) of the screen and the viewer does not get spatially disoriented.

180º is an installation in which an image is reproduced and translated into different mediums that carry different relations between the viewer and the image. The place of the image is multiple and formed by the articulated set of the ways in which the image is presented. The diversity of these ways leads the image to be something else, while the presence of multiple views projects the unknown on the image causing the suspension of a single and final sense.

180º is a full shot, the picture of city street. According to the digital logic, the image is constructed from many takes that break the shot so that the image can allow enough definition even in the smallest details. The takes are then linked through its inner digital core so coherence is maintained in the photography, displayed as a single image. The full shot allows us to understand certain structure, relate things from a distance. At the same time, and because of the enormous scale of the image, it is possible to expand it in the smallest details, so that the structure, perceived as a whole, is subverted or transformed into the specific details that form it. The image then passes through different mutations: a series of videos, 110 smaller photos, which appear as a book edited for the occasion, portions of the initial image that explodes and is fragmented into some parts, which inevitably form new stories, as each fragment, isolated, creates new meanings, working as a microstories.

180° represented Catalonia and the Balearic Islands in the 54th Venice Biennale

180° Multimedia Installation
project 2011

Directed by Mabel Palacin
Executive Producers Vanessa V and Hiuwai Chu

A (d’acqua)

A (d’acqua) project 2008
01 January 2008

The topic of the performance is Water that is explored through exciting sensory impressions. Through images, sounds, bodies that show the water in all its fullness and preciousness, Konic Thtr investigate on the abuse / exploitation of water resources in the world. Water: main element of the human body, universal primary and vital energy, delicate drop or huge powerful devastating force.

An interactive performance directed by Konic Thtr.
A (d’acqua) – The Augmented Stage in Turin is an original creation, a work in progress transnational project. For A (d’acqua) were selected 20 students from MultiDams (University of Turin) and Cinema and Media Engineering (Polytechnic of Turin) who worked with Italian and Spanish professionals and researchers. To realize the performance the students where divided in various team: performers, audiovisual/multimedia production, management and information control and documentation. A (d’acqua) makes use of elaborate technological software (some of them are designed and manufactured in Piedmont as the Solumnium software) that enable interactive and prosthetic communication between performers and stage machinery. Performers and music instruments activate wireless sensors directly connected to an audio-visul world (video images, 3D graphics and electronic music) changing the performance in real time. A sort of sensible scene that leads to its “expansion” through technological devices for creating sound and visual effects.

Première at Malafestival 2008.

A (d’acqua) project 2008

Crossroads

Crossroads project 2009

concept and direction Antonella Usai and Ali Zaidi
in collaboration with Antonio Pizzo and Vanessa Vozzo (drammaturgia dei sistemi interattivi)
choreography Antonella Usai
media design Alì Zaidi
with Antonella Usai, Vanessa Michielon, Alessandro Tessitore, Antonio Christian Iosco

01 January 2009

Crossroads is a performance using body, ritual and new media to trade cultural stories. The stories migrate and morph between medieval India’s devadasis, to women trafficked into the borders of Europe to the borderless sex workers of the world wide web.

Crossroads is directed by two artists of excellence: Ali Zaidi founder of motiroti (UK) and Antonella Usai founder of the Compagnia NAD (IT). Both have worked with students from Politecnico di Torino (Ingegneria del Cinema dei Mezzi di Comunicazione) and from Università degli Studi di Torino (Facoltà di Scienze della Formazione) selected by Officine Synthetic in a work that uses the digital real time interaction.

Première at Live Acts Officine Sintetiche.

Crossroads project 2009

Cotrone

Cotrone Interactive performance
project 2010

directed by Marcel.lì Antunez Roca
inspired by Luigi Pirandello’s “The Mountain Giants”
Director’s Assistant Vanessa Vozzo
Consultation for Interactive Dramaturgy Antonio Pizzo, Pere Vilà Barceló
With Alessandro Lombardo, Ettore Scarpa
Technical Direction Oriol Ibañez
Technical Assistance David Giacomelli, Marco Scevola
Animation Liliana Fortuny
Colour Wahab Zeghlache
Graphics Riccardo Muroni, Juliana Acevedo
Sound/Music Paolo Armao/ASA Lab, Andrea Valle
Programming Javier Chavarri
Organisation Il Mutamento Zona Castalia, Servi di Scena opus rt, Panspermia S.L.
Italian-Spanish Coordination Officine Sintetiche
Documentation CIRMA
Officine Sintetiche Production

01 January 2010

STORY-LINE

COTRONE is inspired by I Giganti della Montagna (The Mountain Giants), the unfinished posthumous work of Luigi Pirandello, a very well known Italian playwright of the early twentieth century. The unwritten final act, which the author had only recited to his son on his deathbed, becomes the suggestive “mystery” which brought about this performance. Marcel.li’s carnal and fantastic world has an unexpected affinity to the enigmas which shroud the Villa della Scalogna (House of Bad luck) particularly Arsenale delle Apparizioni. This last place in particular has been transformed by the Catalan performer’s visionary, ironic and technological nature, appointed to take on the unfinished final act of I Giganti della Montagna. Two unkowns take on the role of guide, two crazy characters who maintain that they are the bearers of Pirandello’s last words. In the new Arsenale delle Apparizioni, they use technological devices designed by Marcel.lì to recount their version of the last missing piece. And so, as if by magic, we also find Ilse and Cotrone, Spizzi and Diamante, Cromo and Battaglia, Quaqueo the dwarf and the young Milordino in the Arsenale, who turn to the spectators telling their tales as “characters in search of an author” (like the title of an other Pirandello work), deformed by their own desires.

LANGUAGES

COTRONE occurs in an essential scene, made up of a big screen, safety mats, a videocamera and special technological devices such as the “guncam”. The two actors wear “dreskeletons”, interfaces of an esoskeletal nature, created by Marcel.lì from 1998 and developed especially for this performance. A network of hardware and software devices, including the newly updated version of v4 POL, enable a performance to make use of a specific working style developed by Marcel.lì and defined as “systematurgy”. COTRONE transcends traditional forms of theatrical drama, generating new contexts where digital interaction augments reality, and various interfaces allow the actor or the spectators to expand on their own typical roles.

SYSTEMATURGY

The aforementioned Systematurgy is used as the work methodology for the dramaturgy and the narration. This neologism, invented by Marcel.lì, joining the words ‘system’ and ‘dramaturgy’ together, is a technique where technology plays a fundamental role. Just as cinema took on the theatrical and paratheatrical techniques of the 19th century, applying them in a new artform which made use of new innovative technologies, Systematurgy uses theatre and the visual arts to generate new artistic contexts characterised by information technology. So Systematurgy is relatively young, and perhaps this is why it relies on the micro-narration technique, rather short narrative nuclei constructed on the bones of the dramaturgical text, which enable the efficient organisation of material for composition through interactive management. The main tool used for applying Systematurgy is v4 POL software created by panspermia S.L. which allows the coordination and synchronisation of the other applications which are used for the interactive performance, such as Pure Data, Open Frameworks, GEM and more.

Première at Prospettiva Festival Teatro Stabile di Torino.

Cotrone Interactive performance
project 2010

Nomads

Nomads Interactive installation
project 2013/2014

Officine Sintetiche platform
Promoted by: CIRMA Dipartimento Studi Umanistici – Università degli Studi di Torino
Supported by: Fondazione CRT.
Partners: PAV – Parco Arte Vivente di Torino; Politecnico di Torino – Ingegneria del Cinema e dei Mezzi di Comunicazione; Corso di Studi in Dams e Nuovi Media; Laboratorio Multimediale “Guido Quazza”, Scuola di Musica Elettronica del Conservatorio di Torino

Network: Contemporary Art Torino Piemonte

artistic direction: Ali Zaidi (UK, India, Pakistan)

Project design Officine Sintetiche: Tatiana Mazali, Antonio Pizzo, Vanessa Vozzo
Producer and e tutor videos: Vanessa Vozzo
Tutor interactive systems and videos: Stefano Sburlati
Tutor performance and graphics: Vanessa Michielon
Tutor sound: Andrea Valle
Tutor texts: Claudio Grimaldi
Arduino design: Giacomo Leonzi

Voiceover installation: Alessandro Tessitore
Children in the videos: Ettore Alonge, Agata Valenzano, Emma Valle
Video doc: Gigio Migliore

Selected Students:
Video shooting: Carlo Conversano, Fabrizia Cosentino, Giorgio Cristofoletto, Luigi Imperato, Luca Leli
Production and research: Federica Bertana, Silvia Carpignano, Elena Falomo, Lucrezia Gera, Giulia Gerbó, Davide Grimaldi, Marina Hassan, Alisa Marghella, Ilaria Milan, Grazia Salvador
Editing video: Mattia Capone, Carlo Conversano, Giorgio Cristofoletto, Alessandro Garelli, Roberto Sandri
Sound recording: Antonello Campo, Edoardo Rissone, Fuat Sunay
Sound design: Antonello Campo, Edoardo Rissone
Graphics: Mohammed Khedr, Elena Lamura, Stefano Rolando, Grazia Salvador
Photos: Giacomo De Caro, Luigi Imperato, Elena Lamura, Maria Teresa Sarti
Interactive system: Gianpaolo Basilicò, Micol Da Milano, Mohamed Khedr, Riccardo Mollo, Alessio Sacco
Performance (14 dicembre): Dimitri Gadaldi, Martina Muroni
Social media and promotion: Ludovica Baldassarri, Federica Bertana, Silvia Carpignano, Chiara Lurgo, Jessica Stella Traduzioni: Giuliano Cammarata, Elena Falomo
Video promo: Lorenzo Canale

01 February 2013

A portrait of coffee, rice and wheat, Nomadi, is an homage to migration and culture.

“To see a world in a grain of sand
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,
And eternity in an hour.”
William Blake

If viewed from a different perspective, the ordinary can become extraordinary. As modern day consumers most of us buy our food ingredients from super markets and shops following a principle of loyalty to brands. Nomadi is an interactive space making us rethink our habits and notions in relation to food. Together, let us rediscover the distant history of coffee, rice and wheat in a dialogue with the here and now. In the hands of each of us these simple ingredients may give birth to so many different dishes. The movements of peoples and resources are inscribed in the recipes and food we cook and eat.

Nomadi is a celebration of natural and cultural diversity and of the strong bonds that bind us together, from the intimacy of the home to the typical restaurants of our beautiful Turin.

“The cultural exchange of the hungry migrant is all about food and it performs a unique magic of connectivity, joining peoples and their children to distant ‘homes’, to past lives, to utensils, ingredients dietary traditions and health outcomes. It forms the basis of culture and memory. Food is often the initial point of contact through which difference is observed, discussed and celebrated. Sharing food is the perfect and inevitable vehicle through which the inter-cultural understanding can blossom.” Ali Zaidi

Discover the nomad in you. Each plinth has many stories to tell – enjoy!

Première at Parco d’Arte Vivente.

Nomads Interactive installation
project 2013/2014

Network: Contemporary Art Torino Piemonte

artistic direction: Ali Zaidi (UK, India, Pakistan)

Voiceover installation: Alessandro Tessitore
Children in the videos: Ettore Alonge, Agata Valenzano, Emma Valle
Video doc: Gigio Migliore

VR in Wonderland#1

VR in Wonderland#1 VR and real-time streaming 360°
project 2018/2019

by Vanessa Vozzo (IT), Maša Jazbec (SLO), Aleksandra Mitic (SR), Jürgen Ropp (AT), Martìn Nadal (ES), Bàlint Budai (HU)

The research was supported by the Interface Culture Master Program
Kunstuniversität Linz

01 September 2018

Virtual Reality (VR) systems allow the user to experience a sense of presence in a place other than the physical body. VR also allows users to feel like someone else when they take the first-person perspective of another real person or avatar.

With the help of VR tools and devices for consumers integrated into our VR in Wonderland#1 system, the perception of the body of the participants in another room can be directed to a new perspective. Consequently, the VR in Wonderland#1 research setting actually makes it possible to manipulate the participants’ physical perception through self-localization. The natural view of the participants is replaced by the vision of a small robotic device running in an abstract city labyrinth model. While wearing head mounted displays and looking around, users can observe themselves from the perspective of the third person from below and above, leading to confusion about self-localization. This is a common approach where bodily illusions influence bodily self-awareness.

VR in Wonderland#1 was premiered at Ars Electronica Festival 2019

VR in Wonderland
research setting in Ars Electronica 2019

VR in Wonderland#1 VR and real-time streaming 360°
project 2018/2019

by Vanessa Vozzo (IT), Maša Jazbec (SLO), Aleksandra Mitic (SR), Jürgen Ropp (AT), Martìn Nadal (ES), Bàlint Budai (HU)

The research was supported by the Interface Culture Master Program
Kunstuniversität Linz

Contact Zone

Contact-zones Locative Media Documentary
project 2018 - still in progress

long-term project curated by Vanessa Vozzo and Laura Romano
photo by Andrea Ballo, Niccolò Mazzon, Federico Primavera

06 October 2018

Contact-zones is a long-term project curated by Vanessa Vozzo and Laura Romano around the concept of “boundaries/borders” as defined by geography, political spaces and as a political device on people and in territories. The physical earth and marine borders between states is fragmented and reconfigured within cities creating a dialogue between new arrivals and long-term residents. Society is the result of displacement, moving, and migration but new migratory influences seem to place urban spaces in physical crisis.

The project, conceived in 2018, concentrates on citizen contact-zones as possible spaces of new interaction.

The project uses locative media and interactive media art to create installations, performance, routes and tracking. The audiovisual contents follow a narrative model and/or one of counter-narrative with the object of redesign the contact-zone through an embodiment process of re-perception of urban spaces.

The project includes narrative compositions both indoor (museums, using locative media), and outdoor (using GPS).

RESEARCH

The research, that has been developed as a collaboration between Vanessa Vozzo and Laura Romano, includes:

urban studies/critical geography on the concept of boundaries/borders;
studies on new narrative/counter-narrative
studies on positioning (the point of view of the researcher, point of view of the user, and the breaking point of old systems of positioning);
studies on displacement (crowding out/ moving/ physical dislocation)

The project includes phases of action-research with in-depth field surveys.

Contact-zones Locative Media Documentary
project 2018 - still in progress

long-term project curated by Vanessa Vozzo and Laura Romano
photo by Andrea Ballo, Niccolò Mazzon, Federico Primavera

Laura Romano is a documentary producer and a PhD fellow in Urban Studies at DICEA – Dept of Civil, Building and Environmental Engineering at the Sapienza University of Rome, working on internal borders related to migratory spaces and the visual representation. Ms. Romano graduated with a thesis entitled The Border Talk, the process of doing frontiers as a spatial and narrative event. (Palermo, a case-study).

AFTERTASTE (strawberry)

AFTERTASTE (strawberry) Interactive artwork (installation + performance)
project 2013/14

Concept Chiara Vallini and Vanessa Vozzo
Performer Chiara Vallini
Media design Vanessa Vozzo
Music and sound design Fabio Viana
Voices Raffaella Tomellini and Chiara Vallini
Produced by Officine Sintetiche Production & NEO-Teatro and Arti Performative

01 June 2013

Aftertaste (strawberry) brings you on a journey of the senses. The synergy of the senses is triggered by the image of a delicious-looking strawberry, while an old anecdote is told, interspersed with artificial olfactory and tactile stimuli.Aftertaste (strawberry) prompts us to reflect on our loss of gustatory perception.

STRUCTURE

The artwork consists of:1) an automated interactive installation which enables the visitor to interact with a video, with the protagonist being a strawberry. The participant can change the video’s pitch by simply moving their hand. The installation is open to the public.2) an interactive performance enacted by an actor inside a box. The actor, initially positioned in the installation area, invites participants to enter the box. The performance is for one participant at a time, lasting approximately 5 minutes.

CONCEPT

The artwork content has been developed from studies in the psychology of perception and consumption, from recent sensory analysis techniques, as well as from anthropological studies of fairy tales (particularly Hänsel and Gretel by the Brothers Grimm). The artwork’s structure is innovative, as digital interaction systems are used (Interactive Media Art. It is based on studies of creating transdisciplinary art, bringing together contemporary theatre and contemporary art.

Première at Asti Teatro – Teatro e Natura.

AFTERTASTE (strawberry) Interactive artwork (installation + performance)
project 2013/14

Missing Out

Missing Out VR and real-time streaming 360°
project 2019/2020

Concept and curated by Vanessa Vozzo
Platform Officine Sintetiche
Students involved in the Narrative design: Mya Arbues, Guido Artioli, Maria Luisa Favia, Lorenzo Paggi
Researchers involved in the Narrative design Alessia Gervasone
Performer Chiara Vallini
Students involved in the VR System, video production and post production Carlo Gioia (chief technician), Giuseppe Bruno, Massimo Gismondi, Katia Grasso, Giulia Vilardo
Technical consultant Francesco Strada (researcher), Enrique Valido Moure (student)
Supported by Fondazione CRT
with Università degli Studi di Torino – Dipartimento Studi Umanistici , Politecnico di Torino – Cinema and Media Engineering
Media partner Torino Città del Cinema 2020

01 January 2019

Missing Out explores the FoMo (Fear of Missing Out) fear of being excluded through the medium of VR and real-time streaming 360°.

FoMO is a social state of anxiety derived from the need to constantly be informed about everything that everyone else is doing. It is characterized by the obsession that others are having more gratifying, interesting, exciting experiences in other places, but without us. This pervasive sensation of aprehension can be exasperated by the continuous reading of messages and posts published by others on social networks or through various apps. Some scholars, like Andrew Przybylski and his team, have recently brought to light various basic facts of FoMO and its consequences given the increasing restlessness in the absence of control over social network posts.

Missing Out directly involves the user by putting him in a critical comparison to his own relationship with social media.

In Missing Out the temporary and self-positioning proprioception, or sensorial perception, in surrounding space becomes modified in real time, creating an effect of disorientation between reality, virtuality, and ambient streaming.

Through an experiential path which travels from 2D vision to immersing oneself in VR 360° through living fully in the Real Reality of live streaming 360°, the spectator is given the possibility of living a specific situation from a more active and engaging perspective.

RESEARCH AND EXPERIMENTATION

The research is based on one hand, on recent studies in the field of immersive journalism and, more generally, of immersive and interactive documentaries. On the other hand, it is based on the study of innovative techniques in embodied narratives and cross-media writings which profoundly involve the spectator causing participation from a new point of view. This is a point of view in which the distance between reality and virtuality are obviously reduced through an illusionary mechanism of space-time distortion.

Research into the new field of social media regarding the cause and effects of FoMO has been also launched with the Politecnico of Turin.

This research was accompanied by a series of experiments and studies held during the Ars Electronica 2019 exhibition (Linz – AU) by a research and work group, among whom Vanessa Vozzo took part (see VR in Wonderland).

Première at Circolo del Design of Turin (Italy).

Missing Out.
Circolo del Design of Turin (Italy).

Missing Out VR and real-time streaming 360°
project 2019/2020

photosynthetic self-sustenance

Première at Malafestival 2008.

Première at Live Acts Officine Sintetiche.

STORY-LINE

LANGUAGES

SYSTEMATURGY

Première at Prospettiva Festival Teatro Stabile di Torino.

Première at Parco d’Arte Vivente.

VR in Wonderland research setting in Ars Electronica 2019

VR in Wonderland research setting in Ars Electronica 2019

RESEARCH

STRUCTURE

CONCEPT

Première at Asti Teatro – Teatro e Natura.

RESEARCH AND EXPERIMENTATION

Missing Out. Circolo del Design of Turin (Italy).

VR in Wonderland
research setting in Ars Electronica 2019

VR in Wonderland
research setting in Ars Electronica 2019

Missing Out.
Circolo del Design of Turin (Italy).