Category: The Illusion Beyond Art

Three Impressionist Paintings by Florence Morrison

As if Santiago of Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea had gone out again for priceless discoveries, but this time with a group of friends. The singularity of this painting is striking, yet it also reminds me of work products from Van Gogh’s period in Arles. Notice the exact synchronicity between the principal objects (and their…

April 1, 2011
From The Technological Herbarium, by Gianna Maria Gatti – Interactive Plant Growing and Trans Plant by Christa Sommerer and Laurent Mignonneau (translated by Alan N. Shapiro)

Christa Sommerer has a strong interest in botany: she dedicated herself to this after her secondary studies, enrolling in the Faculty of Biology and Botany of Vienna. Her intention was to investigate nature with methods suitable to the classification of plants for the purpose of achieving the formulation of systematic rules.

October 4, 2010
From The Technological Herbarium, by Gianna Maria Gatti – Nerve Garden by Bruce Damer (translated by Alan N. Shapiro)

All images © Copyright Bruce Damer, embedded here with the permission of the artist. Nerve Garden is a three-dimensional virtual world accessible on the Internet, a “Public Terrarium in Cyberspace,” according to the definition of its authors, where the users of the Net can sow and witness the growth of virtual plants.

October 4, 2010
Only Impossible Exchange Is Possible, by Aurel Schmidt (translated by Alan N. Shapiro)

Impossible exchange is an impossible subject. In Jean Baudrillard’s book Impossible Exchange (2001), the matter is treated in such a way that one is better off with an associative and meditative interpretive approach than with a discursive reading. Much of the book transported me into a state of wonder, other parts I found irritating.

April 15, 2010
Considerations on Transgenic and Biotech Art, by Gianna Maria Gatti (translated by Alan N. Shapiro)

At the Experimental Art Foundation of Adelaide, Australia, there took place in 2004 the exhibition “Art of the Biotech Era” organized by Melentie Pandilovski. It involved the principal exponents of the artistic sphere connected to biology, genetics and bio-technologies, showing their projects and realizations.

April 15, 2010
From The Technological Herbarium, by Gianna Maria Gatti – Osmose by Char Davies (translated by Alan N. Shapiro)

To enter inside a tree and exit it through the leaves after having participated in its process of chlorophyllous photosynthesis: this is one of the many journeys that Char Davies makes the user of Osmose experience in an immersive, interactive, and multisensorial virtual reality environment that was developed and produced in 1995.

April 15, 2010
From The Technological Herbarium, by Gianna Maria Gatti – Telegarden by Ken Goldberg (translated by Alan N. Shapiro)

Telegarden is a telerobotic installation that enables users of the World Wide Web to see and cultivate a real garden. Conceived in 1994, it was activated in June 1995 at the University of Southern California and presented, over the course of the summer, at the leading international exhibitions of digital art and technology.

April 15, 2010
Merleau-Ponty and Marx on Nature and Art, by Gianna Maria Gatti (translated by Alan N. Shapiro)

Man places between himself and nature those signs useful to denote and represent it, sanctioning the beginning of the autonomous differentiation of the phenomenal world. In the Upper Paleolithic, the figurations of wild animals drawn on the walls of caves, between magic and the practice of the satisfaction of vital needs and control over nature.

April 15, 2010
The Technological Herbarium: Introduction, by Gianna Maria Gatti (translated by Alan N. Shapiro)

The Technological Herbarium: Introduction by Gianna Maria Gatti (translated from the Italian by Alan N. Shapiro) Infinite are the facets in which the living manifests itself. Infinite are the possibilities in which it expresses its existence. Art seizes these possibilities of existence, interprets them, advances unusual combinations of them, breaks up their consolidated connections.

April 15, 2010
Gianna Maria Gatti’s The Technological Herbarium, by Alan N. Shapiro

Gianna Maria Gatti’s book The Technological Herbarium (subtitled: “Vegetable Nature and New Technologies in Art Between the Second and Third Millennia”) is a study of ‘interdisciplinary’ works of art that exemplify the increasing importance of science and technology in artistic creation.

April 14, 2010