Your browser does not support the video tag.
Your browser does not support the video tag.
Marco Cadioli - The Whirlpool
  • © ARSHAKE | ISSN 2283-3676
  • CONTACT
  • Login
Arshake
  • ABOUT US
    • ABOUT US
    • PROJECT
    • MEDIA/PARTNERSHIPS
    • CONTACT US
  • FOCUS
    • All
    • focus
    • From the Past
    • Interview
    The finalists of the ‘Driving Energy 2023 Award’ on show at the Palazzo Esposizioni Roma

    The finalists of the ‘Driving Energy 2023 Award’ on show at the Palazzo Esposizioni Roma

    Summer in a Solitary Book #12

    Summer in a Solitary Book #12

    Summer in a Solitary Book #11

    Summer in a Solitary Book #11

    Summer in a Solitary Book #10

    Summer in a Solitary Book #10

    Summer in a Solitary Book #9

    Summer in a Solitary Book #9

    Summer in a Solitary Book #8

    Summer in a Solitary Book #8

  • FRAME
    FRAME > STARDUST

    FRAME > STARDUST

    FRAME > MOBILE

    FRAME > MOBILE

    FRAME > SUIT

    FRAME > SUIT

    FRAME > Beach Day

    FRAME > Beach Day

    FRAME > Kellogs

    FRAME > Kellogs

    FRAME > Belonging

    FRAME > Belonging

    FRAME > Landscape Painting (Quarry day)

    FRAME > Landscape Painting (Quarry day)

    FRAME > Bee Colony Collaboration

    FRAME > Bee Colony Collaboration

    FRAME > Passport Photos

    FRAME > Passport Photos

  • VIDEO POST
    VIDEO POST > Moon Arrow

    VIDEO POST > Moon Arrow

    VIDEO POST > AIR

    VIDEO POST > AIR

    VIDEO POST > Sound Fossil III. Lines

    VIDEO POST > Sound Fossil III. Lines

    VIDEO POST > Wavescape for Walla

    VIDEO POST > Wavescape for Walla

    VIDEO POST > When the Sky Blooms with Sakur

    VIDEO POST > When the Sky Blooms with Sakur

    VIDEO POST > Oh my ( )

    VIDEO POST > Oh my ( )

    VIDEO POST > Unerasable Characters II

    VIDEO POST > Unerasable Characters II

    VIDEO POST > Second Self

    VIDEO POST > Second Self

    VIDEO POST > Sky Light

    VIDEO POST > Sky Light

  • SPECIAL PROJECT
    • CRITICAL GROUNDS
    • YOUNG ITALIAN ARTISTS
  • RESOURCES
    • ARCHIVIO
  • ARSHAKE’S BANNER
  • GAME OVER
  • EXTERNAL PROJECTS
  • GAME OVER • LOADING
  • BACKSTAGE | ONSTAGE
  • PERCORSI • 6 years of the Terna Prize
  • TEMPO IMPERFETTO
  • CALLS
  • ONLINE RESOUCES
  • it IT
  • en English
No Result
View All Result
  • ABOUT US
    • ABOUT US
    • PROJECT
    • MEDIA/PARTNERSHIPS
    • CONTACT US
  • FOCUS
    • All
    • focus
    • From the Past
    • Interview
    The finalists of the ‘Driving Energy 2023 Award’ on show at the Palazzo Esposizioni Roma

    The finalists of the ‘Driving Energy 2023 Award’ on show at the Palazzo Esposizioni Roma

    Summer in a Solitary Book #12

    Summer in a Solitary Book #12

    Summer in a Solitary Book #11

    Summer in a Solitary Book #11

    Summer in a Solitary Book #10

    Summer in a Solitary Book #10

    Summer in a Solitary Book #9

    Summer in a Solitary Book #9

    Summer in a Solitary Book #8

    Summer in a Solitary Book #8

  • FRAME
    FRAME > STARDUST

    FRAME > STARDUST

    FRAME > MOBILE

    FRAME > MOBILE

    FRAME > SUIT

    FRAME > SUIT

    FRAME > Beach Day

    FRAME > Beach Day

    FRAME > Kellogs

    FRAME > Kellogs

    FRAME > Belonging

    FRAME > Belonging

    FRAME > Landscape Painting (Quarry day)

    FRAME > Landscape Painting (Quarry day)

    FRAME > Bee Colony Collaboration

    FRAME > Bee Colony Collaboration

    FRAME > Passport Photos

    FRAME > Passport Photos

  • VIDEO POST
    VIDEO POST > Moon Arrow

    VIDEO POST > Moon Arrow

    VIDEO POST > AIR

    VIDEO POST > AIR

    VIDEO POST > Sound Fossil III. Lines

    VIDEO POST > Sound Fossil III. Lines

    VIDEO POST > Wavescape for Walla

    VIDEO POST > Wavescape for Walla

    VIDEO POST > When the Sky Blooms with Sakur

    VIDEO POST > When the Sky Blooms with Sakur

    VIDEO POST > Oh my ( )

    VIDEO POST > Oh my ( )

    VIDEO POST > Unerasable Characters II

    VIDEO POST > Unerasable Characters II

    VIDEO POST > Second Self

    VIDEO POST > Second Self

    VIDEO POST > Sky Light

    VIDEO POST > Sky Light

  • SPECIAL PROJECT
    • CRITICAL GROUNDS
    • YOUNG ITALIAN ARTISTS
  • RESOURCES
    • ARCHIVIO
  • ARSHAKE’S BANNER
  • GAME OVER
  • EXTERNAL PROJECTS
  • GAME OVER • LOADING
  • BACKSTAGE | ONSTAGE
  • PERCORSI • 6 years of the Terna Prize
  • TEMPO IMPERFETTO
  • CALLS
  • ONLINE RESOUCES
No Result
View All Result
Arshake
No Result
View All Result
Home exhibitions

Metaverse Hypothesis at Palazzo Cipolla

A series of reflections by Fabio Giagnacovo on the current exhibition at Palazzo Cipolla in Rome and the 'metaverse'

Fabio Giagnacovo by Fabio Giagnacovo
16/06/2023
in exhibitions, focus
Metaverse Hypothesis at Palazzo Cipolla

It is undeniable that the concept of the metaverse creates curiosity and fascination in most people. A metaphysical universe that surpasses the concept of analogue reality with the use of the technological tools of virtual and augmented reality, cannot but stir something in us, cannot but make us jolt at the idea that we are living in the future, after all, the term itself was invented with a purely sci-fi meaning by the writer Neal Stephenson in his 1992 novel Snow Crash.

Despite the bombastic declarations of the large multinationals on the metaverse (the company Facebook has even changed its name to Meta, revealing its immense plans for the years to come to create a real metaverse), it remains science fiction at present, or, if you like, something very similar to The Sims, a video game from 2000 that tries to simulate, with the means and technologies it possesses, the everyday life of avatars created and moved by users, sitting comfortably in front of their personal computers.

This is precisely why, if we want to get to the bottom of this concept of the future, which is germinating in our time, we have to rely on what McLuhan calls ‘people of integral consciousness’: artists. According to McLuhan, men should convince themselves that art is a precise advance knowledge of how to deal with the psychic and social consequences of the coming technology, and again, as we read in his Understanding Media (the Italian translation Gli strumenti del comunicare does not do it justice at all): ‘The artist is the man who in any field, scientific or humanistic, grasps the implications of his own actions and of the science of his time. He is the man of integral awareness. He can correct the relationships between the senses before the blows of a new technology have numbed conscious processes.”

In Ipotesi Metaverso, an exhibition curated by Gabriele Simongini and Serena Tabacchi at the Palazzo Cipolla in Rome, open to the public until 23 July 2023, we rely precisely on artists in the hypothesis of a hinted-at metaverse, awaiting the great technological breakthroughs that will be able to actually put it into practice, above all the semantic web. But the exhibition does not only look to the future: 16 contemporary artists reflecting on new technologies are flanked by 16 other historicised artists, who somehow create a connection with their future, which is our present, the integral awareness of two, three, generations ago.

This methodology, which may appear to be successful, and which gives meaning to the entire reflection on which the exhibition is based, is in reality also a double-edged sword that demonstrates how important it is to equate the artistic qualities of those present at the exhibition. Granted that this is not a criticism of the exhibition, but rather an ode to it, in recognition of its ability to open up new reasoning on perhaps the most changing concept of our contemporary times, the contemporary works in the exhibition do not hold a candle to the great masters, especially in its first part. Triangulating the series of Giovanni Battista Piranesi’s Prisons (1749-1761), Maurits Cornelis Escher’s tetrahedral Planetoid (1954) and Fabio Giampietro and Paolo Di Giacomo’s Aletide (2013), for example, corroborates the common thought of a contemporary art emptied of meaning, made to be enjoyed as in a playground, with that all-too-technological optical illusion that fascinates and makes the eyes glaze over. The work itself has sense and undoubted qualities, but these are debased when the same effect, devoid of any superficial gamification strategy, is created by two brilliant artists like Piranesi and Escher, without the need for any new technology, but only through their flat surface and the perception it creates in our brain, passing through our eye.

Gamification however functional to perception and aesthetics, unlike the two virtual reality ‘works’: Regenesis by Krista Kim and The Bacchanalian Ones by Federico Solmi. In both works, virtual reality technologies are neither functional to aesthetics nor indispensable to sense. In both cases, one has the feeling that one is playing a video game that is not even that interesting, and this is a pity, because both of the reflections underlying virtual reality – urbanism becoming an instrument of well-being in the first case, and the use of the grotesque, the outlandish and the ironic in a postmodern pastiche reflecting on the meaning of history in the second – are very fascinating focuses. Both works are much broader than the mere enjoyment of virtual reality with a VR helmet, but that very helmet is the nerve and weak point of both experiences.

Solmi’s sculptures, for example, ceramic sculptures made with an ancient technique, are the result of a triple translation and intrinsically have a complexity of meaning very close to the analogue-digital space in which we live. The grotesque historical characters, created in 3D through the computer and brought to life, in their existential dematerialisation, in the virtual reality we enter through the helmet, we find them in our analogue reality, concrete and immobile, statues that are transformed into idols of the other space in which we believe, like the statues of the divinities of Ancient Greece.

If this, that of the works described above, is the integral awareness of a subject as complex as analogue-digital space, and especially the metaverse, then there is still a long way to go. It seems that contemporary artists often only dwell on the tip of the iceberg, a mostly fun and carefree tip made for cultural amusement parks, without any real critical depth.

Ipotesi Metaverso, curated by Serena Tabacchi and Grabriele Simongini, Palazzo Cipolla, Rome, 05.04 – 23.07.2023 

images: (cover 1) Fabio Giampietro e Paolo Di Giacomo, «Aletide», ph Luca Perazzolo (2) Federico Solmi, «The Bacchanalian Ones», ph Luca Perazzolo

 

 

 

 

Tags: arsarshakeFabio GiagnacovoGabriele SimonginiMetaversePalazzo CipollaRomeSerena Tabacchi
ShareTweetShareSend
Previous Post

Sónar Festival and Sónar+D in Barcelona

Next Post

VIDEO POST > Reprocessing… Piano + AI

Next Post
VIDEO POST > Reprocessing… Piano + AI

VIDEO POST > Reprocessing… Piano + AI

CALLS

Call for submissions> MUSAE OPEN CALL FOR ARTISTS S+T+ARTS Residency
Calls

Call for submissions> MUSAE OPEN CALL FOR ARTISTS S+T+ARTS Residency

29/05/2023
Driving Energy Terna Award 2023
Calls

Driving Energy Terna Award 2023

22/02/2023
S+T+ARTS Prize 2023
Calls

S+T+ARTS Prize 2023

04/02/2023
RE:HUMANISM Art Prize: SPARKS AND FRICTIONS
Calls

RE:HUMANISM Art Prize: SPARKS AND FRICTIONS

01/02/2023

CRITICAL GROUNDS

Critical Gounds #13 – Massimo Maiorino, The Artist as Archaeologist.
Critical Grounds

Critical Gounds #13 – Massimo Maiorino, The Artist as Archaeologist.

08/07/2020
Critical Gounds #12 – Filiberto Menna «PROGETTARE» IL FUTURO
Critical Grounds

Critical Gounds #12 – Filiberto Menna «PROGETTARE» IL FUTURO

26/11/2019
Facebook Twitter Instagram

Arshake is a collaborative artistic project, blurring the borders between art, science and technology, information and production.

  • Focus
  • Video post
  • Frame
  • Special Project
  • Interview
  • Calls
  • Exhibitions

One more step - Check your email and click the confirmation link

© 2012-2023 – ARSHAKE

No Result
View All Result
  • ABOUT US
    • ABOUT US
    • PROJECT
    • MEDIA/PARTNERSHIPS
    • CONTACT US
  • FOCUS
  • FRAME
  • VIDEO POST
  • SPECIAL PROJECT
    • CRITICAL GROUNDS
    • YOUNG ITALIAN ARTISTS
  • RESOURCES
    • ARCHIVIO

© 2012-2023 – ARSHAKE

Welcome Back!

Login to your account below

Forgotten Password?

Retrieve your password

Please enter your username or email address to reset your password.

Log In
This website uses cookies. By continuing to use this website you are giving consent to cookies being used. Visit our Privacy and Cookie Policy.