TTN-20
TTN-20 is a time- and site- specific work based on an investigation of global data gathered during the pandemic spread of COVID-19.
Conceived as an extension and reiteration of the Tribute to the Noise series — a journey through generative video noise behaviour — the igniting element for the chaotic change in TTN-20 is based on crucial parameter correlations that provoke new ways of questioning reality.
Analyzing data collected over a 3 month period commencing 8 March 2020 and transposed via a holographic LED-Fan, TTN-20 presents daily visualizations processed by an original computer-programming script written by Familari for this exhibition.
TTN-20 constitutes a move towards a different understanding of the interrelations between subjects and the events that influence them, when decision-making processes become defined by incidental combinations of objective and subjective factors.
Unceasingly merging and blending colour-coded representations of various datasets related to the pandemic spread of COVID-19, such as, virus mortality rate, number of confirmed cases, recovered subjects, corresponding CO2 levels, PM2.5 measurements and the earth’s natural oscillations, TTN-20 explores the concept of ‘randomity’ in a moment of planetary change, drawing out a dialectic between a persistent state of becoming and invisible political bodies.
Through modulation of inputs into the daily data visualization, TTN-20 generates a video work, opening a window to the present, for the future. Sensitive areas of the hologram are set to react to numerical combinations of pandemic-related data: this method has been designed by following a compound of the fundamental axioms underlying the series Tribute to the Noise, where the same script acts on different media, borrowing the notions of study and exercises in style from classical painting, thus prompting a critical rethinking of how artistic processes interact with the current digital realm.
In TTN-20 the passage of time constitutes an essential dimension. From March 8th onwards, the work narrates the succession of weeks until the end of June, the evolution of the pandemic and its spread throughout the world. A transition to black in the piece defines every fortnight: each passage represents not only the beginning of each new phase/two weeks but also the gradual and irreversible chaos in which our “normality” has been swallowed up.
The visual relations derived from the data gathered are expanded by a simultaneous alteration of shapes and blending colours that come together in the artwork, in an extreme, decadent synthesis of the phenomena.
In its own making as a digital presence and in our fragmented witnessing of it, TTN-20 functions as a temporary attempt to refocus the lens through which humanity’s relations are perceived and conceived during an unprecedented pandemic, when random events in time and space constantly collide and intertwine with the surrounding environment.
In dialogue with Berlin—Weekly, TTN-20 can be experienced from an intimate and immediate perspective, and yet remains protected from human contact. The opening up of a window in the middle of a street heavily affected by the very same correlations as TTN-20, leads the audience into a temporal dimension in between what we are living in and what we will live in.
Text: Alice Lamperti
Production: Martina Pelacchi
Video: Daniele Lucchini
Photo: Dario J. Laganà, www.norte.it
Presented at: Berlin—Weekly, Berlin, 2020 with Stefanie Seidl
TTN-20 is part of the series Tribute to the Noise (2018-2020)
The world is governed by chance. Randomness stalks us every day of our lives.
Paul Auster
During the last two years, Tribute to the noise unravelled a wide scope investigation about the potentialities of the noise and its meanings. Originally identified as “unwanted signal”, in the series it is celebrated as a contemporary proposal against hard determinism, redefining scales of possibilities in the chosen area of analysis, merging and superimposing endless results, in which the creative process and decision making is fragmented and delegated, in time and space, by the medium of the research itself. The entire series is generated by a glsl original script entirely written for the piece.
Tribute to the noise is a journey through generative video noise behaviour in contemporary audiovisual formats. A timeless immersion in multiple meanings of the noise, where randomity is investigated via the activation of ever evolving collapsing landscapes affecting directly and indirectly, all human senses.
In Tribute to the noise, the classical notions of study and exercises in style are borrowed from classical painting to prompt a critical rethinking of the artistic processes in digital practice. It represents an ongoing co-research with and via the medium, from the methodical standing point and of the constitutive progression of the subject in becoming.
Concretising the friction between chance and causality, the series is permeated by exhausted colours compositions feeding the viewer’s restless stare, overlapping with hazy unrecognizable patterns, attracting it to replicate layers of harsh colour contrasts – almost toxic – between cold and warm, pale and fluo, darkness and light, progressively dismantling hidden tensions towards the recreation of a perpetual movement.
The work takes an implied critical look on how, while digital technology allows a theoretically endless artistic potential and development through media and meanings, the systematic demand for new works and fast delivery in the current artistic scene, often undermines the effectiveness of a mature reflection on the artistic medium and its store of significance, lost in the unceasing run-up to the new(est).
