B Ben Fabrica Co Master Class for Fus and is a multidisiplinary art studio founded in 2007 by Luca kamini and Matia kti who’s here with us today in they’re investigating the expressive possibilities of the emerging Technologies dealing with the complexity of the Human Social and natural phenomena they deal or they’re producing multimedia installations and performance
Who are in way exploring the boundaries between disciplines and also experimenting new connections between light space sound and movement in 2016 they started node an electronic music and Digital Arts Festival in Moda was still going on and uh also they have presented their Works internationally in art institutions and festivals uh
Including MCH sonar Art House the national museum of China today’s Arts s in Bal in Roman Europa Festival the in not Festival the Hong Kong design Institute the dong demon design Plaza Marana thank you very much Gra thank you thank you thank you Carlos thank you
Fabrica thank you thank you you to be here thank you at the resident artist that stay with us this this afternoon I am I was speak in English in this um this lecture um and not super good in English so I’m I’m sorry but uh
I try to do my best and uh I reflected a lot on how to organize this this lecture because um usually I I focus on one or two artworks and to explore their meaning and process in detail but um we have already done this today with the
Resident artist so I try to to do something different so let’s see if it works this lecture is organized into three chapter and in the first one our own Utopia I’ll tell you a little bit about my background my path the beginning of fuse and the principle of the
Studio the second chapter selfing the caos um will narrate how sometimes unexpected and random events have influenced our our journey as a studio and finally everything in existence the third chapter um in this chapter I would like to share with you the main theme that connects almost all our projects with
Some fast example of artworks that we developed so here we go um my own Utopia I my name is MAA kti as Carlos said before and I’m the co-founder and director of fuse I was born in 1981 and um from the very beginning of my life I’ve been surrounded by
Multimedia devices because my father was passionated about video recording and photography and um I remember that uh we spent a lot of time doing video editing uh together this is my family and me with five years old more or less in Calabria if I remember well so
Um we spent a lot of time doing a video editing together starting from record of fragments of memory of my family and friends and uh when I was a kid I was really shy and um the use of video and music to create these little movies
Became a sort of vehicle to be able to express myself my feeling my emotion uh without the need to speak with my voice so this became for me a new language that allowed me to communicate things and emotion that I wasn’t able to explain with other languages with other in other
Modality I remember that in more or less in 1989 the first computer came into my house and since the first moment I was completely fascinated by this machine and in particular I was very attracted by The Narrative power of some interactive story for example Monkey Island created by the comp production
Company Lucas art of George Lucas uh I remember I wondered how difficult and at the same time wonderful was the creation and the development of this interactive experience and um how many people with different expertise expertise with different background work together to achieve that kind of complexity I think about artist
Developer storytellers musician that uh that works in the same place and uh Lucas Art became for me like the best place to work when I when I grow up uh another passion that I have is music in the left picture there is me Luca the co-founder of fuse in
1991 at the oratory of calano our own town and where we have the studio right now also and um in the right picture you can see the first core team of fuse me Luca and Ricardo bazon 20 years later in New York h Luca is my friend since where we
Were kids and he has a background in computer science and Ricardo is the first collaborator that me and Luca invited to work with us in fuse and uh he’s a a sound designer a musician and uh since the beginning music became a fundamental component in all of all our artworks usually
The sound is one of the first things that we develop in in the early stage of our creative process to set the overall atmosphere of of the project so music became like the narrative voice of all our projects and it’s super important for us my educational background is in
Science I have a degree in chemistry and chemistry to me is like another point of view on reality when you look at the word through a scientific lens it become clear how everything is interconnected how everything is in constant change and our how our existence is closely interdependent with with everything that
Exist so this concept this way to perceiving the reality became the foundation on of almost uh all our artworks and when I started fuse with luuka the idea was to find a way to bring together all our passion and try to turn them into our
Job um it was it has never been easy to describe what we do because we work at inter interception between different discipline and there are not standard labels that can describe our work and also I have to say that I really don’t like labels in general I always try to escape from
Them and this is the reason I like this picture label has the power have the power to make you feel safe because you are following a path that someone else already already did but um I think you gain a lot of freedom when you are no longer care care about
Labels and uh when you are free to create your own space your own personal word and um your own Utopia in for a certain point of view in this picture you can see our actual team now we are in 12 and I can see that fuse became my attempt to
Create my little world my little community my little Lucas art in some way where people that came from different discipline from different path that has different personalities works together trying to have an impact not only towards other people but also and in particular toward oneself working on projects that allow
Us to evolve as individual and as a human being uh I close this chapter sharing uh with you this video one of the thing that I love most in my job is OB serving people while they are in relation with our work in this case we were at signal Festival in
2019 and I remember that I was close to um video maker and I asked him to to record the face of the the people that were watching one of our artwork Multiverse um I like to to to to look at the eyes of the people that are looking
That are in relation with our work because I I try to think what are they thinking if um they are in empathy y with with our works if we are able to we were able to to create like um a wave of um inspiration that maybe is U growing in the community so
This this kind of experience the the moment you see that you have the the power to create a relation with other people is uh really important and gave us a lot of responsibilities also in what we do okay chapter chapter two it’s good okay surfing the cows the Second Story begins in
2011 at the invisible Dart Center in Brooklyn New York in in this image you have seen before there is me Luca Ricardo and Simon the guys with a white shirt Sim Simon is the person that in a completely unexpected way allowed us to to create our first live media performance without us realizing
It we were at invisible dogar Center sorry H because we were selected as a finalist for the salest priz with the project an that was um sound reactive video mapping designed for the fa facade of of a building so a project quite expensive in terms of technical stuff
And we didn’t have enough money for doing such a big installation in New York so for this event we decided to develop a little version of the project that became a sort of Audio Visual live set we play music during during the show at the last moment we also decided to
Add a KET camera which was supposed to take um the movement of the audience during the life set and change the behavior of the net of the projection uh on the wall in real time this is Simon we were very lucky because during the setup of the work we had the chance
To meet Simon who was one of the founder of the invisible Dr Center but later we discovered that he was also a great dancer and Simon Just 15 minutes before the show um asked us if he could dance improvising during the life set obviously we were happy to have this
Chance also because the alternative was Luca like this and it was not super cool probably and so yeah this was a a big surprise for us and U and this is uh what Happened This was the first time we realized the the the emotional power of combining physical aspect of the body with with audiio visual languages and um from these images you can see how excited we were at the end of the performance it was a true Revelation for
Us and I remember that uh this I remember this moment as one of the most exciting experience I had in my career after this experience we decided to continue work on the interaction between dance sound and video in real time because we wanted to explore the real potential of these languages and U
The idea um I had was to create a performance where the dancer was suspended in the air and at the same level of of the screen to give a sense of his immersion and suspension at the same time and that’s how the collaboration with our friends elen Novi
Starts with the project Leos I’m very touched to Leos because for many reason because I working on this project when I was about to become father for the first time and the Leos is a metaphor of the experience of being born the experience of coming into light Leos means light in
Icelandic we presented Leo for the first time in a barn in the countryside of Mona in front of a small audience of dozen people mostly friends and uh relatives and I remember that was one of the first time my parents saw one of our artistic projects and um I think after that
Experience they more or less understood what was my job before it was really difficult to explain and this made me very happy this was also the project that let us to participate in some International Art Festival for the first time and touring and travel the world and present your project to people with
Different background age and culture was an incredible experience and it is still now an incredible opportunity however the most beautiful date for me was once again in mon this time at the theater sty two years later after the bar in the countryside I remember that evening very well because
The theater was full of friends and I decided to watch the show From a Balcony alone and Leos is about 25 minutes long and just before the final Crescendo there is a moment of silence and after this moment Elena starts a sequence of when where she controlled the sound real time with her
Movements and um this is my favorite part of the show I remember that moment the entire theater was in silence I had the feeling of listening the breath of the people and The Sensation of having taken everyone somewhere else and uh I believe that this is one sorry okay let me show that Moment [Applause] [Applause] [Applause] [Applause] [Applause] [Applause] thank You [Applause] [Applause] [Applause] [Applause] Okay and then finish after years we wanted to continue to explore this field and um this time the idea was to create a live performance where the body and Visual and the sound component were even more fused together so we started working on Doc which mean dark
Inic and it became one of the most complex and challenging projects I’ve have ever worked on I think conceptually Doc is a theci of Leos and tells a story from birth to death and the main theme we explore in the concept is the concept of interdependence and um
To achieve this idea on stage we create a custom system that connect a large amount of data in real time this data constantly influen the scene in every moment during the show on stage and the visual element has a different behavior that depends on how those data interact with uh with each
Others so so in this video you can see the testing phase of the System on the right you see the control interface where that we designed of the for controlling in the entire show with all the data in real time that are um interconnected and um The Cho scen because the the dock is is a show that has two different
Projection one in the front and one on the back of Helena and uh another element that we experiment in this project is a specific danc dancer suspension system that can create a sense of anti-gravity on the of the movement of uh the perform on stage here you can see you can have an
Idea of how it works and how we put it together put it together all the Elements so you see that there is um a tool a fabric in front of the stage and a screen on the back Helena is mounting the hanging system system it was a system very specific because everything was controlled by Elena with a um a system of that balances her weight with
Another um another element on the other part of the of the r and this is more or less the the behavior so putting together all these things was quite challenging because also for practical things because you see Elena wear this um this suite for motion
Tracking and so we have to find a way to make it work for 55 minutes because the project was 50 55 minutes is 55 minutes long and uh here are the final results [Applause] Okay this picture is um from um the last performance of Doc that we had a few months ago in Mexico and I like this image because on the left there is Luca at the desk they control the show on the right you see the show on stage with
Elena and in the middle 1,000 people we took in a journey with us and I think that pretty much everything I need to be happy is in this picture so I would like to share with you okay so last chapter everything in existence was the title of
Uh our first solo exhibition in 2019 at Artic C in Washington DC the concept of that exhibition embodied almost all the principle and at the foundation of uh our works the aim is to generate the sensation of feeling part of something greater one of the project that I think
That captured this idea is amigdala developed in 2016 amigdala is a a s an audio visual installation that analyze million of messages from social media in real time understanding the emotion and translating them into lights and sound and uh the idea is to have an installation that reflects in every
Moment the emotional states of million of people who are connected to each other and we installed amigdala for the first time in bolognia at kubba the corporate Museum of the unipo group that we cre created in 2013 and um every time a significant EV events happened in in the world it was
Impressive to see the installation change colors and the sound when that news start to be shared in The Social Network I remember for example that the day that uh when David B passed away and the amigdala turned it blue the color of sadness and um begin generating a melancholic
Music and the feeling that million of people around the world in the same moment are feeling the same emotions give you a sense of how close and interconnected we are at the end I mean there the first version that you see in this video was composed by two parts one was the installation
Outside and the the other part is this inside where you have an archive of theemotion that U we collected during X bit another project that in a different way aims to stimulate our reflection on the idea of interdependence is trust that we presented in 2021 in New York and this
Project was developed during covid period at a time where when for for many reason um for many different reason we had we all had to deal with the feeling of trust trust in in the others trust in institution in science trust in the informations we wanted to create a
Project that will stimulate a reflection on how this sentiment the trust can influence our decision and our perception of reality also the the concept behind the trust is to use a series of economical data in particular the consumer consumer confidence data as the foundation of the storyboard of the entire audiovisual
Experience so the idea is to interpret those data in a more humanistic way trying to find the story behind them and form a a cold series of numbers into pictures sounds emotion and in this video you can get an idea of the final Results In 2022 we had the opportunity to work for another Raider crazy Project Luna somnium it started with this with visual concept videoita Festival invited us to propose an installation for the gometer in Rome a massive structure that is 90 M tall and a 60 m in the
Diameter and uh in our concept we designed a suspended sphere inside the the gometer metal framework and when our proposal got accepted we couldn’t believe it and the first reason the the first reaction was okay now how can we do it and um but obviously we accepted and
Uh this is the video when for the first time we entered inside the gometer as you can see the structure is huge I don’t know if someone of you know this this uh building it’s really impressive and um going inside for the first time was really really exciting one cool things about this
Place is the big metal walls that that surrounded you and that generate an impressive sound Echo this effect was really special so we decided to incorporate this feature also in the into the sound design of the project yeah here we entered for the first time and it was super exciting
Because maybe from the video it’s not possible to realize how big is this project this this this space and it was also I think the first time that an artistic piece was available inside the gometer so very very exciting and with the Luna sonum for the first time we had the opportunity to
Work on a scale where the installation could be visible from many part of the city thinking about this being able to observe the same thing the same events from different perspec perspective it’s a real exercise in empathy so we decided that this was to be the foundation for the
Concept of the entire project so the titled Luna somnum is a reference to the somnum that is a story written by Kepler that is considered the first science fiction book in history in this tale Kepler brings uh the reader to observe the solar system from the moon’s
Perspective to explain the motion of the planets around the Sun by changing point of view Kepler let us better understand the reality and his aim was to convince the scientific community that the entric theory was correct and Kepler used for the first time an imaginative work to describe a
Scientific Theory and uh that uh is truly fascinating for me another meaningful aspect of this project for us was contributing to give New Life to a decadent Urban space so the feeling of having done something for that Community the community that live in that area is in this case is uh was
Really and is really special for us here you can see how big was also the sphere it was 18 M met of diameter and uh also in this case I I spent a lot of time looking at the people and uh taking picture of them was
Nice because it seems I don’t know if you saw the the movie don’t look up with everyone that look at the star look at the Moon and here are the the video of the installation Okay um the latest project I want to talk you about is Ona which we presented last year for the first time in ital the found Alberto pero in Padova and aot Festival in Budapest in this case the idea was to work on another another element that um you unites all human beings the
Dreams in 2022 almost by chance we become aware of the existence of a dream Bank created by University of Bologna the the dream bank is an archive of over 800 dreams collected by researchers researchers at the University in their laboratory and they started to collect these dreams in
1967 until today more or less and uh during the process we also discover another dream bank at the University of California Santa Cruz which expanded our data set to about 28,000 dreams and uh the study ER to study the experience of sleep and dreams the laboratory of laboratory of bologa
Analyzed the mental activities of volunteers during uh during sleep and the volunteers are woking up when they are dreaming and in that moment they tell what they are dreaming about so the these dreams were are then written down word by word by by the researcher and stored in this bank with also other
Information and data data about the dreams so we were absolutely fascinated fascinated by all of this so we start to imagine how to transform those little stories of Dreams into a sequence of artificially generated images to create a sequence of little movies the idea was to give to the audience the sensation to
Walk through the dreams of other people and to perceive the infinite creative power of our mind even when we we sleep so now I would like to show you a couple of Dreams um at the beginning of the video you will see the dream information in
The center you see the here the dream code and below a series of specific characteristic of of the dream as they are as they are collected by the University of bologna and during the dream you also see text appearing on the side of the video those text are other
Dreams where the same word appear but in different context so imagine that you are listening someone that is telling you a dreams a dream and maybe you are trying to connect it if you have dreamed the same thing in what contest this was the idea that we had to
Create this sense of interconnection between different people that dream the same things but in different mind I show you uh a couple of Dreams I was thinking about television and had in mind a girl with a long dress down to her feet and a straw hat there was a person watching
Television I wasn’t there the girl was Outdoors while the man watching was in an enclosed space which I couldn’t identify because I was focused on the image of the television the girl’s dress was in shades of blue with small flowers um she also had a purse and a straw
Hat the girl was picking flowers and looking at the man outside the television Are the I saw myself walking on a paved Road wearing rower skates that I had recently gifted to my girlfriend she was watching and amused by my movements because it seemed to become easy after overcoming the initial fear the location is undefinable as the dream space and its boundaries were very
Brief making it impossible to describe the place there was a kind of road where roller skating was possible I was skating and I saw a man who was actually me having fun and laughing while performing small acrobatics on the skates that I saw a box near this man a box of medicine
Lastly I saw the environment we were in was very small as if it were a film strip okay sorry if I cut it but it’s 95 minutes long so if we want to sleep here maybe lat next time um okay this this piece we presented this piece in two
Completely different environment as I said before in a festival is a power plant you in the left preer in in Budapest and and uh K Sant in Padova it was nice to see how different the experience was and at the same time similar also in two completely different environment with with completely
Different people something that we said also today with the guys and and with during the interview is that is really interesting when you you you see how this kind of languages are Universal in some way and how it’s possible to tell a story to people the same stud to people
With completely different background in a completely different uh environment and at the same times you feel that there is something that connect all of us in some way there is something that make us the same things the same the same universe I can say here just few minutes I I want to
Show you the final result inside that Spaces Okay so before saying goodbye I just would like to invite you to visit our our website we we try to share as much information information as we can about our project today I just go in the surface and there are many things you can discover in our website and we
Also want to share a lot of things uh knowledge that uh that we gain during during our our works so you can find in our website also a research page where we want to share with other people the tricks that we use we don’t we we try to to keep it updated
But it’s not easy but since we take a lot of from the community because we use a lot of Open Source software and uh and tools it’s I think it’s good when you give back something to the community so we are very happy when uh we see other
Student artist that take inspiration and use the same techniques or take inspiration from our works happy happy to to share everything we can and um that’s it thank you thank you for thank you thank you thank you very much and maybe now
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