Written Contributions by Emilio Vavarella
Low Form: Imaginaries and Visions in the Age of Artificial Intelligence, 2018
A short theoretical contribution and a visual essay for the catalogue of Low Form, a collective e... more A short theoretical contribution and a visual essay for the catalogue of Low Form, a collective exhibition at MAXXI - Museo nazionale delle arti del XXI secolo, curated by Bartolomeo Pietromarchi.
It is not difficult to foresee the coming of a world in which artificial intelligence (AI) has advanced to the point that creativity has moved from its current anthropocentric position, with humans at the heart of all creative endeavors, to a ‘machinocentric’ or ‘post-anthropocentric’ regime, with machine intelligence as an alternative and independent pole of creative nonhuman production. A regime of autonomous, electronic and post-anthropocentric intensities could free many creative spaces from the currently unrivaled domain of humans. Such occurrence, of course, may never take place. Or it could already be under way, because different kinds of consciousness may coexist without being aware of one another, with human and nonhuman intelligences failing to recognize each other.
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That’s IT! On the newest generation of artists in Italy and one meter eighty from the border, 2018
A layer of subtle threads connects digital cartographic techniques, map users, and mapping techno... more A layer of subtle threads connects digital cartographic techniques, map users, and mapping technologies. To each kind of map, corresponds a certain set of ideals, which informs the work of the map makers, and in turn produces specific subjectivities that operate in relation to specific mapping technologies. In other words, by looking at today’s digital mapping, we can discern a set of particular ideologies that guide how maps are imagined, coded, designed and used, and how they operate across physical and virtual realities. More importantly, by looking at digital mapping, we can retrace how particular ideological constructions are mediated and conveyed by specific digital artifacts, and how the interweaving of these conceptual and technical threads informs the fabric of our very subjectivity.
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Routledge, Dec 2016
The Digital Skin Series is composed of self-portraits in which I pose “under the digital skin” of... more The Digital Skin Series is composed of self-portraits in which I pose “under the digital skin” of strangers I’ve crossed paths with in the past. To create this series, I first used a 3D scanner to obtain an accurate tridimensional model of my face. Then I used a camera-prototype to acquire HD portraits of strangers. Finally, I applied their portraits to my digital skull as if they were simply an additional layer. The result is a series of photographs where bidimensionality and tridimensionality collide in an intimate and unpredictable way. In the past, myths about skin were common across cultures and related to radical biological metamorphoses. For example, in the Navajo tradition – which considered the skin a mask – if you were to lock your eyes with those of the skinwalkers, they could project themselves into your body and transform into you. In today’s network
society, bodies have left that organic condition and are characterized by transient statuses: individuals have become di-viduals, data aggregates, samples, signals. The
last boundary between us and the world, our skin, has become a transient membrane that changes along with the trans- and meta-human forms under it. The space that
was occupied by the skinwalkers of the past has been taken over by infinite reconfigurations and mediations. What remains the same is that to be human still means to constantly shift through generative metamorphosis, corruptions, and de-generations that escape any clear categorization.
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TRANSICONMORPHOSIS, the result of a theoretical reflection on the development of new forms of tec... more TRANSICONMORPHOSIS, the result of a theoretical reflection on the development of new forms of technological communication and their effects on human beings as well as their political impact, comprises a conventional chat service hosted in a computer interfaced with a series of electrodes connected to the face of the artist. The emoticon received through the chat translates into electrical impulses that force the artist’s facial features to mimic the expression of each emoticon.
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The artistic use of error has a long history, and this essay attempts to reconstruct the genealog... more The artistic use of error has a long history, and this essay attempts to reconstruct the genealogy of the relationship between artists and error. It then goes on to analyze the characteristics of technological error used in art along with the reasons for its appreciation by media artists and media activists. Finally, it contextualizes the practices of media art and media activism taken as exemplars in questions bound to contemporary technological power. The aim of this theoretical trajectory is to understand how error is used, for what purposes, and with what outcomes. Further, its goal is to determine whether and how the current popularity of technological error is bound to a certain relationship with technological power, the characteristics of which are control, regulation, prevention, and normalization.
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Papers by Emilio Vavarella
Visual Communication Quarterly, 2016
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Journal of Science and Technology of the Arts, 2015
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ACM SIGGRAPH 2014 Art Gallery on - SIGGRAPH '14, 2014
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Error, Ambiguity, and Creativity , 2020
This paper revolves around a series of media art projects that present creative uses of technolog... more This paper revolves around a series of media art projects that present creative uses of technological errors and glitches in order to subvert the logic, processes and aesthetics of digital mapping technologies. The first scope of this paper is to frame these projects as strategies of counter-mapping adopted in response to the rise of mapping technologies such as Google Maps, Google Street View and Google Earth. The second scope is to describe the subjects behind counter-mapping strategies as media-flâneurs and media-flâneuses: experimental practitioners of new forms of networked wandering. Finally, the third scope is that of sketching the image of the map as dispositif: an ever-changing net of subjects and objects, articulated across different spaces and media, constituting the background of any counter-mapping practice.
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Written Contributions by Emilio Vavarella
It is not difficult to foresee the coming of a world in which artificial intelligence (AI) has advanced to the point that creativity has moved from its current anthropocentric position, with humans at the heart of all creative endeavors, to a ‘machinocentric’ or ‘post-anthropocentric’ regime, with machine intelligence as an alternative and independent pole of creative nonhuman production. A regime of autonomous, electronic and post-anthropocentric intensities could free many creative spaces from the currently unrivaled domain of humans. Such occurrence, of course, may never take place. Or it could already be under way, because different kinds of consciousness may coexist without being aware of one another, with human and nonhuman intelligences failing to recognize each other.
society, bodies have left that organic condition and are characterized by transient statuses: individuals have become di-viduals, data aggregates, samples, signals. The
last boundary between us and the world, our skin, has become a transient membrane that changes along with the trans- and meta-human forms under it. The space that
was occupied by the skinwalkers of the past has been taken over by infinite reconfigurations and mediations. What remains the same is that to be human still means to constantly shift through generative metamorphosis, corruptions, and de-generations that escape any clear categorization.
Papers by Emilio Vavarella
It is not difficult to foresee the coming of a world in which artificial intelligence (AI) has advanced to the point that creativity has moved from its current anthropocentric position, with humans at the heart of all creative endeavors, to a ‘machinocentric’ or ‘post-anthropocentric’ regime, with machine intelligence as an alternative and independent pole of creative nonhuman production. A regime of autonomous, electronic and post-anthropocentric intensities could free many creative spaces from the currently unrivaled domain of humans. Such occurrence, of course, may never take place. Or it could already be under way, because different kinds of consciousness may coexist without being aware of one another, with human and nonhuman intelligences failing to recognize each other.
society, bodies have left that organic condition and are characterized by transient statuses: individuals have become di-viduals, data aggregates, samples, signals. The
last boundary between us and the world, our skin, has become a transient membrane that changes along with the trans- and meta-human forms under it. The space that
was occupied by the skinwalkers of the past has been taken over by infinite reconfigurations and mediations. What remains the same is that to be human still means to constantly shift through generative metamorphosis, corruptions, and de-generations that escape any clear categorization.