ENACTION

Contemporary video art, 3 films x 10’, Italy  2013 – current

Enaction is a crossover video art project consisting of three trilogies, that integrates art and science, freely inspired to enactivism theory (Francisco Varela – Humberto Maturana).

Each trilogy narrates enactivism theory assuming three distinct life forms ranked according to the common evolutionary concept: the first trilogy forms are abstract but live entities; those of the second trilogy are plants and the last will be animal forms.

In every trilogy the living forms will interact with several vital dimensions that will be: water, light and air.

Each material shape shown in the videos is the result of the shooting of existing matters, organisms and environments. No form was created digitally.

In every video, the organic and the material forms modify their own shapes through an instinctive interaction with different vital environments. These forms’ behaviors reflect the connection with enactivism theory for which cognition arises through a dynamic interaction between an acting organism and its environment.

In Enaction sound is understood as an interactive environment with the organic and the material forms.

Enaction#1

Enaction is an audiovisual narration, the staging of an organic form that produces its own world through the perception and movements of his own body.

The organism interrogates the environment both by delimiting as space and sound: sensory and motility define a world that becomes real only when it is lived.

Enaction’s sequencing of selected colors represents the different/diverse ages of organic form, which regenerates constantly and every phase of life that closes prelude to the next one. The fragments of liquid bodies narrate the form’s life experience; its own changes define the sound field and become sound themselves – the result of long field recordings, recordings of organ, digital synthesis.

The living form is an actual element and is narrated here in all of the mutations assumed through the shooting of each evolutionary phase, obtained by exploiting some principles of physics (non-Newtonian fluids) and chemistry (a combination of various elements at different temperatures of water). The final result is a digital modulation of a process “analogical” to its origin.

CREDITS ENACTION#1

Production ELENFANT FILM
Concept and Direction CARLOTTA PICCININI
Music LUIGI MASTANDREA
Director of Photography SALVO LUCCHESE
Editing CARLOTTA PICCININI
Color Correction WALTER CAVATOI
Production Assistants ALESSANDRA CESARI, SERGIO SCANU
Photography Assistant ALFONSO SANTOLERO
Curator ELISA TRENTO


FESTIVAL SELECTIONS AND PRIZES

1st Prize for Video and Animation section PREMIO CELESTE 2014, aimed to promoted italian contemporary art.

The first version of Enaction#1 was created within the project, European Festival “Listening Cities” and it was hosted and projected only in Lyon, France, at the end of 2012 at the Groupe Musiques Vivantes de Lyon.

Enaction#1 is currently part of IkonoTV’s broadcast programs and NIJO Art platform

  • Premiered at roBOt Festival 06 (Bologna, Italy, 2013) in the new and definitive version.
  • Screened at Patch:audio_visual_lab (Krakowie, Poland, 2013).
  • Selected for Segnali 2014 – International Festival of visual art and performances IV Edition (Perugia, Italy, 2014).
  • Selected for FONLAD #10_2014 – Digital Arts Festival (Coimbra, Portugal, 2014).
  • Selected for Ende Tymes IV // Festival of Noise and Experimental Liberation (New York, USA, 2014).
  • Selected for roBOt Festival Argentina (Buenos Aires, Argentina, December 2014).
  • Selected for Video Art Festival Now&After (Moscow, Russia, 2015).
  • Selected for International Festival of Creativity, Innovation and Digital Culture (Canary Isles, 2015).
  • Selected for Addis Video Art Festival, per “In Search of future collection”, curator Marina Fomenko (Addis Abeba, Ethiopy, 2015).
  • Selected for FILE Video Art > FILE Electronic Language International Festival 2014 (São Paulo, Brazil, 2014).
PRESS REVIEWS

Enaction#2

In Enaction#2, a material form, a plasma is producing its own world through the perception of the movements of its own mass within an environment.
The material form in created using The PLASMAPROMETEO, a plasma generator of Borealis Aurora (project carried out in collaboration with the Dept. of Physics, University of Milan – Bicocca – Italy).
The element that relates the material form and the environment is light.
Matter questions the environment by specifying it both as an emitter space/receiver of light as sound.
The enactive approach is represented visually through the connections between sensory and motor systems of the two co-agents: material form and light with all their mutation forms (deflection, refraction, speed variation and chromatic induction).

In second part of the Enaction Trilogy, dedicated to the light, the sound insists on the pulsation and the intimate rhythm of the luminous phenomena which can be both perceptible (wavelike–percussive and tonal sound) or non perceptible (the sound is perceived as continuous).
Music articulates the different declinations of the luminous phenomenon as they are seen in the visuals, yet differently from the first episode of the trilogy, music here is built mainly with sounds generated by analogical synthesis.
The sampled sounds instead, are used to fuel tensions and perturbations to disrupt the rhythmical and harmonic stability of the pulsation.


CREDITS ENACTION#2

Concept and direction CARLOTTA PICCININI
Music LUIGI MASTANDREA
Director of photography SALVO LUCCHESE
Assistant director ROBERTA CLEOPAZZO
Light Designer FRANCESCO CARTA
Props and set design MARCO MURAT
Editing CARLOTTA PICCININI, MARCO MURAT, IRENE DEL MAESTRO
Color Grading WALTER CAVATOI
Backstage CORALIE MANERI
Curator ELISA TRENTO
Production ELENFANT FILM 2016

In collaboration with Federica Patti;
Federica Codignola Università di  Milano Bicocca;
Centro di ricerca musicale_Teatro San Leonardo;
Centro PlasmaPrometeo Dip. di fisica Università Milano Bicocca

 

FESTIVAL SELECTIONS AND PRIZES

Premiered at Teatro San Leonardo (Bologna, Italy, December 2016).

  • Selected for FILMIDEO – 12th Annual Film and Video Screenings (Newark, USA April 2017).
  • Selected for CANCAN Exhibition – LemoArt Gallery (Berlin, Germany April/May 2017).
  • Selected for XII Sardinia Film Festival (Sassari, Italy, June 2017).
  • Selected for International Video Festival VIDEOMEDEJA (Novi Sad, Serbia, Museum of Contemporary Art of Vojvodina, September 2017).
  • Selected for MATADAC09 Muestra de arte digital audiovisual y tecnologías contemporáneas (Madrid, Spain January 2018).