Italy has always been the cradle of creativity, innovation and research in the artistic and cultural fields. Over the past two decades, we have seen a generation born and grown of artists, creatives and designers who have realized pioneering projects and have become a point of international reference in the field of video mapping, immersive art experiences, of light art and audio-visual performances.
FARNESINA Digital Art Experience enhances and promotes Italian excellence within the digital art sector, through the organization of exhibitions, shows, performances and participation in international events. The project is promoted by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, and its title is inspired by the iconic Palazzo della Farnesina in Rome where the Ministry is based and which houses the largest public art collection in the world and where its first edition took place. Through the network of Italian Cultural Institutes, Embassies and Consulates General, MAECI brings Farnesina Digital Art Experience to the most significant places in every corner of the planet.
The latest generation of Italian Artist who works in digital and immersive art comes from a long tradition that we can trace back to the historical Italian avant-gardes of the twentieth century.
Your eyes will soon open to more radiant visions of light. We shall put the spectator in the center of the picture. (Futurist Technical Manifesto,1910)
With the resources of modern technology, we will make appear in the sky: artificial forms, rainbows of wonder, luminous writings. (Lucio Fontana: Second Manifesto of Spatialism – 1948)
SPACE, intended as an environment, and TIME, intended as a progressive audio-visual experience, are identity components of this immersive art form. The long-lasting effects are the survival of the most intangible emotions, exchange and sharing, the creation of new processes of materialization in art. If the exhibition turns into a film or theater set, the public itself become the actors. Documentation of the participants’ actions through photos and videos shared on social media, becomes part of the creative process, expanding the boundaries of the exhibition itself. Cultural productions are subjected to a re-reading-relocation by visitors, which certify the ubiquity of optical instruments and their current prevalence on any other means of production and social sharing. Immersive art allows multiple and simultaneous views on the work. The viewer/actor is an integral part of the immersive work.
“Immersive Art is an art form that aims to immerse the viewer inside the work of art itself. The visitor is stimulated and involved through light, sound, images and animated graphics. The artist’s goal is to create a space that is a “container of emotions”, a place that generates a seamless sensorial flow.
Andy Warhol often liked to repeat that, from his point of view, pop art was above all “loving things’ ‘. Paraphrasing his words, we could say that immersive art is above all “loving people” since in these installations there is an important and fundamental relational aspect between artist and visitor. The only fact of defining them as “experiences” (Immersive Art Experience) makes us understand the change of paradigm put in place by the artists who dedicate themselves to this discipline. The quality of the creation of the audiovisual product or the purely technological, then can also take a second place. First of all is the visitor’s experience, his being enveloped in the light, inside the rooms augmented by the sensorially thanks to the poetic use of technologies. It is not a question of surrounding the viewer with large images, but of bringing him into an audiovisual flow, shaping the form of sensory perceptions. Being an artist who works in the field of Immersive Art is not simply a matter of making videos or multimedia installations but above all the perceptions of the visitors and the relationships created within the immersive space”.
(Stefano Fake, creator and artistic director of FARNESINA Digital Art Experience)
IMMERSIVE ART EXPERIENCE 