Memories of fragile life forms in the age of synthetic landscapes
- Pier Giorgio De Pinto
- Memories of fragile life forms in the age of synthetic landscapes
Video 3’46”, colour, Full HD, sound, 2023
Syntethic images and videoclips, video composition and editing : Pier Giorgio De Pinto
Sound: Giovanni Dal Monte
The video won the “Video Special Mention Landscape 2023”. Landscape is an international call set up to build an anthology of the ‘Landscape’ through collaborations between sound artists and video artists.
Imagine multiple territories and their first inhabitants as an exercise in ancestral memory. Landscapes forgotten because taken away by the devouring of human progress. A synesthetic journey, a sound/played landscape, through micro worlds of flora and fauna that are articulated in not only tangible but also energetic territories, referring to the many studies on the genius loci and the lay lines of Alfred Watkins and John Michell. The musical composition, obtained by organizing interventions in real time, proceeds with an almost imperceptible phase shift of abstract pulsations. Short samples of female voices attempt to articulate a narrative, like ghosts trying to convey forgotten meanings. They scour the sound space in the impossibility of narrating, entrusting a possible, fragile communication to timbre and intonation. The use of AI helps us to describe ancient territories that recall the landscapes of Raphael or Leonardo. An advanced technology that tells us about the beginning of life three billion years ago. Non-existent animals and plants appear in a fast timelapse. For the realization, over 4000 video clips and synthetic images were selected, created with “text to image” programs. A video that stands out as a warning: we still have a real life to preserve, otherwise we will only have the one imagined in the latent space of an artificial neural network.
Pier Giorgio De Pinto (Civitavecchia, 1968) lives in Ticino, Switzerland. He is a transdisciplinary artist, a performance artist, a curator, a theorist and a media trainer. In many of his works the sounds, objects, watercolors and drawings, videos, functional architectures and interactive installations create real and virtual spaces. These media, recently assisted by Artificial Intelligence, develop a poetic and conceptual dimension through sensory perception, tactile experience, reflection and awareness.
Giovanni Dal Monte (Bologna 1967) is a musician, composer and visual artist. He has played in various festivals in Europe and the USA and has participated in various exhibitions in Italy, Europe and the United Arab Emirates with his sound installations and visual works. He collaborates with RAI (Italian Public Broadcasting), has collaborated with various musicians and directors (Nicolette, Bruce LaBruce among others), with visual artists, theater and dance companies. He was awarded in 2006 with the PAI (Italian avant-garde award) and in 2007 at Live! Ixem. While preferring electronics, he has frequented different genres over time, and his musical dimension is unorthodox, inclusive, open to every possibility.