Silvia Casini

Koen Vanmechelen. Chickens, Chicks & Experimental Subjects

Silvia Casini
During the international arts exhibition LIV, International Art Exhibition in Venice, the Belgian artist Koen Vanmechelen will install a laboratory at the Istituto Veneto di Scienze Lettere ed Arti, Palazzo Loredan, one of Venice most renowned buildings. It is a new stage of the artist's research on fertilization of arts and science, a project that Vanmechelen has been pursuing since the beginning of his career using all sorts of materials and techniques' sculpture, video, photography, multimodal installations, drawing.... READ MORE...
ArtArticlesDigimag - Issue 67, September 2011Science

Necessity Or Taboo. How To Evaluate Art & Science Projects

Silvia Casini
Scientists and communicators are more and more persuaded that divulgating science to the public and involving outsiders into it is a duty rather than a choice. In order to make science is necessary to use a various range of tools: from a pen and a sheet where to draw sketches, write notes and create mental maps, to the utilization of the most advanced technology. The sciences that more evidently and more closely concern the human body, such as genomics and neurosciences, are searching for more effective ways to communicate and involve people.... READ MORE...
ArticlesDigimag - Issue 60, December 2010 / January 2011Science

James Johnson-perkins. Pop Sensitivity Meets Panoramas Gigapan

Silvia Casini
For inspiration among the narrow streets of Venice, James Johnson-Perkins, conceptual artist who teaches at Newcastle (UK), stopped to tell readers Digimag of his residence for artists in Venice, a few weeks of immersion in the suggestion of Venice, thanks to a scholarship from the Emily Harvey Foundation. The conversation with British video artist offers us some interesting ideas regarding possibilities for video-makers and artists in general Gigapan technology. Johnson-Perkins' recent experiments with this technology, all accompanied with a Pop sensibility, can reinvent the tradition of Renaissance Venetian views.... READ MORE...
ArticlesDigimag - Issue 54, May 2010

Body, Cyborg, Robot In Lugano. Interaction Between Mechanical & Organic

Silvia Casini
Primary and basic technology become works of art capable of playing with our passion for machinary and technology, a form of "pain" that we feel with and through our bodies. Simplicity is at the heart of Macchina Inutile (Useless Machine), an almost inconsistent assembly of delicate stems and coloured metal pieces built on to a spinning structure that slowly speeds down... READ MORE...
ArticlesDigimag - Issue 52, March 2010Science

Wodiczko’s Video Shadows Between Visible And Invisible

Silvia Casini
Despite all promises of more attention to figurative arts and above all to painting, the 53° Esposizione Internazionale d'Arte della Biennale di Venezia (International Art Exhibition in Venice) focuses again on video installations and expanded cinema, which does not necessary mean experimental. In most cases it is a revisit of the exposition space after the typical experience within the cinematographic field. The screen becomes a wall or a plasma TV and the installation assumes the features of a real projection in which all typical cinematographic devices are deconstructed - think only to the loop movement enphatized by Douglas Gordon or to the decomposition of film into monitors dispayed in a row (Chantal Akerman).... READ MORE...
ArticlesDigimag - Issue 47, September 2009

The Ethics Of Gaze: Raymond Depardon & William Kentridge

Silvia Casini
A photographer and a filmmaker, Raymond Depardon, author of what can be described as documentary fiction, was awarded the Pulitzer prize. He is the author of several reportages in countries such as Biafra, Chad, Venezuela. He is also renowned because he spent some time in 1976 at the former psychiatric hospital in San Servolo, Venice. In 1996 he shot a sort of documentary-fiction on a trip in Africa that lasted three years and on the filmmaking profession. William Kentridge was born in South Africa, an artist, whose artistic matrix is drawing, but who ranges from sculptures to animation and video installation and constantly interrogates himself on the social role of art and the responsibility of the artist.... READ MORE...
ArticlesDigimag - Issue 46, July / August 2009

Marc Didou: Resonances

Silvia Casini
Marble, bronze and wood coexist with reflected images: what firstly appears as an abstract monolith, sudden reveals another face thanks to concave or convex mirrors. Marc Didou's original way of assembling the ancient art of anamorphosis with a cutting edge medical imaging technique is constitutes a remarkable encounter between art and science, where Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI), set free from the scientific laboratori, is made available to the public as sculptures to interact with... READ MORE...
ArticlesDesignDigimag - Issue 43, April 2009Science