I’ve made some comments about the Beyond Entropy meeting in Geneva on by blog, Disturbing the Universe, and on the Herschel mission blog.

Vorrei portare queste immagini e queste parole¬†come commento a questo articolo apparso nel blog “Space and its different configurations; Form and its different declinations”.

Non sono uno scienziato ed ho incontrato la scienza attraverso l’arte. Quindi il pensiero della falsificazione di una teoria non si pone. Per questo sottopongo il link qui sopra. La forma non √® che una sintonia particolare fra particelle ed energie, che proprio come un accordo musicale danno origine¬†una nota che √® si esprime secondo la sua dominante. ¬† Questo √® un video che ho realizzato anni fa. E’ un caminetto di legno che brucia se stesso. Alla fine si √® traformato il materiale che √® servito per costruirlo in cenere, ma il lavoro che √® servito per realizzarlo sarebbe veramente scomparso, nessuna traccia niente √® stato trasformato, se non fosse che, con l’aggiunta di altro lavoro, (la ripresa video)¬†il lavoro¬†servito per costruire il caminetto scomparso, riappare e offre indietro intensit√†.

A proposito di intensità aggiungo un piccolo testo che ho scritto su un opera di Carsten Holler è Miriam Backstrom:

In the Western understanding of ‘unity is backwards. If something is divisible, then measured, means that before it was unified. The data are taken from ‘experiences through the’ apotheosis of the measurement and division: the digital.
Space and time‚Äù are how you measure the ‘intensity’, and may not be in turn divided without energy loss and hence characteristics. The experiment of dividing the “intensity” has succeeded to the pavilion of the Nordic countries ‚ÄúSharing space with dividing time. ¬†The space exists as an active field that hosts events and influence of a certain length of time that made a new space and so on. In art, space and time involved in the occurrence of a work completely enveloped the building, leaving all creator or as in this case to the artisans, Holler and B√§ckstr√∂m, the task to realize and enhance the features already present. The glass is part of a building where the permeable boundary that is identified between exterior and interior becomes blurred. The removal of this border underline the artifact (nature with the man) and what surrounds it (nature without man) making possible an amplification of the inside outside and viceversa. At this point the words so often used “inside and outside” or “space and time” have no more reason to exist. The work of art perhaps more than many other work shows that the world is made of pure intensity.¬†Is ‘the achievement of peaceful and unfathomable assertion of Robert Walser “the man is nature too.” The architectonical icon of this work may be a lounge of an airport, with a window left open by mistake, whose the only destination is the journey to the presence of themselves in the world.(…)

A few days ago I had great fun visiting Peter Liversidge’s studio in East London. We spent a few hours drinking coffee and discussing about all sorts of things, from the status of conceptual art to music (Peter knows a lot about all sorts of contemporary music genres!), from creativity to the hidden layers of meaning that lend value to the artistic process.

I started out being very sceptical about conceptual art: in my view, a piece of art needs to be able to relate to the user independently on any information she might have about it, at least at some level. True, knowing more about the artist and their idea behind it might enhance the experience, but I always thought that the experience has to come first and foremost. The piece has to have a life of its own. Peter has a more nuanced view, and his arguments about the “added value” of this hidden layer of meaning (and several examples he gave me in his own practice) have made me reconsider my opinion somewhat.

It was also fascinating to witness first hand the unfolding of Peter’s work – like a snapshot behind the scenes of the artistic process leading to his upcoming show at the end of February

I checked out the Institute for Contemporary Art in Boston today (great building, and great views on the Ocean) and was struck by the work of Tara Donovan. Most of her work is about using everyday materials to create other-worldly landscapes, often with a poetic and organic quality to them.

One piece in particular strongly relates with the notion of potential energy (see picture below). This large cube (about 80 cm per side) is made entirely of pins, which are not glued nor held together by anything but the fact that they are all pressed together. The inside of the cube is hollow, as the pins have been assembled by pouring them in a mould which has then been removed at the end.

A great illustration of the forces of electromagnetic repulsion (i.e., the force that is responsible for the solidity of the pin’s surface) versus the potential gravitational energy.