Quasi-Objects / Cinematic Environment #7, 2008

Quasi-Objects / Cinematic Environment #7 (eighth video of the Quasi-Objects cycle) was produced in anamorphic DV format, 1024×576 px resolution. This format uses a stretched image that is later desqueezed to achieve a wider aspect ratio (16:9), offering a more cinematic look.

Completed in 2013, the Quasi-Objects cycle includes ten videos, video installations, and over one hundred prints and preparatory studies, generated through 3D modeling and animation software.

Its title, borrowed from Nous n’avons jamais été modernes by Bruno Latour (which in turn refers to reflections advanced by Michel Serres in Le Parasite and Statues), represents my intention to make a precise reference to that ‘regime of ontological undecidability’ which, at least since the second half of the last century, has progressively and definitively reshaped the order of ‘men and things.’

Processing its synthetic-combinatory genesis as an operational advantage within a practice of organic (re)-design of organisms and ecosystems, the Quasi-Objects cycle intends to stimulate thought and dialogue about the ongoing relativization of natural forms of life as a result of techno-biological evolution. By subordinating the classical conception of representation (its optical-discursive apparatus) to an ‘aesthetic of process’—in which the sensory outcome emerges from a computational morphogenesis, through an an-optic procedure that actualizes it—the project aims to assert the opportunity to conceptualize the living in terms of a dynamic relationships between processes: a transient output of an operative practice independent of the material component.

As entities emerging in the absence of ontological referents, synthetic images shift attention from the ‘image’ itself to its embodied ‘knowledge quota,’ helping us to become aware of our rapidly evolving relationship with the alterity due to an increasingly intertwined technological apparatus with the bio-genetical one … moving toward a non-dialectical reconciliation with the ‘Alterity,’ beyond any stable representation that preserves the proliferation of the ‘Difference.’

Life is a real and autonomous process independent of any specific material manifestation, a generative grammar independent of the bearer (s)object.

Year : 2008
Tech Specs : Anamorphic DV 1024×576 px, 16:9, 4:31 min, BW, Stereo, Ed. of 5 + 2 AP
Copy & Credits : Lorenzo Oggiano. Cover image: “Tecnobiologie”, Installation View / Traffic Gallery Contemporary Art, Bergamo, Italy, 2009 – Courtesy “Traffic Gallery” – Photo: Paola Verde