Cielofuturo
Cielofuturo arises around the work of artist Francesco Tosini (@francescotosini_) and from the collaboration with the emerging realities of Unframed 721 (@unframed721) and the collective Matta (@matta_matta_matta), who were respectively responsible for production and artistic direction. Consisting of a site-specific installation, the exhibition, which opened on 28 May and closed on 5 May, was held in the Basilica of San Celso in Milan, with the contribution of Cortex of Light for the creation of the sound environment, graphics by Maria Chiara Moro and texts by Piergiorgio Caserini, Niccolò Gravina, xàr num and Greta Sugar.
Entering the space, one has the sensation of being in an upside-down environment. Massive and luminous, the monolith of a led wall stretches out horizontally, resting on the floor of a Romanesque basilica near an upper-class Milanese neighbourhood: an upturned sky* of data that counterbalances the holy sky of the church ceiling. Francesco Tosini's installation is an alien object in sacred ground, yet it makes the experience even more evocative, guided by the transdimensional sound environment composed by Cortex of Light.
The led wall space becomes the place for anti-narration composed of a constant flow of algorithmically generated liquid forms deep-drowned in acid colours, expression of an interest in recursive mechanisms in nature, but also a declaration of love to software and programming.
*Cielofuturo (it): lit. future sky
Tosini's work seems to speak to us more about analogies than differences: it is common thinking to consider natural and technological as conflicting states, forgetting that one takes its foundation from the other at the hands of man. The biological roots of Cielofuturo’s software generated images create a bridge between the natural and the artificial, a simulation of structures that challenge the boundary between the possible and the non-existent, and it is here, in this microscopic and unstable point of contact that we find ourselves moving towards a future of unexpected developments, while questioning crypto revolutions and developing metaverses. With the consolidation of the NFT market, new demands and needs have arisen in the art world as well, which is why the urgency of realities such as Unframed 721 is a key node in the communion between a nascent virtual market and the experimental research of artists.
In a three-voices conversation, we asked these confluent realities - Francesco Tosini, Unframed 721, Matta - to tell us about the ideas behind Cielofuturo and its link to a context in flux, that of emerging technological innovations in contemporary art.
Cielofuturo is an exhibition child of the collaboration between artist Francesco Tosini, Unframed 721 and Matta collective. How did the project come about?
Matta: Last September, during the first meeting with the guys from Unframed 721, we were asked to think of a project for an idea they had in mind. Their desire to support the production of an exhibition that had a contact with the NFT world unexpectedly struck us and this was the stimulus for us to propose Francesco's work. We wanted to create a bridge that could unite two apparently distant worlds, the natural and the digital, working in the digital sphere but looking at it from a different perspective. This was our wish, welcomed by the Unframed 721 team, and so the project was born. We like to find works in the moment of their expressive urgency, then find the possibilities to make them happen. The Cielofuturo exhibition is the perfect example. Francesco's work, which we have known and followed for a long time, needed to be communicated. This exhibition is the first bridge that Matta has built.
Cielofuturo materializes in an atypical place: the installation of a led wall placed on the floor of a Romanesque-style basilica stretches horizontally across the floor; it presents itself as an “overturned sky of information” from which fluid forms are algorithmically generated in synesthetic correspondence to the sound environment created by Cortex of Light. All this makes the exhibition an immersive experience that dialogues with a specific, almost antithetical place (and city). How is the idea of the project linked to the choice of location?
Francesco Tosini: It was more an instinctive synchronic act than a choice. The first time I visited the basilica, I think I visualised the installation after a few moments. Having worked in churches in the past, I’d already experienced the dialogue between my videos and an architecturally sacred environment like the Basilica of San Celso. I then collaborated with essayists, graphic designers and musicians whom I had been following for years and with whom I shared a common vision of the concept of recursiveness. The rest was a very natural and spontaneous synergistic process.
Quoting Nicolò Gravina in the small pamphlet that accompanies the exhibition: "The sequence of procedural commands of graphics software, usually used as a conduit between the initial idea and the result, become anti-representative, expressing only their own structure".
Cielofuturo (ref. video installation) is linked to concepts and emotional states proper to the time it is passing through, but is it also a reflection on the language and beauty proper to the medium? (I’m thinking of the early net.art experiments that played with code structures and software interfaces to talk about the medium)
Francesco Tosini: Of course. Love for the medium is the emotion that has accompanied me most often in these six years of research on video feedback. Every time I express myself through this technique, my perception of the instrument - whether it is a PC or a video mixer - changes completely. Observing these autonomous behaviours, this growing of shapes in motion makes an apparently inorganic and artificial instrument like the computer a sort of living being. When I think of my computer generating feedback, the emotion I feel is not too far from the one I feel when I observe a plant.
Unframed 721 is an organisation that offers support to artists who want to engage with the NFT world. Today, there is a lot of talk about NFT and blockchain, between criticism and praise. What is your personal point of view on this reality and the possibilities it offers to contemporary artists?
Unframed 721: We are living in a Technological Revolution with the advent of the Web3, still in its infancy. In these disruptive phases, a thousand possible evolutionary paths are being tested, with extreme dynamics in a primordial phase yet to be constructed. The relationship between the crypto market and the art market is still in this phase of definition, testing various paths: from the notion of self-recognition, for which possessing a certain NFT is a symbol of being part of the revolution, to the purely artistic one of abstraction of form in a new communicative medium. It therefore passes through market dynamics that are also extreme, speculative or not. However, NFT also means greater economic protection and emancipation for the artist, as economic issues can already be regulated in ‘smart contracts’. Unframed 721 wants to be a prophet and pioneer in this, creating a bridge between the traditional art world and the digital one, which can be clearly identified in our modus operandi, thus helping to find a stable and lasting dynamic between art and the crypto market.
Cielofuturo as an exhibition is the result of your first collaboration. What is coming next?
Unframed 721, Matta: One of the goals of both our companies is to move the NFT world away from the concept of a speculative bubble and to exploit this technology as a medium and a new means of expression while still respecting the language and practice that populates the "traditional" art world. We believe that the best way to achieve this is to have vertical skills at both a technological and artistic level to create projects that are complete in all these aspects. Cielofuturo is an example of this 'fusion' and we are confident that, given the success of this project, we will have the opportunity to collaborate again in the future.
Unframed 721 is a laboratory of ideas, products, and services about the NFT world. We call ourselves a team of multi-skilled digital alchemists coming from the artistic, technical and financial field, with the aim of shaping all kinds of content into digital products. Ours is a team prepared to extract the most from the NFT revolution, given our extensive knowledge of the crypto world, complemented by our affinity for art. Our identity is imagined as an unframed being made up of two souls: the first is a workshop for digital creation, where artists who want to take their work to the next stage of their journey can lean on it. We therefore offer a safe space to support them from curating, marketing, communication and the technicalities of the web3 world. The second one coexists with the first in an end-to-end NFT service perspective, guiding and supporting brands in the creation of unique and innovative products. The aim is to help companies and brands with NFT production and accompany them in navigating this world to the fullest. In the Cielofuturo project we acted as producers of the exhibition, as well as supporting Francesco and Matta in the design and technical production of the NFTs.
Matta is a mobile, dynamic and decentralised research space. It fosters momentum by bringing together insights, dialogues, exchanges, stimuli and moments of sharing. Matta wants to unite authors and push them towards action, choral acts that move towards common directions. Matta is more like a theatre company, or a shipping company that dreams of charting new courses.
Francesco Tosini was born in 1988 in Milan, where he lives and works. His artistic practice focuses on visualising the energy inherent in natural mechanisms, such as morphogenesis, in relation to the digital. He uses 3D, generative software and analogue technologies to produce mainly moving images, with which he creates a cosmology that lives between the virtual and physical worlds, underlining the affinities and differences between these different worlds. Through a narrative non-linearity and a psychedelic visceral charge, he creates synaesthetic universes that draw on a collective unconscious and primordial memories. His works have been presented at international festivals and organisations such as Sonar d+, Barcelona, Istanbul; Experiment Intrinsic, London; Galleria Inconsueta, Milan; Fondazione Prada, Milan.
photo courtesy of DAVIDE FRANDI
interview FEDERICA NICASTRO
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