BNL Media Art Festival

BNL Media Art Festival is an initiative of Fondazione Mondo Digitale coproduced with BNL – BNP Paribas Group. After the pilot edition the Festival became a uniq production lab proving to be the main scene in Italy dedicated to the relationship between Art and Technology. The BNL Media Art Festival is a 5-day-long event, from 13th to 17th April 2016. Following the gallery of the Exhibition at MAXXI-Museo Nazionale delle Arti del XXI Secolo

Métamorphy Métamorphy (2014-05-01/2014-05-02) by ScenocosmeFondazione Mondo Digitale

Installation

Media Art installations are based on technology. Old and new technologies are revisited by artists. Artist can develop the artistic possibilities of new and old media. The installations engage both new technologies as kinect, oculus rift, tablet, smartphone, and old technologies as magnetic tape,  cathode tube. 

Chiodi Chiodi by Davide DorminoFondazione Mondo Digitale

The nails, made in large size, here are installed in balance in order to form a structure with three main axes: the first example of a dwell. In this way, the nail becomes our present, past and future home, the potential of any our creations: from the nail to the most advanced technology, back and forth.

Contrazione urbana n°2 by Croce TaravellaFondazione Mondo Digitale

Photography, computer, collage, painting, engraving, are the main features of this artwork which goes from advanced technology – photography, computer – to the manual skills of the engraving: un overlapping which reveals the multiply passages between contemporary art and media art

Equilibrium Equilibrium (2015) by Filippo PansecaFondazione Mondo Digitale

Equilibrium (2015) by PansecaFondazione Mondo Digitale

Photocatalytic solution that is activated with UV light through pollutant sensors and allows to reduce the pollution of the environments

Collisione 2015 Collisione 2015 (2015) by Michele CossyroFondazione Mondo Digitale

Collisione 2015 Collisione 2015 (2015) by Michele CossyroFondazione Mondo Digitale

The work of Michele Cossyro is a perfect balance between technology and science to the point of having anticipated real scientific phenomena. “Collisione 2015” brings together the artist's manual skills, who creates his blacks holes with glass, slate, marble, with the LED technology

Métamorphy Métamorphy (2014-05-01/2014-05-02) by ScenocosmeFondazione Mondo Digitale

Métamorphy Métamorphy (2014-05-01) by ScenocosmeFondazione Mondo Digitale

Gestures of spectators on the veil allow to change matter of images and sounds: three-dimensional distortions generate visual and sound video matters which are transformed in real time through their interactions. Like a music score, each interaction zone on the fabric offers sonorous matters (sound effects) when the spectator pushes on it with his hand. Then, when nobody interacts with the veil, it becomes rigid and virtual matters disappear

Tapebook Tapebook (2014-01-28) by Cesar Escudero AndaluzFondazione Mondo Digitale

Tapebook Tapebook (2014-01-28) by Cesar Escudero AndaluzFondazione Mondo Digitale

“Tapebook” takes the information directly from the GUI, alters the rhizomatic (root-likes) structure of the hypertext and converts it into linear sequence of sounds

Tapebook (2014-01-28) by Cesar Escudero AndaluzFondazione Mondo Digitale

“Tapebook”is an exercise in media archaeology. It involves the conversion of data which are extracted from social networks into audio documents. They are recorded on cassettes.

Calling for the Infinite Sphere Calling for the Infinite Sphere (2015) by James P. GrahamFondazione Mondo Digitale

Calling for the Infinite Sphere (2015) by James P GrahamFondazione Mondo Digitale

The title references a famous quote attributed to the ancient Egyptian philosopher, priest and
alchemist Hermes Trismegistus. ‘God is an infinite sphere, the centre of which is everywhere and the circumference nowhere’.

Twisted Light Twisted Light by Fabrizio Tamburini and Freddy Paul GrunertFondazione Mondo Digitale

The hologram imparts to the laser light that is passing through different degrees of vorticity. The donuts are real optical vortices, the light takes on a twist, and each of the light spots has a different aspect of spatial information encoded in its phase, different fusilli for different conveyed information, as was also done to the light of distant stars.

Twisted Light by Fabrizio Tamburini and Freddy Paul GrunertFondazione Mondo Digitale

It is a mask that modifies the phase. Light and radio waves are the same phenomenon: electromagnetic waves. Because the wavelength of visible light is small, the structure of the hologram must be small as well and was built with nanotechnology. For the radio waves used in Venice and Karlruhe, there is only a scaling factor to adjust. The vortex mask is simply bigger.
Nature preserves, in this case, its properties from infinitely small to the large macroscopic scale that can be manipulated with hands.

Percezione ridotta all'osso Percezione ridotta all'osso (2016) by Giulia MarchiFondazione Mondo Digitale

Percezione ridotta all'osso Percezione ridotta all'osso (2016) by Giulia MarchiFondazione Mondo Digitale

Radiographic trace alien geometries

Percezione ridotta all'osso (2016) by Giulia MarchiFondazione Mondo Digitale

Strumento di protesta - Opera latinoamericana #1 Strumento di protesta - Opera latinoamericana #1 (2016) by Felipe AguilaFondazione Mondo Digitale

Observing the artistic, cultural, political and social history of his country, Felipe Aguila built and actual drum set. An instrument where pots serve as drums, lids become cymbals, and wooden spoons serve as sticks

Strumento di protesta - Opera latinoamericana #1Fondazione Mondo Digitale

The artist chose to use a brand of pots and pans which was the most popular in Chile in the 1980’s, aluminio ell mono (the monkey aluminium), actually featuring the picture of a monkey, whose neon advertising sing towered in the Mapocho area.

Strumento di protesta Strumento di protesta (2016) by Felipe AguilaFondazione Mondo Digitale

Picchio veloce (2016) by Giuseppe De MattiaFondazione Mondo Digitale

Under images is placed one or more sheets, and each of these is operated an artist "robot".
The robot has three arms which strike the sheet leaving the abstract and uncontrollable signs.
The sound dl robot produced is equal to that of the pat of a bird.

Emerging Aura Emerging Aura (2014) by Alessio ChiericoFondazione Mondo Digitale

Emerging Aura is a project composed by a sequence of 69 photos of a same subject (a monitor), taken from a fixed position by 69 different models of devices (cameras, video cameras, web cams, laptops, tablets, smartphones, etc. …). These pictures were cropped and scaled in order to be perfectly overlapped in a same size.

Emergin Aura Emergin Aura (2014) by Alessio ChiericoFondazione Mondo Digitale

The installation consists in a projection of the running sequence of the pictures, mapped and overlapped on the monitor that is represented in the pictures themselves to show the fiction of the visual representation, comparing pictures of a same subject taken in same conditions, from different devices

Untitled 1-6 (2016) by Wendy PlovmandFondazione Mondo Digitale

For the BNL Media Art Festival at MAXXI Museum in Rome, Plovmand will take the site of the exhibition space as the material for a new installation. She will make photographic records of the architectural details of the exhibition area, digitally manipulat- ing them before presenting them as abstract works back in the space as a site-specific installation.

Virtual immersive environment Virtual immersive environment (2015) by Lino StrangisFondazione Mondo Digitale

Virtual immersive environment (2015) by Lino StrangisFondazione Mondo Digitale

The application is designed specifically for the OCULUS RIFT device that allows complete immersion and navigability of the user in the virtual space

It's just a game It's just a game (2011/2012) by Maria Rosa JijonFondazione Mondo Digitale

In the video It's just a Game, infrared cameras record the flow of migrants at the border. It articulates the ambivalence of the meaning of the word in English "game": the game and prey; The images are accompanied by the music ironically typical of video games alienating

It's just a game (2011) by Maria Rosa JijonFondazione Mondo Digitale

The project "It's Just a Game, is an investigation of the security systems, monitoring and control of borders that were set in motion around the world, using technologies of war and United armies

Oneiria Oneiria (2014) by Jeroen CluckersFondazione Mondo Digitale

Videoart

After the call for artists the perjury has chosen the best videoart projects exhibited at MAXXI. Following the stills of the videos. 

Disjointed MomentumFondazione Mondo Digitale

Disjointed Momentum (2007) by Emile ShemiltFondazione Mondo Digitale

Disjointed Momentumwas created through a combination of both film and digital creative methods.
A figure performs a sequence of gestures, captured on film, which were then digitized at an extremely high resolution and re-animated on a digital video-editing platform

Desire Ureges Me On, While Fear Bridles Me Desire Ureges Me On, While Fear Bridles Me (2014) by Nicol Eltzroth RosendorfFondazione Mondo Digitale

Desire Ureges Me On, While Fear Bridles Me (2014) by Nicol Eltzroth RosendorfFondazione Mondo Digitale

As a child, Nicol puzzled his playmates. In his oddly single-minded approach to toys, he forewent ordinary play in favor of serial arrangement, taking pleasure in the spacial relations, colors, and forms of tableaux

Desire Ureges Me On, While Fear Bridles Me Desire Ureges Me On, While Fear Bridles Me (2014) by Nicol Eltzroth RosendorfFondazione Mondo Digitale

Scène de naufrage 02 Scène de naufrage 02 (2015) by Giulio LatiniFondazione Mondo Digitale

Scène de naufrage 02 Scène de naufrage 02 (2015) by Giulio LatiniFondazione Mondo Digitale

Between evocation and absence, between the visible and the invisible, the language, the signs, the faces of the sinking of the past and present blend together and mingle in a sore same portrait of the close and far vulnerability that inhabits the present time

Disembodied momentum Disembodied momentum (2011) by Christian SawalskiFondazione Mondo Digitale

Disembodied momentum Disembodied momentum (2011) by Christian SawalskiFondazione Mondo Digitale

The process is intrinsic to the final piece and involves using short clips of video files which are transcoded into audio clips. These are then altered by various methods before being converted back into video files, only to have the whole process repeated again.

Episode 21 "The Hidden" Episode 21 "The Hidden" (2006) by Mike Vernusky and Daniel MaldonadoFondazione Mondo Digitale

Episode 21 "The Hidden" by Mike Vernusky and Daniel MaldonadoFondazione Mondo Digitale

Film footage was captured on super8 and 16mm celluloid, and altered by Daniel using paints, chemicals and hand manipulation techniques

Born Again Born Again (2015) by Mikey PetersonFondazione Mondo Digitale

Born Again (2015) by Mikey PetersonFondazione Mondo Digitale

In this single-shot video, a gull appears meshed within its environment. Water, sun, earth, and wind work together to transform its appearance and location. Speed is slowed down to emphasize its movement. Sound, taken from the source footage, is manipulated to create a sense of displacement and to emphasize a shift in the event.

El Bosque encarnado El Bosque encarnado (2016) by Gonzaga Gómez-Cortázar Romero and David CassFondazione Mondo Digitale

El Bosque encarnado El Bosque encarnado by Gonzaga Gómez-Cortázar Romero and David CassFondazione Mondo Digitale

Struck by lightning, a patch of Aleppo pine forest burned into a surreal vision. After the tragedy, this area of the dry, precious and extremely vulnerable natural park was rendered unrecognisable, resulting in a devastated landscape which ironically possesses a sinister painterly beauty.

A Cartography of Fantasia A Cartography of Fantasia (2015/2016) by Jakob SteensenFondazione Mondo Digitale

A Cartography of Fantasia documents the plant and animal life of abandoned tourist infrastructures in the desert region of Murcia in South Eastern Spain

A Cartography of Fantasia A Cartography of Fantasia (2015) by Jakob SteensenFondazione Mondo Digitale

The work contrasts what humans imagined creating in a desert, with the unexpected landscape that has evolved from human financial speculation.

Stuck In The Dark Stuck In The Dark (2015) by Massimo Saverio MaidaFondazione Mondo Digitale

Stuck In The Dark Stuck In The Dark (2015) by Massimo Saverio MaidaFondazione Mondo Digitale

The visual and narrative structure of the film imagines a reversal of perspective between sound and image, where the natural world is “Shown” mainly through the reverberation of sounds produced in a state of suspension and surprise

Savagery Savagery (2015) by Harold CharreFondazione Mondo Digitale

Savagery (2015) by Harold CharreFondazione Mondo Digitale

Technically it is made of a blend of drawings, stock footages from personnal archives and from the public domain and an original music score. Desire was to picture a reality transformed by visible pencil strokes, though creating a particular texture evoking wild forces, both beautiful and disturbing.

Savagery (2015) by Harold CharreFondazione Mondo Digitale

Tehran Tehran (2015) by Masoud MoeinFondazione Mondo Digitale

An experimental short film with an abstract structure which uses urban lights of Tehran (Capital city of Iran).

Tehran Tehran (2015) by Masoud MoeinFondazione Mondo Digitale

Tehran (2015) by Masoud MoeinFondazione Mondo Digitale

The lights follows the beat of the music, creating a luminous portrait of the city

Metamorfosi del narciso solubile in acqua Metamorfosi del narciso solubile in acqua (2015) by Giovanni MezzedimiFondazione Mondo Digitale

The "Metamorphosis of Narcissus Soluble in Water" is sentenced to take a reverse process but similar to that of Kafka's salesman in which the individual lives the tragic unrest of his destiny in a society that does not take into account the intangible characteristics of every human being: so fragile to dissolve in water

Metamorfosi del narciso solubile in acqua (2015) by Giovanni MezzedimiFondazione Mondo Digitale

Erase Erase by Celia Eid and Sébastien BérangerFondazione Mondo Digitale

Erase by Celia Eid and Sébastien BérangerFondazione Mondo Digitale

With the visual display, Erase uses a standard animation technique which consists of handling each new image by wiping some elements from the previous one and adding a few new elements

Erase by Celia Eid and Sébastien BérangerFondazione Mondo Digitale

Travel Notebooks: Beijing, China Travel Notebooks: Beijing, China (2012) by Silvia De GennaroFondazione Mondo Digitale

Travel Notebooks: Beijing, China Travel Notebooks: Beijing, China (2012) by Silvia De GennaroFondazione Mondo Digitale

The work tries to recompose the impressions but also the different points of view of the traveler, which is now a focus on a particular, now on another.

Travel Notebooks: Beijing, China Travel Notebooks: Beijing, China (2012) by Silvia De GennaroFondazione Mondo Digitale

Reverse Metamorphosis Reverse Metamorphosis (2015) by Eleonora MancaFondazione Mondo Digitale

The suggestion given by the jellyfish Turritopsis dohrnii, potentially immortal was here chosen in order to highlight the life cycle of every being

Reverse Metamorphosis Reverse Metamorphosis (2015) by Eleonora MancaFondazione Mondo Digitale

Video is a path of metamorphosis into the heart of the energy of what we were going to "become".

Reverse Metamorphosis (2015) by Eleonora MancaFondazione Mondo Digitale

Fragments #5 Fragments #5 (2015) by Pedro FerreiraFondazione Mondo Digitale

Fragments #5 Fragments #5 (2015) by Pedro FerreiraFondazione Mondo Digitale

Canadian found 8mm home movies from the 60's and 70's, spliced and blown-up to 16mm using a JK Optical Printer Hand painted, scratched and deteriorated moving images, crafted frame-by-frame. These are fragments of memories that interpret the human condition in a specific space and time

Echoes of a Forgotten Embrace Echoes of a Forgotten Embrace (2016) by ApotropiaFondazione Mondo Digitale

Echoes of a Forgotten Embrace takes inspiration from the concept of emotional memory, depicting the encounter of two lovers in a liminal dimension

Echoes of a Forgotten Embrace Echoes of a Forgotten Embrace (2016) by ApotropiaFondazione Mondo Digitale

The work has been created with a mix of body projection, light painting, real time randomization and animation techniques.

A place I ve never been A place I ve never been (2014) by Adrian FluryFondazione Mondo Digitale

By sourcing multiple digital images of the same place from different archives this experiment in film makes use of frame by frame montage to discover hidden forms, patterns and references thereby giving new meaning to the prevailing redundancy of these pictures

A place I ve never been A place I ve never been (2014) by Adrian FluryFondazione Mondo Digitale

A place I ve never been (2014) by Adrian FluryFondazione Mondo Digitale

The visual attributes such as resolution, sharpness, colour saturation and tonal values differ in each image but when run together at the rate of 24 frames per second, they form one consistent constant impression

Water on asphalt (2014) by Johanna ReichFondazione Mondo Digitale

Water on asphalt Water on asphalt (2014) by Johanna ReichFondazione Mondo Digitale

The camera records the process of painting:
the artist is painting directly on the street. Instead of using oil colour or acrylic paint the only
material utilised is water

Home//Oblivion Home//Oblivion (2016) by CugeenoFondazione Mondo Digitale

Home//Oblivio (2016) by CugeenoFondazione Mondo Digitale

In equilibrium between the will to break with the outside world and the research of a mediated point of contact with it, Home//Oblivion spots out human lack of ability to cope with others through erroneous or distorted use of media.

Clouds fall Clouds fall (2014) by Yuk-Yiu IpFondazione Mondo Digitale

Together with ANOTHER DAY OF DEPRESSION IN KOWLOON (2012) and THE PLASTIC GARDEN (2013), CLOUDS FALL forms a trilogy that reworks hacked materials from the video game franchise CALL OF DUTY

Clouds fall Clouds fall (2014) by Yuk-Yiu IpFondazione Mondo Digitale

Il cedro dei cieli Il cedro dei cieli (2014) by Maria Grazia PontormoFondazione Mondo Digitale

Il cedro dei cieli Il cedro dei cieli (2014) by Maria Grazia PontormoFondazione Mondo Digitale

To the uncanny and scientifically ungovernable dimension of natural forces seems to allude the videoanimation Il Cedro dei Cieli (in 1935 a violent storm eradicated a centennial Lebanon cedar tree).

Post Rebis Post Rebis (2016) by Alessandro AmaducciFondazione Mondo Digitale

Post Rebis Post Rebis (2016) by Alessandro AmaducciFondazione Mondo Digitale

Primordial Primordial (2015) by Huseyin Mert ErverdiFondazione Mondo Digitale

Each canvas was hand-painted with multitudes of acrylic dyes and then photographed under the microscope. The work is specifically designed to be experienced in an endless loop.

Primordial Primordial (2015) by Huseyin Mert ErverdiFondazione Mondo Digitale

Dell'acqua che risalta Dell'acqua che risalta (2015) by Adriana AmodeiFondazione Mondo Digitale

Dell'acqua che risalta (2015) by Adriana AmodeiFondazione Mondo Digitale

Sounds and Words translated from electronic images of the Nature in the notes of shapes and colors.
The protagonist is the 'Water understood as a way of communication and source of energy and as a symbol of an eternal flow

Dell'acqua che risalta (2015) by Adriana AmodeiFondazione Mondo Digitale

Sievert Rising Sievert Rising (2016) by Frederik De WildeFondazione Mondo Digitale

Experimental short by Frederik De Wilde about two guys sneaking into to Fukushima's post apocalyptic radioactive exclusion zone.
The short combines found footage with artistic data visualisation techniques made with Processing, an open source software applicatio

Sievert Rising Sievert Rising (2016) by Frederik De WildeFondazione Mondo Digitale

The doser (2014) by Pamela DiamanteFondazione Mondo Digitale

Sound Art

Sound Art is a very important topic for the BNL Media Art Festival. It is divided in two section: installations and performances. Following the installations' project.

The doser The doser (2014) by Pamela DiamanteFondazione Mondo Digitale

The doser (2014) by Pamela DiamanteFondazione Mondo Digitale

In a double circle hot tank filled with dense black water, the tar surface is covered by ever changing silver shivers. The visual rhythms are dictated by the sounds at the bottom of a double row of neural waves that the human brain radiates simultaneously.

Pentatono Pentatono (2014) by Yiannis KranidiotisFondazione Mondo Digitale

Pentatono (2014) by Yiannis KranidiotisFondazione Mondo Digitale

Five acrylic balls hanging from optical fibers, form five pendulums that are moving in the space using the thrust of small propellers

Pentatono Pentatono (2014) by Yiannis KranidiotisFondazione Mondo Digitale

When a pendulum passes from the equilibrium position (the middle of the motion path) it emits a light pulse and sound tone. Each pendulum is “tuned” in a different note of a natural pentatonic scale.

ColorCoder (2015) by AudintFondazione Mondo Digitale

AUDINT’s current sound work is an App called the ‘Colorcoder’, which is programmed to sonically decrypt Kelly’s paintings, extending the research undertaken by Arnett, Morton, and Slepian

Credits: Story

BNL Media Art Festival would like to thanks:

Google Culturale Institute

MiBACT

Regione Lazio

Roma Capitale

Samsung

MAXI- Museo delle arti del XXI secolo

RUFA- Roma University of Fine Arts

Quasar Design Universaty

Goethe Institute

Embajada de Chile en Italia

Real Academia de Espana in Roma

Embajada dell' Ecuador en Italia

Embassy of France

United States Embassy to Italy

Embassy of Israele

Rai

Wired

Inside Art

Courtesy Matèria Gallery

Courtesy Galleria Adalberto Catanzaro

Courtesy GALLLERIAPIÙ

Courtesy Galleria Rossmut

Credits: All media
The story featured may in some cases have been created by an independent third party and may not always represent the views of the institutions, listed below, who have supplied the content.
Explore more
Related theme
What is Contemporary Art?
Challenging the notion of art itself – explore the art of our recent past, present and future
View theme
Home
Discover
Play
Nearby
Favorites