E-XTENSIONI BY DIGART

This first exhibition promoted by Digart, in Naples at the church San Giacomo degli Italiani, in a city that for several years has been attentive to the advanced development of artistic culture and international technology, presents an exhibition and series of events dedicated to the extension of the body and mind through art and techno-science.
What does one intend by 'extensions'? An anthropologist would say that which has always distinguished man from any other animal and the characteristic of the human species is the use of instruments, as a means to improve their condition: in other words, to become civilized. Clothes, the wheel, writing, the paintbrush, and a myriad of other utensils represent an extension of the body and human intelligence. The sophistication of the instruments that humanity has invented, has characterized each phase of the evolution of civil societies, each time creating its model.
Today, in an era of faster and faster growth, from the internet to cyberspace, from robotics to genetics, each extension becomes more complex and sophisticated, to the point that it becomes difficult to distinguish that which is artificial from that which is real, like a prosthesis for the body, distinguishable only by means of equipment just as sophisticated; or between robots that were yesterday mechanic, and today are electronic; the initial models completely remote controlled by humans, which have now been substituted by autonomous models, able to interact and make decisions in self-sufficient ways.
They are equally extended, our collective bodies and minds using internet and cyberspace on behalf of millions of individuals all over the world, or the manipulation of DNA on the part of genetics. Conservative culture indicates that scientific research and technology is a dangerous end with harmful results that will distort the human species from the essence of its most intimate nature, but it does not consider how much our quality of life has improved thanks to this research.
In the area of creativity that includes -the visual arts, mass communications and performance art - E-XTENSIONI wants to contribute to the development, not only locally, of the events and the contact between the public and these practicing artists, ready to "e-xcite," and inspire poetry, in order that new artists and their experts can enliven the spectators imagination with good will and the conviction that they can- together - extend life and beauty to the "tecniche."
Digart 2005

Category:

Film & Animation

Tags:

• art
• and
• techno-science