Installazione audio-video, Dimensione ambiente
Quest’opera audiovisiva rappresenta il nostro percorso di ricerca nel campo delle installazioni artistiche. Realizzata per l'evento d'arte contemporanea *Cazzotto* (Perugia, maggio 2019), è un'opera site-specific che prende vita da un ristorante dismesso, abbandonato da anni. Abbiamo documentato l'ambiente con foto e video, successivamente elaborati e integrati nell’installazione, composta da tre piccoli televisori VCR incastonati in un muro. L'audio, distinto per ogni video, è un mix di suoni naturali e rumori ambientali, come fuoco, aria e pioggia, registrati sul posto per evocare l’atmosfera desolata e decadente di quel luogo. L'opera mira a trasmettere visioni e suggestioni dell’abbandono.
History and Birth of a Concept
Throughout human history, the possibility of combining simple elements to describe and construct a complex reality has been examined from various perspectives—ranging from theological to scientific, literary to computational. In 1315, during the height of the Middle Ages, the Catalan Franciscan Ramón Llull published his Ars Magna, a machine-book designed to provide the correct answers to every question and dilemma in the world, from the workings of the universe to the nature of God.
At first glance, the Ars Magna machine appears so simple that one might doubt its ability to generate responses to all the queries it aims to resolve. In reality, it is extremely complex, as it contains the necessary information to deduce and address scientific and philosophical thoughts and questions, using a complex set of signs and graphic devices through which the theologian renders elements and their possible combinations. These tools include the Alphabet, Figures, and Table, and it is their interaction that gives rise to combinatorics. Each letter symbolises different concepts and ideas, which in turn refer to meanings of divergent attributes. The result of this operation proposed by Llull is an abundance of combinations, the whole of which resembles an algorithm that generates a series of systematic operations aimed at producing a final response that reveals a unique and irrefutable truth.
This complex mechanism was directed towards the specific aim of mechanising and mathematising knowledge, which, according to Llull, was a product of calculation. Borges speaks of the Lullian mechanism:
Un hombre de genio, Raymundo Lulio, que había dotado a Dios de ciertos predicados (la bondad, la grandeza, la eternidad, el poder, la sabiduría, la voluntad, la virtud y la gloria), ideó una suerte de máquina de pensar hecha de círculos concéntricos de madera, llenos de símbolos de los predicados divinos y que, rotados 14 por el investigador, darían una suma indefinida y casi infinita de conceptos de orden teológico. Hizo lo propio con las facultades del alma y con las cualidades de todas las cosas del mundo. Previsiblemente, todo ese mecanismo combinatorio no sirvió para nada. Siglos después Jonathan Swift se burló de él en el Viaje Tercero de Gulliver; Leibniz lo ponderó, pero se abstuvo, por supuesto, de reconstruirlo. (N3)
One of the first figures to embrace and internalise the Lullian idea of Ars Magna is Giulio Camillo Delminio, a humanist and philosopher active during the height of the Renaissance, and a prominent figure of his time. His work, The Idea of the Theatre, offers an extremely detailed description of a structure capable of encapsulating all human knowledge through a device that, akin to an inverted theatre, organises knowledge within a closed and dynamic space. A detailed description can be found in a letter written by Wigle van Zwichem to Erasmus of Rotterdam in 1532:
Opus est lignum multis immaginibus insignitum, multisque undisque capsulis refertum: tum varii in eo ordines et gradus. Singulis autem figuris et ornamentis sua loca dedit, tantamque mihili chartarum molem ostendit ut, etsi semper audierim Ciceronem uberrimum eloquentiae fontem esse vix tamen induci ante potuissem ut crederem unum auctorem tam late patere, totque ex eo volumina consarcinari potuisse... hoc autem theatrum suum auctor multis appellat nominibus, aliquando mentem et animum fabrefactum, aliquado fenestratum fingit cum omnia quae mens humana concipit, queque corporeis oculis videre non possumus, posse tamen diligenti consideratione complexa signis deinde quibusdam corporeis sic esprimi, ut unusquisque oculis statim percipiat quicquid alioqui in profundo mentis humanae demersum est. Et ab hac corporea etiam inspectione theatrum appellat. (N4)
The structure described by Camillo in his book was to be divided into seven horizontal rings intersecting with as many vertical columns. Each column was represented by a planetary deity: Diana, or the Moon; Mercury; Venus; Apollo, or the Sun; Mars; Jupiter; and Saturn. This set forms the first horizontal ring. The second ring is represented by the Convivio (N5), while the third consists of the Cave of the Nymphs (N6), symbolising natural elements and their combinations. The fourth ring is represented by the Gorgons, embodying the tripartite soul of man: rational, irascible, and concupiscible. The fifth ring is dedicated to Pasiphaë (N7), serving as a metaphor for the physical dimension of humanity. The sixth ring is represented by the sandals of Mercury, symbolising actions driven by mankind's natural needs. The final ring is dedicated to Prometheus, representing the arts and sciences. The intersections of the columns and rings create forty-nine "places" that encompass concepts, images, and elements of reality.
The theatre as described by Delminio becomes a library, an encyclopedia, an archive of both explicit and implicit correspondences, where the viewer is not merely a passive participant in the process but also an active element capable of utilising the material available from the Artificial Soul and integrating it with new information.
With Camillo, we arrive at a new way of combining knowledge. Unlike Llull, he presents a space where the audience's participation is of primary importance, as their actions unfold at the centre of the stage. The first to examine the lullian Ars Magna, defining it as Ars Combinatoria, is Leibniz, who proposes a method of knowledge based on primitive notions that, when combined according to certain rules, can lead man to discover coherent truths. Through his Dissertatio de Arte Combinatoria, the philosopher presents a methodology that transforms reasoning into a formal act, leaving no room for ambiguity and enabling the calculation of what humanity is capable of imagining, much like mathematics does with quantities.
The contribution of the German mathematician extends beyond an abstract theory; it finds application in the creation of binary code, which underpins computer systems, and in the development of what can be defined as a true calculating machine. Indeed, it is Leibniz who, perfecting the idea of the summing machine invented by Blaise Pascal, constructs the first mechanical calculator capable of performing tasks that until then could only be done by humans. This marks a significant step in the theory of computation, culminating in the invention of the computer nearly four hundred years later.
