Claudia Marfella
In your latest projects you have often collaborated with musicians such as Mass. When did the need to work with musicians first arise?
Bianco-Valente
It's not really a matter of need; creating new works in collaboration with people you feel close to, and with whom an understanding is quickly established, is an experience that enriches you a great deal on a human level: it's like eating together and sharing food, but it's experienced on a deeper level.


C.M.
I think dialogue is very important in this kind of collaboration. From a practical standpoint, how do you decide which sound and which images to use?
B-V
There's no predefined working method; sometimes we show Mario some scenes, or he plays us some sounds, and that alone can spark new ideas. Sometimes we work side by side for hours and hours, other times we're commissioned to do works with a concept that becomes a kind of boundary to push against.
Our common denominator is the spontaneity of intent with which we approach the creative process: all three of us are very interested in the emotional aspect of the work, and it's essential for us to be able to evoke sensations through images and sounds.


C.M.
You were selected for the Venice Biennale of Contemporary Music, and I understand you've conceived an original new work. What project will you be presenting?
B-V
The concept of the new audio-video project we're working on with Mass is tied to travel. Obviously, in the broadest sense of the term.
We share a passion for travel, and we decided to try to crystallise, in this new work, the ideas and reflections that accompanied us during the days spent away from our everyday lives.


C.M.
Your works are often tied to an emotional component. I'm thinking in particular of "Minimum Unit of Meaning", the kilometre-long ribbon on which you recounted your life, but also of videos like "Cloud System" or "Uneuclidean Pattern", in which the places depicted take on an evocative quality. In these works the emotional charge is expressed through "cold" means: the ribbon has an essential purity, limited to the white of the paper and the blue of the ink; while the video images have an artificial look. How do you perceive or experience this apparent dichotomy between the expressive medium used and the idea underlying the work?
B-V
We don't believe there's a contradiction between what we want to express and the means we use to express it. At least, that's how we feel.
In fact, the fact that we never attended an academy or studied under any master has left us with full intellectual freedom to use any means useful for creating meaning. On the other hand, some not-yet-established artists feel more protected if they stay in the wake of some great figure who came before them: identifying with and using an alphabet created by others is certainly more comfortable and lets your work travel more easily, but it's a practice that doesn't interest us.


C.M.
Your videos would seem to arise from complex computer-based image manipulation. In reality, the artifice is almost always achieved at the moment the video is shot, for instance through the use of coloured filters. Isn't this choice at odds with your constant attention to new technologies?
B-V
We're interested in the very latest developments in technology, that's true, but not so much because they represent the only way to produce our works. What interests us is testing the hypothesis, feared by many, that before long we will have to start interacting, whether we like it or not, with artificial intelligent entities. This event would have enormous repercussions on how we understand life, social dynamics, religion, and so on. We currently work on the duality between body and mind, and there's a chance that, before too long, this duality will also have to be extended to artificial intelligent entities, made of plastic, metal, silicon, and electrical states.


C.M.
Your works almost always have an immediate expressive power, and it isn't necessary to watch an entire video to grasp its essential aspects. Is this also a deliberate choice?
B-V
Certainly. We don't use video to tell stories, but to induce sensations. We don't use actors or dialogue, but distorted visions of reality with altered colours. We use scenes that we think are able to communicate directly with the brain, without mediation, sometimes even deceiving it.
This is why the videos have no plot and don't need to be watched from beginning to end: we work a great deal on inference and on minimal units of meaning, and in our most recent video works there is no longer even a beginning or an end.


C.M.
The installation component seems to me always very important in your works. Do your projects often arise in relation to the spaces in which you're working?
B-V
We find it very intriguing to make our work interact with the spaces chosen for the installations. The best displays are the ones where we've managed to change almost nothing in the architecture, and to install our work as if it had always been an integral part of that place.
Watching people enter this small artificial world you've created for them, and managing to catch the emotions on their faces, is one of the most rewarding forms of feedback this passion can give you.


C.M.
We're at the beginning of a new year. What do you have in mind for the coming months?
B-V
We'll soon have the premiere of the new audio/video project we're working on with Mass; it will be on 28 October, as part of the Venice Biennale of Contemporary Music. An important group show in Naples at the Museo di Castel S. Elmo, and a group show curated by Berta Sichel at the Museo Reina Sofia in Madrid.
In Genoa there will then be the opening of the De Ferrari metro station with our permanent installation, a generative work on artificial life.
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27 September 2004, taken from Around Photography, no.3 October-December 2004

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