Simona Cresci - Interview with Bianco-Valente, 2003
Bianco-Valente: Minimum Unit of Meaning is a thin ribbon of tissue paper a kilometre long, on which, over the course of months, we described the memories of our most significant experiences.
Scattered thoughts, the minimal units of a design around which our existence has been built.
We tried to draw out the faint traces imprinted in the mind and entrust them, through writing, to this extremely fragile paper ribbon that will carry them into the future.
The research underlying the exhibition is tied to artificial intelligence and the need to provide some cognition, however approximate, of the world to the intelligent machines that are about to come into being.
A surrogate of experiences and memories that immediately enables them to interact meaningfully with us human beings and with the reality that surrounds them.
SC: For some time now, Naples has held a central place in the world of contemporary art, thanks also to the presence of long-established and young galleries and the opening of important exhibition spaces. How does the public in Naples respond to contemporary art? I ask you because you have chosen the Neapolitan capital as the city in which to live and work.
BV: They respond well, because whenever there's an opening there are always people, curiosity and interest, well beyond the narrow circle of art enthusiasts. The ongoing series of openings in public spaces, such as metro stations or Piazza Plebiscito, is increasingly pushing ordinary people to engage with new aesthetic languages.
SC: Today, as we know, we live in a society in which technology is increasingly embedded in contemporary aesthetic research, and yet video still doesn't enjoy the reception it deserves.
What effects is this having on the new way of making and perceiving art?
BV: Video is tiring to watch, because it requires time and concentration.
Standing still in front of a projection that doesn't have the rhythm and dynamics of TV or cinema is an experience that, by now, exasperates people.
A telling example is the last Venice Biennale, where Szeeman set up the "video fair", lots of horrible white partitions and so on, a Dantesque circle where people trudged along with no memory left, threw a quick glance into a "stand" and, growing ever more weary, moved on to the next one, eyes wide open, without hope.
SC: Why did you choose video as the expressive medium to use as the basis for your works?
BV: We found very strong similarities between the electronic image and the mental image: both are not very high in resolution and tend to be volatile, both are the product of a code.
We needed a medium that was versatile enough to convey our vision of what exists: what we see outside, but also what we feel inside, and the camera is the tool that lets us do this most naturally.
SC: What is the starting point for your aesthetic research?
BV: Our research tends to highlight the relationships between what we perceive as natural or artificial, and to bring out the interdependence linking the physicality of the body to the incorporeality of the mind.
SC: How do you use video?
BV: As with all the other technological devices we use in our work, the camera remains a means to pursue the goals of the project we're working on at the time.
We make heavy use of technology, but our challenge is to always keep the human being, temporary and fallible, in the foreground.
The places, forms and means that contribute to creating a work have changed, but the artist always remains the sensitive interpreter of everyday life.
SC: Which aspects of the reality around us are you interested in representing in your works?
BV: The relationships between the external reality that touches and stimulates us at every moment and the mental imagery, poorly fixed in the folds of the cerebral cortex, are a phenomenon we have been working on for years and which still hasn't shown us its limits. And if we add that we are about to witness the creation of the first "intelligent" machines, capable of perceiving the outside world and interacting with it, the paradoxes and starting points to work with increase exponentially.
SC: In front of your works one has the feeling that the viewer's gaze must go beyond the pure vision of the depicted subject, because of the awareness that you are communicating something that goes beyond simple sight. Where should the viewer's gaze be placed?
BV: Each of our works has a double level of reading, visual and conceptual.
One can stop at a purely aesthetic experience, or go deeper to read what lies behind the visible appearance, which is the research we have been carrying out for several years.
In any case, we like to think of our works as simple structures where everyone can freely lay out their own imagination.
SC: Do your images connect to specific situations or memories from your own experience? Not always, even though the initial spark can be a real event, and even though the human figures portrayed in our imagery are ourselves, we generally tend to simplify things and work with universal symbols.- What is your attitude towards globalisation?
BV: From the point of view of communication opportunities, globalisation is a wonderful thing: people from all over the world can cheaply and quickly connect to our website to see our latest paintings, download videos or read what we write. The hateful filter of trade magazines, as slow and moody as their editors, no longer exists. There's no longer any need to wait two months for a ridiculous review, badly cut for length (to save paper) and adorned with the inevitable, dreary little black-and-white photo.
A very different matter is the exploitation of low-cost labour or natural resources in underdeveloped countries by multinational corporations.
SC: What are your future projects going to be?
BV: We are working, together with some researchers, on developing two projects on artificial intelligence: we use "intelligent" computers designed to interact with people, involving them in paradoxical situations that push them to interact verbally with one another. The results are impressive! Another thing keeping us busy at the moment is finalising the project commissioned by Ansaldo Trasporti Sistemi Ferroviari for a metro station in Genoa, due to open in 2004.
It's a very ambitious work, consisting of the development of an artificial life software. It will be a piece with a slow but continuous random evolution that could, in theory, last forever, and which will retrace the same dynamics that the first unicellular organisms on Earth had to establish in order to generate the world as we see it now.
_
January 2003