Interactive installation — SETE

Interactive installation, Happening
Andrea Stefanelli, Morgana Cavicchioli, Laura Manetti, Diana Sonetto

Edited by Chiara Causo

With the collaboration of the Pixels Smoothies collective.

Software used: TouchDesigner, Logic, OBS Studio, nginx, html.
Data used: water stress indices, data related to water pollution,
data related to climate variations
Sound component: recordings of archival aquatic environments
Tools of use: Smartphone, QR code, Landing page.

On the occasion of the International Water Day, the artists Andrea Stefanelli, Morgana Cavicchioli, Laura Manetti and Diana Sonetto present a participatory action that invites reflection on the criticality of the environmental problem.

Using the languages ​​of digital and performative techniques, an experience is proposed in which technological devices are transformed into a virtual water basin and bring us back to an ideal moment of conviviality along the banks of a river. The lived experience is placed in conceptual contrast with the projection of the data collected on the world water condition in a dialogue that makes the scientific approach and direct experience an opportunity to raise awareness regarding the dramatic and apparently irreversible waste of water resources.

Inspired by the sensations experienced during a convivial meeting on the banks of the river, the artists reflect on a present in danger and an uncertain future, inviting us to follow a line of thought that leads to the plausible possibility of having to live, in a future perhaps not too distant, without water.

The group of artists, uniting and comparing themselves with personal languages ​​of different nature, recreate a realistic and possible atmosphere in the desire to propose a critical and profound collective reflection. Using both digital and performing arts techniques, the group of artists proposes an experience with a participatory imprint similar to an ideal meeting on the river, virtually recreating a moving body of water generated by the set of devices of the public.

The final visual and sound effect is modeled according to the set of data and information on which the aesthetic product is formulated and with respect to which we wanted to emphasize the difficulty of availability and accuracy, thus demonstrating an essential scientific and research approach. The audio and video product is in fact the aesthetic consequence of the data collected on the speed and change of state relating to the world water situation, its conditions of well-being, stress, pollution and drinkability. The data collected are then reworked and transformed into the body of water reproduced on the screens where its constant change is determined by the real-time change of the information collected.

The sound dimension, on the other hand, is the final product of a reworking intervention on the sounds of water flows collected live and recomposed in sound archives which provide the matrix of a final result capable of emphasizing the immersive component.

All the information found on the state of water available today has been collected and reformulated into a final result that can be used individually and collectively, a product that is not simple aesthetic contemplation, but which instead tries to trigger a cognitive short circuit for which we can think that what the virtual image that artists propose to us could in the future be the only way to know water.
In this common dystopian experience, free and spontaneous performative actions are inserted in the desire to regain the sense of the dynamic and uninterrupted flow of watercourses and internalize it, bringing back into the biological body a dimension typically belonging to nature and thus reintegrating two conceptual poles that are only apparently opposed.

The final result will be a return to the origins, the opportunity to think of an informal meeting place where one can be present and aware, listening and watching the flow of water that is now virtual but, hopefully, forever possible. The proposal for a reunion between the social and individual body is therefore placed in the political and social reading of a conscious and aware awakening towards a real responsibility for the future of our planet.

Chiara Causo