New initiatives entail new risks, but also great satisfaction when tangible results are achieved. In Trieste – a town located at Italy’s furthest end, enclosed between real, yet invisible borders on the Karst and looking onto the Adriatic Sea, where multicultural and multiethnic communication is lacking – the association Acquamarina gave life to a new and ambitious initiative last year, i.e. an international digital visual art competition called "The Brain Project". The 2006 edition was a trial one and there were not many expectations in terms of number of participants. The subject matter chosen was “Borders”, which mirrored the very intrinsic nature of Trieste itself. The “web art community” had a positive, indeed flattering, reaction to this initiative: artists participating in the first edition were 309, 162 of whom from Italy, while the remaining 145 from 42 different countries of which 24 from Central and Eastern Europe, 8 from North and South America, 7 from Asia, 2 from Africa, and one from Oceania.
When speaking of “The Brain Project” 2006 edition, Giulio Montenero thinks of digital visual art as the newest demonstration of a very ancient truth: “There is no substantial difference between prehistoric cave art and electronically processed images, because a work of art – if it is a real one – is always perfect in itself. It is neither inferior nor superior to any other work of art, irrespective of when it was created, what technique was adopted or what artistic current it belongs to”. Whe referring to the thirty pictures selected for “The Brain Project” he highlights the fact that they are “a first example of a future encyclopaedia of art completely experienced in the present time and accessible and understandable to any kind of audience. It is a successful demonstration of how man can communicate, share emotions and ideals even with people he does not know or with whom he does not have anything in common, either the language or the religion or the culture or the concept of society. This is the real Esperanto, immediately understandable to everyone. It is a tool of universal human solidarity.”
In the wake of the successful outcome of the 2006 edition, the association Acquamarina – whose final objective is the promotion and dissemination of arts – organised "The Brain Project - 2007", which has somehow been renovated. Just as in the previous edition, thirty works have been selected as the best ones to organise an exhibition and to be published in the competition magazine. However, this year an absolute winner will be identified who will be offered the chance to mount a personal exhibition at “The Brain Project – 2008”, publish a short monograph in next year’s exhibition magazine and be a member of the jury in the 2008 edition.
Therefore, the space which, last year, was dedicated to computer art master and forerunner Edward Zajec – who was present as president of the jury and whose works were displayed at the State Library in Trieste – will be devoted to the winner of “The Brain Project” 2006 edition, Florentine computer engineer and artist Riccardo Paci.
Some years ago, Riccardo Paci devoted himself to computer technologies to develop digital image processing software and special software to create “puzzles of digital images”. The combination of his vast photo archive – containing ad hoc pictures of leaves, flowers, fruit etc. – and the increasingly higher quality of his software led to the creation of works for the “Occhi” (Eyes) subject matter. “Occhi 9” was the winning picture he chose to participate in last year’s edition. When looked at from a distance, an eye can be seen in the colours of pink, purple, lilac, light blue and brown. But when taking a closer look, the picture appears as a mixture of tiny, irregular scales of flowers, fruit, shrubs and pieces of sky. Paci may thus have wanted to represent nature and, therefore, the manifold aspects of life, its individual elements or, perhaps, chaos becoming unity and/or vice versa, give a poetic interpretation of the eye as “the window of the souls”, where fragmentation may symbolise thoughts, desires, the dreams of humankind. Or perhaps he simply wanted to represent the important role of the eye which, despite receiving thousands of impulses, can always process images in their entirety. Whatever his intention was, Riccardo Paci fully grasped the meaning of the subject matter and fascinated the members of the jury.
“Attraction”, the subject matter for the 2007 edition of “The Brain Project”, is completely different from “Borders”, but certainly not less demanding. Its interpretation may be difficult and for this reason organisers encouraged artists to express themselves as freely as possible by offering them a wide range of possible representations at the conceptual, abstract and figurative levels. “Attraction” can be interpreted as strength, as gravity or thrust, but also as appeal, fascination, impulse, call, entertainment, curiosity, knowledge or as a spur to meditation and as the encounter of geographical, cultural, race, religious, national, and sex differences.
Soon after the notice of competition was published on the competition website (www.thebrainproject.eu) artists started to apply and, as the deadline approached, the number of participants exceeded last year’s: 410 artists (8 of which out of contest) from 55 different countries participated in “The Brain Project – 2007”, including 27 from Europe, 11 from Asia, 9 from North, Central and South America, 6 from Africa and 2 from Oceania.
This result exceeded all expectations not only in terms of number of participants, but also in qualitative terms. Such an achievement was certainly made possible thanks to the dissemination activity carried out by Paolo Trento, web manager and coordinator of the competition website, and Maurizio Bekar, head of the press office.
The jury consisted of Riccardo Baldassarri, photographer and founder of the competition, Annamaria Castellan, president of the cultural association Acquamarina and competition coordinator, Emanuela De Marchi, film director and president of Mis Mas Eventi, Spettacolo e Formazione, Antonio Giusa, curator of “Spilimbergo fotografia”, Riccardo Paci, computer engineer and winner of “The Brain Project – 2006”, Tatjana Rojc, literary critic and Alessandro Rosada, poet and art gallery manager. The analysis of the 402 posted images was not an easy task to carry out for the jury. Each member of the jury voted on an individual basis through the internet website without exchanging opinions with other members of the jury in order to ensure maximum impartiality. A specially designed computer programme was used for an automatic calculation of votes. The thirty selected works are presented following an alphabetic order in the exhibition magazine, while expository criteria were adopted in mounting the exhibition. Works concerning humankind are the first which can be seen. With his “Attraction forever”, Rob Hassan, from Round Lake Beach, United States, depicted an ideal, surreal place of rounded lands connected by bridges while the figure of a man and a woman walking hand in hand stands out against the horizon. Also Pedro Nunes from Oporto, Portugal, took inspiration from a couple and a futuristic representation. Giovanni Auriemma from Viterbo, Italy, who ranked among the thirty best artists also in the 2006 edition, offers a mirror image called “L’attrazione nel doppio” (Attraction in double”), where a woman, daydreaming and lingering between earth and sky, vaguely reminds of Magritte. Allegra Lucarelli, from Milan, Italy, sent a black and white picture of a man embracing a woman, while Adele Babanova from Prague, Czech Republic, took inspiration from a famous 18th-century painting by Jean-Lucie-Louise, "Mme Vigee Lebrun and her daughter" and sent a colour photograph of a mother embracing her daughter. Rita Soccio from Recanati, Italy, interpreted attraction by means of pop art and showed a noticeable sense of humour by using the images of two popular advert characters. For Roberto +orco, Bisceglie, Italy, attraction is two lovers communicating through the internet by means of a web cam, an extremely topical issue. Daniela D’Andrea from Messina, Italy, is the winner of "The Brain Project" 2007 edition with a picture called "Silenzio". It is the portrait of a woman from the Middle East staring in astonishment at the suffering and violence unfolding before her. It is a crude and harsh image which perfectly mirrors the historical period we are living in. Emeka Ogboh from Lagos, Nigeria, participated with a picture named “Curiosity”, a picture portraying some Nigerian children from a particular angle. Another image focusing on the eyes interpreted as attraction to a woman lying on the beach was sent by Michal Podobycko from Lodz, Poland. The rich and interesting picture of Kazuhiko Nakamura from Kawasaki-City, Kanagawa, Japan, interprets Kafka’s short story, “The metamorphosis”, by explicitly referring to Arcimboldo. In his picture, the face of the man is completely covered in beetles. Natalia Saurin from Milan, Italy, interpreted the obsessive aspect of attraction between an object (a pair of scissors) and a person (a woman’s face). Attraction for travelling has been represented by Benedetto Riba from Campiglione Fenile, Italy, and Vladimir Moldavsky from Odessa, Ukraine. While Benedetto adopted a figurative technique, Vladimir chose a symbolic and surreal representation. Trevor Pack from Rovereto, Italy, opted for a violent representation of the subject matter, thus leading spectators to think about the attraction one may feel towards death. On the contrary, Moran Barakdi from Tel-Aviv, Israel, conceived attraction as the particular atmosphere created by a guitar around a bonfire on the beach at night. Sara Fittipaldi from Padua, Italy, offered an interesting interpretation of "attraction”: in her picture, a man enters a painting in an art gallery. Elisabetta Gon from Mariano del Friuli, Italy, focused her attention on the attraction to the moon. Her work is abstract, as is Rubens LP’s from Sao Paolo, Brazil, who posted a picture representing attraction between two lions. Simonetta Busetto from Spinea, Italy, did not elaborate a new idea. However, her picture showing sperm cells being attracted by an egg-cell has been perfectly represented. Daniel Munteanu from Deva, Romania, focused on the attraction exerted by light and transparent surfaces, thus creating a fairy-tale like image for the competition. Also Miriam Chermaz from Trieste, Italy, was fascinated by transparency and presented the picture of a bee on a daisy. Edward Hill from London, Great Britain, created an iris consisting of the right and left-hand side buildings along St. Antonio Canal in Trieste. Buildings are reflected in the pupil, while the vast space around can only be imagined. A graphic processing of Buenos Aires and the imaginary representation of a metropolitan labyrinth, both referring to places where one is faced with loneliness, are the works sent by Stefano Cento from Turin, Italy, and Sergey Skachkov from Novosibirsk, Russia. Another picture about human sorrow was sent by Michele Petrelli from Taranto, Italy, who worked on a surreal representation of supermarket trolleys attracted by a tray full of coins. Magnetic attraction was chosen by Emilio Zangiacomi Pompanin from Cortina, Italy, whose work presented an example of precarious, yet solid, buildings in contrast with the law of gravity. He called his picture “Gli architetti dell’impossibile”, “The architects of the impossible”. Paolo Gaetano De Maio from Pasian di Prato, Italy, took inspiration from Escher and represented the mathematical concept of infinite by developing it through perspective and mirror-like relations.
A particular planet consisting of a horizontal and a vertical ring is attraction as conceived by Pierpaolo (Plinio) from Marsano di Sant’Angelo in Lizzola, Italy. David Ramponi from Ancona, Italy, represented a magnetic wave symbolising a constant tension existing between attraction and repulsion. His work was chosen as the conclusion of “The Brain Project” exhibition.
To the organisers’ regret it was impossible to give equal importance to many other excellent works which will be published in the virtual gallery created on the competition website.
On the other hand, we would like to congratulate Daniela D’Andrea on her success as winner of the competition. She interpreted and effectively conveyed high sensitivity in dealing with tragedies afflicting our society. Lack of communication and increasing violence perpetrated against women in many parts of the world strengthen traditions based on psychological and physical abuse. D’Andrea’s work is an accusation bearing the image of a veiled woman helplessly witnessing pain and hopeless loneliness, where suffering is conveyed through the woman’s eyes. Attraction is represented by the image itself, by those magnetic eyes attracting ours and inevitably forcing to reflection.
I believe it is worth highlighting that both last year and this year winning images depicted human eyes and were selected by two different juries. In terms of global digital art, the purpose of “The Brain Project” is to provide it with a particular connotation within the framework of other forms of artistic expression. Almost all the works participating in the competition stemmed from a mixture of different techniques, thus confirming the fact that artists interpret digital art as an additional tool or a new artistic means to create and/or elaborate their works. Very few images have been entirely created by the sole means of a computer, which means we are still very far from taking full advantage of the constructive and expressive possibilities offered by digital visual art. However, the computer era has only just begun and surprising elements will surely emerge. To conclude I would like to thank all those who contributed to the success of “The Brain Project”: the Regione Autonoma Friuli Venezia Giulia, the Regional Committee for Education, Culture, Sport and Peace, the Credito Cooperativo del Carso, the Ministry for Arts and Culture, the State Library in Trieste, Foto Mauro, the Regional Committee for Culture, regional Councillor Roberto Antonaz, Mara Luchetto, Erica Slatich and Annamaria Richter, Adriano Kovacic, Sabina Citter, Marco Menato, Emanuela DeMarchi, Antonio Giusa, Riccardo Paci, Prof. Tatjana Rojc and Alessandro Rosada, Paolo Trento, Maurizio Bekar, Giulio Montenero, Silvia Agostini, all the participants to the competition and many more whose names I do not remember, but who are equally important. I would like to conclude with a quotation by Kafka, which was inspired to me by Kazuhiko Nakamura’s work. In “Wedding Preparations in the Country” Kafka wrote: “Art flies around truth, but with the definite intention of not getting burnt. Its capacity lies in finding in the dark void a place where the beam of light can be intensely caught”.

Annamaria Castellan
President of the Association Acquamarina

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Some remarks on digital art

Clearly defining “computer art” is a hard task. Or so it is for me, at least. I believe there is not, at present, an objective and clear-cut definition. There exist various interpretations of computer-processed images, too often classified under the generic and somehow anonymous definition of “digital art”. In my opinion digital art is a graphic representation of images created or coordinated by means of a computer with the purpose of expressing “artistic dimensions”.

Unfortunately, digital artists have been considered “second-class” artists or, even worse, not “real artists” due to the easy access to powerful computer graphics tools that this new form of art entails. Digital art is sometimes compared to dry graphic processing or simple photomontage, obtained by using the latest plugin or application. Technical composition is sometimes poor in terms of image processing, but the creativity and imagination underlying it is unique and can be connected to a wider cultural context.

Digital artists are original craftsmen of the virtual world. Just like a carpenter using hammer, a saw, some nails and paint to build, measure, shape, assemble, restore and reassemble furniture until he has completed his task, a digital artist makes use of pictures and various graphic image processing techniques, graphic editors and computer drawing programmes.

They are not paintings. Are they graphic printouts? No, they are not. They are something that can be achieved through modern tools and that is as surprising as etching was in the 16th century and as photography was later. The latter was said to represent the death of painting. On the contrary, however, painting received new momentum to represent the impossible, while photography had a documenting role.

The vital essence of reality, caught through perceptiveness, is directly expressed in digital art, where our consciousness can be projected by means of powerful computer and digital tools applied to images. A simple picture does not do anything more than objectively and faithfully describing the environment. But if it is edited by means of graphic effects triggered by the emotions felt on a particular occasion and in a particular place, then artists’ inner life can be expressed, because the processed images will have nuances, shades, colours and distortions symbolising their feelings.

Digital artists are to take advantage of their creativity to express the power to will mentioned by Deleuze when referring to Nietzsche, who did not believe in a blind will to oppress the masses, but, on the contrary, in a will to rebel oneself as a way to express one’s own disapproval of the power that be and free one’s own highest aspirations. Thanks to the new digital tools artists finally have the interactive and cognitive opportunity to react to media standardization, express and free themselves even through a “Dionysian” style.

Digital art must be free from the ephemeral nature of advertising logics, based on the destructive copying and faking of the real world, in a kind of “hyper-reality”. Contrariwise, digital artists need to make sure that what they create is genuine, an expression of life where imagination can be permeated by reality behind the thrust of the “power to will”. This is how digital artists work, favouring image diversification as opposed to media standardisation.

“The Brain Project” is just a drop in the ocean of information, but demonstrates that the media and cultural standardisation process can be reversed, for the sake of artists and, above all, of whomever enjoys their works.

Riccardo “Tetrarca” Baldassarri
Founder of “The Brain Project”

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Remarks

We are all very aware that we do not belong anywhere.
We shared a virtual and virtuous space on the web thanks to a photographic competition requiring to look at the world through the magnifying glass of attraction.
Attraction is a vital energy; it is an upward movement towards the fulfilment of a project, to reach something we desire even before being aware of it.

According to Hans Georg Gadamer “mutual comprehension can be achieved through a «merging of horizons»”.
These horizons are of cognitive nature; they are outlined and extended by considering each and every life experience. Participating in this competition meant pooling thoughts, considerations and images. In other words, our different life experiences were intertwined and each enshrined a different approach to life, a different view of attraction.

This “merging of horizons” – required by genuine, mutual comprehension – can become stronger when seen from a different perspective as a truly shared experience. It goes without saying that you cannot share an experience without sharing a space.

The association Acquamarina created a web space open to participants, organisers and members of the jury which became a shared experience, even if we have never seen each other. This space seems to offer the chance to overcome geographical and cultural barriers; it turns dialogue and utopia into two possible experiences.

Attraction, the competition subject matter, aroused the interest of many artists from many different countries, as well as of all the members of the jury. When looking at those pictures, the only definition I could find to describe participants and the feelings their images conveyed was restless nomads.

They are nomads coming from different worlds and whose works required a journey into their imaginations and feelings in order to give attraction a digital, ambivalent form: they lingered in between good and evil, dream and nightmare, light and darkness, innocence and sin.

They are nomads who travelled their own personal and closely intimate imageries, guided by their emotions in finding out who we are and what we desire. A journey having self-dimension as a common denominator.
An aspect which one can sense when looking at these pictures is irresistible attraction to discovery and to the definition of one’s own identity, which may be the elsewhere we are looking for.

From a spiritual point of view, this journey is a feared or unavowed spur towards the elsewhere we are looking for.
Elsewhere can be anywhere: it can be a particular person or place, a need or a desire.

Every journey is aimed at reaching an “elsewhere”. Every journey requires a “beyond”, which is not mere wandering, but a movement from one place to another, an inner transfiguration.

Travelling does not mean reaching a destination, but exposing oneself to the unwonted.
The unwonted is a place where, for a fleeting moment, the mystery is unveiled of how the sky touches the earth, how nights reveal unknown constellations, how religion gives hopes, traditions create peoples, loneliness creates deserts, rivers create bights, earth creates furrows. World experiences in rapid succession escape any attempt at fossilization or organization following an ordered arrangement because – irrespective of any predetermined project – nomads know that shades are indefinite, nonsense makes sense, what seems possible goes beyond reality and any attempt at understanding is sheer insanity.

This is the journey. A journey inside attraction and the difficulty in understanding and fulfilling it. A difficult journey, which was certainly worth accomplishing for the many participants in the competition.

Emanuela DeMarchi
Member of The brain project - 2007 Jury

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Final report

The outcome of the international competition “The Brain Project - 2007” was more than positive. Over 400 artists participated in the competition and a considerable number of good-quality pictures were presented including a wide range of different techniques: in some cases pictures, drawings or digitised canvas boards were computer processed; in others, lines and backgrounds were drawn on a “white screen” with vectorial graphics and image editing software and graphic tablets. Some other pictures were the result of complex 3D renderized and processed models.
The high quality of many works is truly surprising: the subject matter has been developed in an innovative, original, excellent way.
Within this framework, my activity as a member of the jury was very complex: just like the difficulty encountered in spotting coloured stones on a grey beach or in singling out a few little pebbles on a colourful beach, I find it very hard to have to limit my choice to just a few works.
Pictures worth being distinguished for combining innovation in developing the competition subject matter, “Attraction”, with top quality techniques giving anyone looking at them a sense of belonging, are a lot more than the awarded ones. Even considering the first sixty pictures, many excellent ones would be disregarded.

Riccardo Paci
Member of The brain project - 2007 Jury

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ART BETWEEN TRUTH AND LIE

Slovenian poet Srecko Kosovel – one ofte most extraordinay interllectuals of the 1920s – wrote: PESEM MORA BITI KOMPLEKS, poetry has to be interpreted in its entirety. Poetry as a means to express art. Can art be defined as truth? For artists there is no possible answer but yes. But what about critics?
Artistic elaborations are undoubtedly aimed at discovering the truth. However, the truth in their works I a personal re-elaboration. A remark is now necessary about the personal stories of people surviving lagers: that memories concerning their personal tragedies are a re-elaboration clearly appears in Zoran Mušic’s
Non saremo gli ultimi, through which he wants to involve readers and tell them about his fears and the tragic experiences that will remain branded forever in his mind. However, his memories come back to the surface only in the 1970s, re-elaborated by his artistic sensitivity and by subsequent experiences.
For a lager survivor, these works cannot certainly correspond to his personal memories. But for us – spared from this appalling violence – they represent a sort of collective memory, an art-mediated, yet collective, truth.
Is art nothing but a lie? And does an art critic have to pretend it is not and consider it as pure truth?
A work of art is a stream of elements and systems which, in turn, form an independent system. But can a work of art exist without a basic concept? Can we define a work of art as a mixture of colours or words having no sense when seen from an external point of view? Is a meaning really necessary when we speak about something which is so unreachable?
Art certainly means searching. It is one of its natural elements: Greek tragedy has already expressed everything, but literature keeps producing extraordinary works. Signs belonging to the artistic world are only signs. What is unique is the way they are driven together, which also defines their meaning. The type of sign, colour, style or technique re not important. These elements represent the suprastructure of individual expression. Think of destructured stanzas in a poem, for instance: Can it still be considered a poem when compared to Dante, Leopardi or Goethe? Translators know how difficult it is to render the rhythm of a text in an effective way, in that they mediate something which does not belong to them and have to renounce to their personal expression to look for the core message of what they are trying to translate. Rhythm is an ancestral, unique element that can be compared to a heart beating, unique by definition in reacting to pain, rage, emotions or joy. Going over a mere individual approach – which is only an end in itself and whose expression does not necessarily lead to artistic creation – is only possible if there is a project, a real concept underlying a work o art and is not a simple mixture of words, colours and sketches.
Therefore, anything can be art, as painter Avgust Cernigoj demonstrated. Cernigoj also conveyed the idea of KOMPLEKS Kosovel referred to, a concept even art pioneer Eward Zajec drew on to create his works.
Is art nothing but a lie? Maybe. Does art correspond to truth? Maybe. Is art research? Yes, it undoubtedly is. It is a concept and is therefore potentially infinite and holds infinite elements. Freedom. PESEM MORA BITI KOMPLEKS

Tatjana Rojc
Member of The brain project - 2007 Jury

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Digital art?

Not every artist accepted the invitation to participate in the second edition of “The Brain Project”:

«Thank you for the chance to be part of your digital competition, but I do not do any form of digital art. I use traditional mediums, chiefly oils. In fact, although digital art can be reasonably arresting, I mainly feel the utmost disdain for it, preferring the intimate craft of a human hand applying wet colour to a stretched canvas. To conclude, I largely detest computers and 'digitalism', seeing them as symbols of humanities creativity and manipulative craftsmanship flushing itself down a toilet.»

This romantic reply get us to think about the meaning of this form of expression. “Digital” (It.: “digitale”) is one of those loan words that have been adapted for some kind of strange xenophilia, while we have plenty of suitable and even more effective words in our native language.
“Digital” was once a curative plant with dangerous side effects. It was used and abused as an adjective and a noun for a long time, while it now identifies any type of computer-processed data. However, the frequent use of a word does not preserve its original meaning, which is sometimes lessened. That the word “digital”/”digitale” derives from English, and means ”finger” or “digit” –in that fingers are often used to count – causes amazement. Amazement, however, increases when people are informed that “digital”/”digitale” is equivalent to “numerical”! Yes, that is true. Digital art is nothing but numerical art. A digital image is a rectangular matrix subdivided into square elements called “pixels”, each one of which is, in turn, subdivided into three phosphors (red, blue and green respectively). Luminosity of phosphors varies on the basis of a precise numerical value.
Working with digital images basically means working with very long strings of numbers.
But is this Pythagorean concept so arid? Do we have to surrender to sad reductionism? Look at the following image, for example, a 100x100 pixels square:

Its numerical representation can be a relatively short string of some ten digits. However, if looked more carefully, the inner square seems to be sticking out. This is a very common effect in computer graphics, especially in users interfaces, to obtain relief buttons. This short string of numbers contains the idea of convexity. If you turn the book upside down and look at the picture again you will see that the square becomes hollow. The sequence of numbers has not changed, but now shows concavity. It seems that the total number does not correspond to the sum of its constituents.

Or perhaps concepts do not lie in images, just like art, fortunately, does not lie in means of expression.

Paolo Trento
Manager and coordinator of the competition website

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