maurizio bolognini
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>Programmed machines / Macchine programmate
- Interactive installations / Installazioni interattive
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Macchine programmate (centinaia dal 1988: serie IMachines, WMachines, Computer sigillati, Naa, Atlas 2 ecc.) per produrre flussi di immagini casuali e lasciate funzionare all'infinito (v. Maurizio Bolognini: Infinito personaleSoftware Art Aesthetics).

"....non mi considero un artista che crea certe immagini o soltanto un artista concettuale, ma uno che con le sue macchine ha effettivamente tracciato più linee di chiunque altro, coprendo superfici sconfinate. Non mi interessa la qualità formale delle immagini prodotte dalle mie installazioni, ma il loro flusso, la loro illimitatezza nello spazio e nel tempo, la possibilità di creare universi d'informazione paralleli, fatti di chilometri d'immagini e traiettorie infinite. Le mie installazioni servono a generare delle infinità fuori controllo."

Programmed Machines: computers  (there are hundreds since 1988: IMachines, WMachines, Sealed Computers, Naa, Atlas 2 series etc.) programmed to produce limitless flows of random images and left to function indefinitely (see  Maurizio Bolognini: Infinito personale ita/en and Software Art Aesthetics).

"I do not consider myself an artist who creates certain images, and I am not merely a conceptual artist. I am one whose machines have actually traced more lines than anyone else, covering boundless surfaces. I am not interested in the formal quality of the images produced by my installations but rather in their flow, their limitlessness in space and time, the possibility of creating parallel universes of information, made up of kilometres of images and infinite trajectories. My installations serve to generate out-of-control infinities."


IM#9 (video, courtesy M. Semler). 
Installazione
, visione parziale (computer, videoproiettori)  / Installation, partial vision (computers, videoprojectors), Roger Smith Lab, New York, 2006 

IMachines, 1988- (video, courtesy NAG Contemporary). 
Installazione
, visione parziale (computer, videoproiettori)  / Installation, partial vision (computers, videoprojectors), Chiesa di Santa Caterina, Arezzo, 200


Macchine programmate, visione parziale (computer, lcd, altoparlanti)  / Programmed machines, partial vision (computers,LCD, loudspeakers), Galleria Neon, Bologna, 1992-2004
Macchine programmate, visione parziale (computer, cavi, silicone)  / Programmed machines, partial vision (computers, cables, silicone), Institut Culturel Italien/Maison de l'Italie, Paris, 1992-1998
Macchine programmate (Zen garden), visione parziale (computer, cavi, silicone)  / Programmed machines  (Zen garden), partial vision (computers,cables, silicone). Courtesy Cacticino, Bellinzona, Switzerland, 2004


Macchine programmate, visione parziale (computer, cavi, silicone)  / Programmed machines, partial vision (computers,cables, silicone), Atelier de la Lanterne, Nice, 1992-98

from Andreas Broeckmann, Software Art Aesthetics, in D. O. Lartigaud (ed.), Art orienté programmation, Sorbonne, Paris 2007:

The project series Sealed Computers by Maurizio Bolognini point us to what might form the most significant line of force in the field of software-based art.
For this installation, Bolognini places over a dozen computers in a gallery space, networking them and having them jointly compute simple graphic structures which, however, deliberately do not get displayed: the monitor buses of all the computers are sealed with wax, and the installation offers no indication of the communication between the computers, or its results. What we can perceive are the interconnected computers, humming, maybe processing software. They are neither keeping a collective secret from us, nor are they even 'conceiving' of the results of their computations as visual structures.
The experience of the installation is uncanny, because we are unable to control, or even fully understand what is going on. The aesthetical experience of the sublime, as conceived by Romantic writers of the late 18th and early 19th centuries, is characterised by a confrontation with unbounded and overwhelming nature, a transgressive experience which is not based on an appreciation for the grandiose beauty of nature, but on a disturbed sense of amazement about its limitless and uncontrollable force. Of course, the notion of the natural sublime is historically associated both with, on the one hand, the experience of alpine and maritime wilderness and natural catastrophies like earthquakes, and on the other hand, with the progressive subjugation of nature under human will in the course of industrialisation. The sublime is thus a paradoxical sign of both intimidation, and the frustration about the loss of 'natural nature'. It is a sensation realised in the event of being confronted with some external force, emerging from the imaginary drama of an unbridgable gap between our experience, and the forces that move it. Closely connected to the Romantic unease about nature is the modern unease about machines. While modernist humanism has done everything to re-enstate human perception of a contained world as the core motor of aesthetic experience, the emergence of technological art has brought the sublime back into the experience of contemporary art.
Bolognini's installation offers a confrontation with the 'machine' in the form of an obscure, software-driven process which we are radically alienated from. It points us to an 'aesthetics of the machinic' whose aesthetical experiences are effected by such machinic structures in which neither artistic intention, nor formal or controllable generative structures, but an amalgamation of material conditions, human interaction, processual restrictions, and technical instabilities play the decisive role. Like any form of art, Software Art should initiate such experiences that fundamentally put our expectations about technology off-balance.


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