A New Media Art immersion at Special Edition

Could the New Media Artof the future miss from Special Edition Future Ways of living? Of course not. On 11 and 12 June at Mediateca Santa Teresa we’ll design the scenarios of art “made with technology”for the future. Leading us on this journey are a number of international gurus, from Luc Courchesne, a veteran of the media artist world, to graphic designerMark Wendt,and his drone-designing studio FIELD, to the latest authors of visual narrative. The theoretical fil-rouge to all these visions is spun by Giuliana Bruno, professor of Visual and Environmental Studies at Harvard, who invites us to reflect on the concept of screen from now to ten years on.

The show opens with Giuliana Bruno, the author of Surface: Matters of Aesthetics, Materiality, and Media in which she theorises a future where surfaces– be they of a smartphone, a tablet or a video installation – are bound to become a space for relation and communication, much like any other membrane, including the skin (Friday 12 June, 6 pm).

At Future Ways of living Luc Courchesne offers a lecture focused onthe progressive disappearance of an aesthetic boundary between real and virtual visual experiences. “Technology – writes Courchesne – has become our second skin. We are completely pervaded and immersed in technology, collectively involved in a multi-faceted dimension of physical, expanded and virtual reality. In this processwe have undergone a transformation, moving from spectators to users,visitors and now inhabitants of our works of art».

If the art of experience is based on systems, methods and devices that explore the folds of reality, the beauty of the process lies in the integration that makes them visible. Indeed, according to Courchesne in 10 years’ time the exchange between real and virtual will become a fluid immersion and not a barrier to overcome. (Friday 12 June, 9 pm).

Mark Wendtis the young founder of FIELD, a London studio creating digital artefacts by mixing design, art and technology research. Imagine to be immersed in a digital environment while flying a drone in a futuristic urban landscape. All this is City of Drones, the project Wendt and his collaborators did for London’s Barbicanin 2014. After we saw it we decided to invite him to Milan for the tenth anniversary of Meet the Media Guru. He will tell us about the way drones will play the unlikely role of “art creators” (Friday 12 June, 9:30 pm).

As we wait to find out how drones will revolutionise media art, let’s enjoy a preview of Violescence, the latest exhibition organised by FIELD for the Hospital Club of London, a blend of photography, animation and music in a context of immersive virtual realitythrough the use of a special helmet/sculpture.