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The Prix Ars Electronica Archive is a collection enabling search and viewing of all the submissions since 1987. The award-winning projects are documented with catalogue texts and audio-visual media. All other submissions can be searched by title/artist and displayed with year, category in list form. Please cite the credits (artwork name, artist and photographer) and only use the materials if your article is related to Ars Electronica.
Metachaos
Alessandro Bavari
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_Metachaos_, from Greek “meta” (beyond) and “chaos” (the abyss where the eternally formless state of the universe hides), indicates a primordial shape of ameba, which lacks precise morphology and is characterized by mutation and mitosis.
In fact, even though they are characterized by an apparently anthropomorphous appearance, in reality the bodies represented in _Metachaos_ are without identity and conscience. They exist confined in a spaceless and timeless state, a hostile and decadent hyperuranium where a fortress, in perpetual movement, dominates the landscape in defense of a supercelestial, harmonic but fragile parallel dimension. In its destructive instinct to violate the dimensional limbo, the mutant horde penetrates the intimacy of the fortress, laying siege like a virus. Similar to the balance of a physiological continuum in human species, it brings the status of things back to the primordial broth.
_Metachaos_ is a multidisciplinary audiovisual project, articulated in a short film, a set of photography and mix-technique painting. The purpose of the project is to represent the most tragic aspects of the human nature and its motion, such as war, madness, social change and hate. It is an accretion of feelings that are metaphorically represented by specific visual forms, which are abstract conceptually but formally concrete and tangible. The application of acid and monochromatic tints, besides the strong contrast, makes everything intentionally more oppressive and tragic.
In order to obtain a more immersive and plausible version, the shot was taken using the camera live technique. The extreme and frenetic motion of the shoulder camera, similar to the subjective view, becomes a main constant, so that, along with the constant editing cuts in the video, it creates a greater sense of instability and danger. In fact, thanks to the democratization of technology, it is noticeable that the unconscious-aesthetic potential of shots on YouTube, characterized by a pseudo-documentary and amateur approach, often offer an unexpected emotional involvement, which triggers an exhibitionistic-voyeuristic interchange between the author and the consumer.
The irrational gesture and action of the bodies, as if a collective form of madness controlled them, are inspired by artists such as Bosch and Bruegel, who between the 15th and 16th centuries produced an iconography where irrational images show sickly madness and pain.
The project was realized using different techniques: live shots taken in abandoned industrial sites, CGI animation, tracking and motion capture, besides various other analog techniques.
The American Jeff Ensign, aka Evolution Noise Slave, composed the original sound track, which was progressively updated during the video production. The musical score was inspired by six separate pieces Jeff had previously created, which were then combined into a hybrid. The composition was also based in part on a sonic interpretation of the ideas of Antonin Artaud’s “Theater of Cruelty” overlaid on Bavari’s images.
Links: http://www.alessandrobavari.com/
In fact, even though they are characterized by an apparently anthropomorphous appearance, in reality the bodies represented in _Metachaos_ are without identity and conscience. They exist confined in a spaceless and timeless state, a hostile and decadent hyperuranium where a fortress, in perpetual movement, dominates the landscape in defense of a supercelestial, harmonic but fragile parallel dimension. In its destructive instinct to violate the dimensional limbo, the mutant horde penetrates the intimacy of the fortress, laying siege like a virus. Similar to the balance of a physiological continuum in human species, it brings the status of things back to the primordial broth.
_Metachaos_ is a multidisciplinary audiovisual project, articulated in a short film, a set of photography and mix-technique painting. The purpose of the project is to represent the most tragic aspects of the human nature and its motion, such as war, madness, social change and hate. It is an accretion of feelings that are metaphorically represented by specific visual forms, which are abstract conceptually but formally concrete and tangible. The application of acid and monochromatic tints, besides the strong contrast, makes everything intentionally more oppressive and tragic.
In order to obtain a more immersive and plausible version, the shot was taken using the camera live technique. The extreme and frenetic motion of the shoulder camera, similar to the subjective view, becomes a main constant, so that, along with the constant editing cuts in the video, it creates a greater sense of instability and danger. In fact, thanks to the democratization of technology, it is noticeable that the unconscious-aesthetic potential of shots on YouTube, characterized by a pseudo-documentary and amateur approach, often offer an unexpected emotional involvement, which triggers an exhibitionistic-voyeuristic interchange between the author and the consumer.
The irrational gesture and action of the bodies, as if a collective form of madness controlled them, are inspired by artists such as Bosch and Bruegel, who between the 15th and 16th centuries produced an iconography where irrational images show sickly madness and pain.
The project was realized using different techniques: live shots taken in abandoned industrial sites, CGI animation, tracking and motion capture, besides various other analog techniques.
The American Jeff Ensign, aka Evolution Noise Slave, composed the original sound track, which was progressively updated during the video production. The musical score was inspired by six separate pieces Jeff had previously created, which were then combined into a hybrid. The composition was also based in part on a sonic interpretation of the ideas of Antonin Artaud’s “Theater of Cruelty” overlaid on Bavari’s images.
Links: http://www.alessandrobavari.com/
Alessandro Bavari (IT), born 1963, studied scenography, photography and history of art at the Academy of Fine Arts. Since 1993, he has added digital manipulation to his art, developing a personal artistic language using industrial and organic products from nature before incorporating photographic process, then computer digitalization, which leads to “a kind of contamination among the arts, dissolving the boundaries which distinguish them.”