A Little Bit-Graphy
I belong to a generation born post-communist: I had my 1977, not '68; never had time to believe in Marx or Lenin; subsequently, I never dealt with Historical Materialism, if not for mere study purposes.
In general, I've sympathized and felt closer (yet, without ever embracing them) to forms and assumptions, that would analyse and question Power of any kind: I have always disdained Ideologies, but favoured Ideas instead.
I've been at all times interested in the New Media, the exploration of new frontiers, which came into being with the onset of social networks and sharing, that constantly redefine concepts of identity, sociality and art.
At the end of 2007, I created Second/Aria/Mente Art Studios project in 3D on Second Life.
Begun, as part of a university project, Second/Aria/Mente was created, since the definition of its concept, as architectural structure/instrument, with the purpose to be a decisive and critical analysis of the tool, as I consider it utopical, if not invalidating, to conceive ones work detached from the context/interface in which it takes form and life.
Contemporarily, I created the blog soWWWersiva_Mente (already Specchi and Second Life): an extra-text with at least two main objectives: the introduction of narration accompanies the developement of the project, and the creation of an "off world", where the debate, concerning some subjects, that I consider unescapable for the use of the New Media is introduced.
My critical vision of the web 2.0, and therefore also of the blog-sphere, already explained in the first post, pushed me to interpret this instrument almost cinematografically: "soWWWersiva_Mente" starts with the narration of the story of Susy Specchi and her fugitive alter-ego, Merror Rayna. In a way, the narration, the identity problems of a multiple personality, could somehow regard all of us, when we deal with new interactive medias.
On February 8th 2008, and with the fundamental help of Fabio Felici a Re7t Blinker aka programmer of Linden Scripting Language, I started the Missing Merror Rayna Contest: a touristic/investigative contest. The results were more than satisfying: we had 65 participants, during the the 44 days it lasted. From the very beginning, the field of action/analysis of Second/Aria/Mente became evitent: Identity - Liberty - Arts and their implications with-in the New Media.
Definetely fundamental for my present aesthetical approach are my sonic experiences of the 80ies, years during which I founded a few post-punk bands (No exprience, Bathroom Flowers and Hard Score Rage), consequently to the problematics and themes proposed by the punk movement.
I conceive art as a cognitive tool of the world, both interiour and external, and have always considered provocation, a basic element of my works.
The creation of situations/concepts, able to stun the observer and to stimulate a reaction/action, allows comparison/confrontation, which are always an occasion for new and further confrontations, that can lead to new creative inputs and feedbacks.
The inter-activities, typical of the 3D ambiente of SL, make this type of artistic approach easily possible. My work is therefore apt to create installations/perfomances inside Second Life and to experimentally exploit the immense creative potential, offered by this "synthetic world"-instrument.
On the other hand, I never considered this medium adequate for the classical representation of in-world modalites of visual art, like for example the numerous art galleries and museums, that expose pictures on the walls.
I have always been highly critical of the use of the medium Second Life, changed by the so called old media and of the conformistic and conventional behavioural mechanisms of social networks (which I find deleterious in SL) and also towards, what I have defined, in order to try to render the idea strongly, a Second Matrix.
I created a few machinima (videos shot inside Second Life, that can be found on the blog soWWWersiva_Mente and on YouTube), and showed my work made in Second Life at the Gallery of Contermporay Arts, "Amphisbaena" in Modena.
In November 2008 I started the 2.0-phase in Second/Aria/Mente: NEU STARTEN. It is a kind of tridimentional summary of my creative experience in Second Life (still visible on the slurls mentioned above).
I also participated at the Festival of Creativity in Florence at the Museum of Natural History at the University of Florence, as part of the Virtual Renaissance Exhibition, dedicated to Virtual Worlds (from October 21st until January 7th 2009), with an installation called "ORIGIN OF THE NEW WORLD".