By Giulia Piceni. Cover image: detail of Giuseppe Lo Schiavo, BTC (Behind the Canvas), 2021. Courtesy of the artist..
“I think you should know a little bit of everything to understand what you really want”, said Giuseppe Lo Schiavo from the very beginning, as a way to contextualise his various interests.
This year, Istituto Marangoni Firenze welcomed a new mentor to support the students in the art department on their academic and personal development journey. Giuseppe Lo Schiavo is an artist who explores the intersection of art and science through technology and innovation. His diverse body of work intricately reflects the complexities of our contemporary world.
During a talk held at Istituto Marangoni Firenze, the artist engaged in a dialogue with the students, showcasing his projects and practices through his online site. He started by pointing out that modern tools, including social media, empower creatives by allowing artists to present their authentic selves to online audiences. Lo Schiavo reveals that he hasn’t relied on external developers to create his own website, which also serves as a portfolio. It is a clear and concise reflection of his identity, avoiding intricate design elements and prioritising communication that suits the limited attention span of modern crowds.
Giuseppe Lo Schiavo, “THE BIOLOGY LAB AS FORGE OF IDEAS“
An artist or a nerdy lab guy? Lo Schiavo seems to be right in the middle, especially when working on a “digital art experiment” like Sintetica. Exploring the concept of artificial life, this digital entity, influenced by real-time happiness data from social media, can reproduce, interact, and even face viral infection based on viewer engagement.
The project raises questions about the emergence of life within the digital realm and challenges traditional distinctions between living and non-living entities. Comprising videos of artificial cells from Trento University’s biology lab, Sintetica is a captivating fusion of technology and emergent biology studies developed by the laboratory of the University of Trento.
When delving into Lo Schiavo’s passion for science, it’s essential to highlight his significant contribution to synthetic photography. Despite the name suggesting a laboratory origin, this technique actually emerged from the artist’s computer.
Echoing the vocabulary of a biology researcher, Giuseppe Lo Schiavo’s synthetic photography has paved the way for contemporary creative trends, employing tools like Blender with a foresight of 10 years. This unique approach to image creation, developed by Lo Schiavo in the early 2010s, introduced captivating three-dimensionality. One of his early works, Levitation (2013), earned recognition from the esteemed Saatchi Gallery, cementing the enduring impact of Lo Schiavo’s visionary artistic expression.
A REFLECTION ON CONTEMPORARY AND POST-HUMAN CHALLENGES
Art is an unfiltered commentary on our current society, reflecting the challenges faced by the global community, and Lo Schiavo reminded us about it through Antropogenica, an artwork consisting of two short videos. It was a site-specific installation in Times Square, NY, exploring the dual nature of humanity, which encompasses both greatness and destruction.
In the two short videos, an elephant is depicted confined inside the Sistine Chapel, with 16k plastic bottles (infographically accurate and equivalent to global sales every second) falling upon it. The elephant breaks free, passes through Michelangelo’s Giudizio Universale, and reconnects with flourishing nature, prompting viewers to contemplate the delicate balance between human impact and environmental harmony.
Additionally, Lo Schiavo has experimented with digital tools to give life to NFTs that provide immediate yet unbalanced commentary on the technological revolutions of our time. Inspired by recent studies in functional neuroimaging that traced dreams based on brain activity, Onirica is an artwork that shocks and captivates like few can. Artificial intelligence generated the captions for the scenes in the NFT video, but it eventually failed. The artist is using this to highlight the limitations of these tools despite their significant progress compared to a few years ago. Lo Schiavo uses this limitation of the machine as an added value to his overall work.
ART ELEVATING BRANDS’ PROJECTS
Lo Schiavo’s artistic practice radiates with an enchanting synthesis of technology, science, and pop culture, vividly showcased on his website. Every click unfurls fresh avenues for creative collaboration, seamlessly pushing the boundaries between artistic domains. In the following lines, three projects exemplify how commercial endeavours can be enhanced by the artistic framework created by Lo Schiavo.
The surge in NFT interest wasn’t just about speculation; it provided a unique space for digital artists like Lo Schiavo. His collaboration with Bombay Sapphire, titled BTC (Behind the Canvas), offered artists the chance to explore huge digital formats, resulting in the creation of one of the highest-resolution NFTs to date.
Crafted during an Instagram live event, the project engaged over 4000 participants in co-creating a virtual room, transforming it into a time capsule with over 200 selected objects. This innovative artwork evolved into a sociological experiment, with participant choices falling into three categories: ecological symbols, nostalgic analogue items, and personal objects imbued with intimate stories for the future.
In the collaborative venture Crafting Magnificience with Bulgari, Giuseppe Lo Schiavo designed three 3D artworks within windows, a key element of his practice. These three artworks were inspired by Bulgari’s jewels and were therefore evocatively titled as follows: The Eternal Muse, The Birthplace of Serpenti and Southern Gateway. An emotion-capturing tool was used to analyse visitors’ feelings via artificial intelligence, generating unique display windows based on individual emotional landscapes.
Beyond the realm of luxury, Lo Schiavo has found rich ground for collaborations in the world of technology. In 2022, Lenovo commissioned Henosis, a 63-second video animation. Characterised by a metaphysical allure and vibrant hues, the animation celebrated the computational breakthroughs of the past decade. Drawing inspiration from the intricacies of genetic editing, artificial intelligence, and the remarkable reconstruction of a black hole’s image, Henosis stands as a visual testament to how technology not only defines our present but also moulds the landscape of our future.
