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DIALOGUE
interview for michelethursz postmedia network
November 2001
----- Original Message [Monday, November 19, 2001 8:57 AM] -----
Name?
Carlo Zanni aka beta.
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Where do you currently reside?
Milan and New York
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You've said that the subjects depicted in the ICOn_portraits are not
meant to be figurative, but rather representative of "a temporary
mental identity." Is this identity assumed only through computers,
or the Internet?
I think that temporary mental identity exists since man was born because
it is generated by thought. The web is just the perfect collection of
tools to do it, like any kind of communication system (NickNames are an
old old thing). Temporary MID is connected with the web but this is just
the starting point. A lot of results derive from the web and then they
have a big impact on our “real” society. So everything has to
be explored.
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When people request a traditional portrait, they are not asking for a
finished product (although that is generally the end result), they are
requesting a particular process. Similarly, the software icons on my desktop
computer are not decorative--they each signify a unique process. How does
the idea of software as process inform your work, namely the ICOn_portraits?
I founded The Church Of Software. And this is the point one. So everything
I do is informed by software. If it isn’t in the result, it is in
the thought. People are the perfect beautiful hardware managed by a software
(in many circumstances a not so good one). So our nature is based on these
things. I’m not speaking by metaphors. I’m an All News PoP (point
of presence). Nobody looked at the dtp icons as decorative with a particular
aesthetic [before]. Similarly, nobody thought of portraits as tools to
investigate or to represent the Temporary MID of the subject. ICOn_portraits
are portraits but also DTPicons. You can connect them to the system folder
icon of your PC and replicate yourself all over your hard disk. Do you
have some other doubts that you are your c:? (If you are not convinced,
think of the doppelganger) Or they could be just an alias without a file.
And every time you click on it, it will search its file again and again
without any results. It’s cruel. But it is. I like very much the
idea that people buy my portraits to visualize them over the fireplace,
with a glass of good wine in the hands, his wife near him and the children.
When I think to this image, I cry.
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Can people request an ICOn_portrait, or do you select your subjects?
If the someone were to request an ICOn_portrait, what should they expect
to receive in return?
Sure. They must because I make the ICOn_Portraits just by commission.
As old painters were used to do.
When you buy an ICOn_portrait I sell you a CD, with the certified sentence
professionally printed on the top and my signature. You are buying the
file not a representation of it. You buy the file with its primary support,
without it the file doesn’t exist. When I sell a file, I leave the
visualisation choice to the buyer. So you can print the file 500”
by 800” or video project it on a 2” by 3” screen. This
isn’t my problem. This is an important point because when you speak
about file, it is as though you are speaking about Aladdin and his lamp.
In the same way you have to wipe the magic lamp to see the genie, you
need to load the file to see it.
A lot of artists sell just a photo of the genie. I sell the genie! (With
the lamp, of course.)
Note: ICOn_portraits are a face of Carlo Zanni's project, "newnewportrait."
For more info, visit: www.newnewportrait.com
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Claire Barliant has covered technology and culture for the Village Voice,
Salon, and Feed. She is a senior editor at Artbyte magazine.
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