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------------------------------------ april 6th, 2001 ßZanni is a young artist who lives and works in Milan. The subject of his paintings and web projects is a new kind of Landscape: the MediaScape. A critical opinion and captures from an interview. You must read it , hearing: www.micromusic.net "The only and essential art is the art which finds its own elements in the surrounding habitat. In the same way our ancestors took their art from religious atmosphere surrounding their souls. So we have to be inspired by the miracles of contemporary life." (Futurism Manifesto, 1910)
All the important socio-cultural changes generate in the art practice of its own time, critical ideas and creates a new imaginary. With Futurism, the speediness gets in the art world imaginary and it brings with itself new subjects like the plane, the car, and the frenzy of the city life. With the Pop-Art the action ray enlarged until the advertising world, the goods world, the real leading character of the consumer society. The "Digital Revolution" presents itself with radical changes like the above ones. The artistic omnivorous research, with very sensitive aerials, generates new signs, new symbols, and new maps to understand the direction of our culture. Laptop is the window, Desktop is the landscape, Cursor is the horizon The computer screen is like a gate opened on an open multiform Landscape built with knots (pop) and connections. The InfoSphere redefines the borders of our daily horizon: it shows us new perspectives, it transforms our way to catch the reality and it creates a new horizon to proceed with our look and our imagination. ßZanni's work is connected and compared with
the techno world which is part of million people daily life. The classic
artistic categories like the landscape or the portrait are used through
an acute and disillusioned view. The artist records the mutations caused
by technology in the individual and collective psychology and he transforms
them in the new icons of our time. PoP icons? Post Office Protocol or/and/not Point_Of_Presence icons ßzanni works with the most ancient artistic way, the painting combined with the most recent that is to say Internet. His research runs on two twin lines, doing a comparison between the tradition and contemporary life. His paintings (big dimension oil on canvas paintings) are precise and impersonal reproductions of desktop's icons and software's logos. The procedure he follows recalls the Pop Art period: with detached irony he takes inspiration from the glowing mass media world; the banal aspects and the daily life become art works. Even if the iconography is changed and it compares itself with new symbols, new myths and new signs. "ßZ: I paint the software which I use
to build my www projects." u _r what search engines find. ßzanni web projects don't have extraordinary technologies. They do not drive us in ipertextual labyrinths, without exits, like the majority of Net Art. His works are extremely minimal and bare from a formal point of view. But they are really well defined from the conceptual point of view. Starting from is domain (www.zanni.org ), considered by ßzanni his portrait (a portrait always in progress), to the "diptych" composed by u _r your c and u _r what search engines find. His consideration is focused on the human identity changes, produced by the computer and by his mediascape. For example, in u _r your c every user is in front of his hard disk like in front of a mirror, the user is obliged to think about it (and mirror himself). Day after day the hard disk stores up pieces of our personality and becomes an extension of our memory. It is a faithful proof of ourselves, of our interests, of our work, of our daily life. "u _r your c" (www.e-sm.org) is the perfect contemporary portrait (pc + ie5+). e-sm.org is a modern mirror soul. The eyes are no more the soul mirror of a person (often you don't know even the face of a person but only the email or the nickname). The computer and the hard disk become the soul mirror. For this reason the sentence "u _r your c". Beg With Style (www.begwithstyle.com) is an ironic
(and in some ways bitter) reflection about the New Economy, with its victories
but also with its failures. The e-loser (electronic loser, the loser of
new economy) are a well-defined social category. Beg With Style is a project
through which the e-losers can beg in every part of the world. In this
way the new losers can find a paradoxical redemption way, using the same
e-commerce mechanisms to beg. "VT: Your www projects are really minimal, almost low tech...they have a really conceptual approach to the medium… am I wrong?" "ßZ: You are right. They are really simple. They aren't too hi the. Because in my opinion it is not necessary. I think e-sm is perfect. It doesn't ask you too much time: a lot of people see it and the do not perceive that their hard disk is displayed while they are on line. I like to do low tech with hi-tech" Links suggested by the artist:
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