Var Digital Art 2022

Digital Soul

Last year as well, Var Digital Art was among the protagonists of the Var Group Convention held at Palariccione on October 20 and 21, 2022, presenting two projects that delved into the concept of Digital Soul, employing Artificial Intelligence and digital technologies, consistently focusing on sensitivity concerning the digital world.

Immersive Tunnel

An exceptional 9-meter display composed of large LED walls that viewers can traverse, experiencing an immersive and astonishing journey.

The tunnel represents a Stargate between the physical and digital worlds, symbolizing a journey through time, encompassing present, past, and future, presenting the diverse meanings conveyed by the works of artists Leonardo Petrucci, Pamela Diamante, and Matteo Basilè, alternating during the two days of the Convention.

Generate Celestial Bodies: Exercises in Style
by Pamela Diamante

The video is a reflection on the future of advertising and the desire of some startups to transform the sky into a vast advertising billboard using an orbital display that will sponsor the most significant brands in consumer society. If the anthropocentrism inherent in humans portends a dystopian future where the shine of millennium-old stars will be eclipsed by luminous signs, the deprivation of the sense of sublimation derived from grappling with the infinite will also nullify the transcendental relationship in connecting with the consciousness of existence. In this monstrous otherness, it will be like becoming blind before the infinite. In the accompanying track, realized with composer Marco Malasomma, a visually impaired person describes the emotions felt while observing the starry sky.

Vortexy
by Leonardo Petrucci

VORTEXY is a loop animation of the M51 galaxy, also known as the Whirlpool Galaxy, rapidly transformed into a collection of cephalopods through Artificial Intelligence software.

The spiral motion adds to an enlargement of the galaxy's nucleus until it becomes a sea of black ink and eventually a marine landscape. The point of contact between the universe and the depths is the key to understanding much of Petrucci's research, closely tied to the alchemical world.

CO,
by Matteo Basilè

Two videos contain a set of digital paintings linked to the theme of Celeritas, understood as an ode to slowness on one hand and speed on the other, where a perfect balance between human communication and technology is found, reliving together in simple and ancient gestures like an embrace, a smile, a gaze, or a light touch.

Today, more than ever, there is a need for love, beauty, and stories that speak of us. We Italians, who every day transform into poets and navigators, between hashtags and megabytes traveling on digital highways; we who with our history redefine the human map of an ancient civilization projected into the future; we who need to remain connected to life always, everywhere, and better. Basilé titles these works for VDA with the formula 'C0', which, through the theory of special relativity, indicates the maximum speed at which all information can travel in the universe. Faced with these paintings at 600 frames per second, one is struck by the rarefied and timeless atmospheres, where the characters are immortalized in that unique and unrepeatable moment of meeting, bidding farewell, and getting emotional.

The Artists

Discover the artists who participated in VDA 2022 and read their biographies

Leonardo Petrucci
Grosseto, 1986

He studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome, graduating in 2009 with a thesis on the relationship between art and alchemy, a field that still characterizes his research. Since 2012, he has been working in his studio at the Pastificio Cerere in the San Lorenzo district of Rome. His artistic research revolves around themes that have always fascinated human beings due to the mystical and symbolic properties possessed by subjects such as Sacred Geometry, Alchemy, Kabbalah, and Astrology. The fundamental aspect of his works is the ability to intertwine these fields with more contemporary and scientific themes, such as Biology, Quantum Physics, and Astronomy, thus providing greater credibility to the overall vision.

Pamela Diamante
Bari, 1985


A former Corporal Major of the Italian Army, she graduated in Sculpture from the Academy of Fine Arts in Bari in 2016. She lives and works in Bari. Diamante's methodological approach is characterized by a constant critical analysis of phenomena that produce a perceptual alteration in our daily lives, present in the natural world, anthropic realm, new technologies, and the impact of information flows. The artworks present themselves as symbolic devices where the conceptual framework determines the representative languages that the artist often tends to hybridize, while maintaining for each element present in the work its references of meaning.

Matteo Basilé
Rome, 1974

He began his career in the mid-'90s and is among the first artists in Europe to merge art and technology. Basilé's research manages to reconcile seemingly irreconcilable ideas such as beauty and grotesque, real and surreal, natural and artificial in an unmistakable way.
Exploring the nature of human beings, the artist develops a narrative divided into successive chapters: What remains of the Transavanguardia (2006), The Saints are Coming (2007), Thisoriented (2009), Thishumanity (2010), Landing (2012), Unseen (2014), Pietra Santa (2016), Journey to the Center of the Earth (2017) Stardust (2018), Memento (2019), Mnemosyne (2021) Hybrida (2022).
A series of independent passages in which the artist confronts his perception of existence.
Basilé's research evolves as an interface between East and West (the artist lived almost 8 years in Southeast Asia), in a dialectic that operates as a situated collision between tradition and modernity, between sacred and profane. In this way, Basilé's glossary is based not only on signs and values (however timeless and multicultural) but also encompasses a totalitarian language where the union between dream, fantasy, and reality is no longer just the subject of the photographic shot but embodies a universally recognizable and limitless narrative. His profound exploration of the Self, the Other, and the Elsewhere not only deeply corresponds to his personal life experience but also simultaneously addresses the meaning of existence within the dynamics defining the modern process of globalization. He lives and works in Rome. His extensive exhibition activity consists of numerous solo and group exhibitions presented from 1994 to today, at art galleries, museums, and institutional venues in Italy and abroad. In 2009, he was one of the artists invited to exhibit at the Italian Pavilion for the 53rd Venice Biennale. In 2008, he was invited to the 15th Rome Quadriennale.

Collective work

An inclusive and collective artwork open to all those who participated in or followed the Convention! Digital Soul, by Antonio Barbieri, is the result of reworking the experiences lived during the event and was presented in November. It was born from the contributions of the participants and supported by technology and Artificial Intelligence. The artist reprocessed the keywords chosen by the audience to represent them in an artistic form.

Antonio Barbieri

His research aims to analyze the changes in form: how it interacts with the environment, is constructed, structured, and how it evolves over time and space. His works often contain a strong technological component that is frequently concealed. It remains in the background but is crucial for the development of a certain type of vision and to capture suggestions that would otherwise remain unexpressed.

This research requires him to delve into highly diverse themes and disciplines. Each time he adds a new layer of research, the artist must necessarily structure a work process from scratch, which leads him to significantly expand his range of scientific and technical knowledge. This includes studies on the applied evolution of phylogenetic trees or the construction of hypothetical natural forms emerging from the fusion of real elements, to examining the arrangement of atomic bonds in molecules related to plant coloring.
This degree of multidisciplinarity leads him to have a highly heterogeneous approach to the subject and to experiment with different materials.
The resulting works have a strong technological component but are always linked to a certain iconographic tradition.
In recent years, the focus has been on natural forms derived from data acquisition and, in general, on themes that develop and bring out the strengths of form in an evolutionary and universal context.