SKIN / TONES
Live media performance, 2017
Concept
A landscape that always tells a different story, my skin, is scanned with a digital microscope showing details that look like maps of unknown planets. An infinite variety of colors, textures and shapes, patterns and imperfections - sometimes beautifully frightening - are transformed into digital information, producing live generative sounds and visuals.
I’m naked in front of two neon lights so that the audience can see only the outline of my body. I pass a digital microscope all over my body, scanning the different textures of my skin (hair, lips, tongue...).
The custom software I created with Isadora, calculates the average color of each segment of my skin, transforming the data flow into generative sound and video (the different sounds and samplings blending and mixing according to the mix of red, green, and blue - the RGB code - recorded in real-time by the microscope). The visuals projected in front of me are the result of the image coming from the microscope, processed into mesmerizing kaleidoscopic renderings, turning the smallest imperfection into live art. Scars, wounds, wrinkles, and stretch marks become mandala, crystals, jewels.
The performance plays ironically on the concept of biometrics, as the study of that system of variables that could allow reliable identification of individuals, through fingerprint, retina, or iris recognition devices, conversely celebrating the chaos, the mistake, the unpredictability of individual identity.
The color of my skin, analyzed by the microscope lens and processed by the digital flow, becomes an endless and unpredictable variety of green, red, and blue combinations, losing any possible connection to the Cartesian reality visible to the naked eye. As well, under the digital microscope, the female and the male bodies lose their sexual identity.
Skin / Tones is a visual and sound celebration of cellular life.
Documentation
Shows
Roma3 University of Rome - 2016
Fonlad Digital Art Festival, Coimbra - 2017
Guggenheim Museum for MEM Festival, Bilbao - 2017
Instants Video festival, Marseilles - 2017
TF18 Biennial of Performance Art & Noise, London - 2018
Villa Trabia Palermo, for MANIFESTA12 collateral event (curated by Lori Adragna) - 2018
Casa Internazionale delle Donne, Rome - 2018
PAErsche Performance Art Festival, Cologne - 2018
RED personal exhibition, Rome - 2018
MACRO Museum, Rome - 2018
CYBORG Fatale personal exhibition, Bologna - 2019
Other Identity Biennale, Genova - 2019
Ibrida Festival, Forlì - 2019
Credits
Concept and art direction - Francesca Fini
Media
Video-recap by Macro Museum - open link
Review on Corrispondencia Fantasma (Spanish) - open link
Video-recap by Cuerpo Y Territorio - open link
Website of the project