In concurrence with the Venice Architecture Biennale, Caffè Florian houses an interactive, participative installation to understand and design our future. Venice, May 2018 | (in)complete is an art installation by Aldo Cibic, a co-production of Caffè Florian presented in concurrence with the 2018 Venice Architecture Biennale, from May 25 to September 8, 2018.
The 2018 edition of Unica has artist Aldo Cibic participate with an installation that is also a research programme: (in)complete is a digital platform that allows us to investigate and understand relevant themes of our times. The art has been installed in the evocative Chinese Room, turned for the occasion in the meeting point for the real and the virtual.
Cibic’s art is a modern reinterpretation of a Venetian alcove: three walls made of tinted Plexiglas canes encircle a screen, which shows a digital platform in continuous evolution. Visitors will be asked to participate in an inquiry about current events on the themes of nature, society, technology, and the future of design. The installation is an extension of the Chinese Room and integrates with perfect sensitivity and harmony with the genius loci at Florian’s.
It is an example of how a distinctly modern piece of art may coexist beautifully with a piece of Venetian history. (in)complete is an interactive installation. A coloured, moving cloud is shown on monitors, illustrating the data that has been gathered thus far. Visitors will be invited to contribute anonymously their answers to 16 questions. Data will be fed into the system, elaborated, and visualized on the monitor in real time. Every questionnaire generates a unique 3D model for every respondent, who will receive a copy of the model via e-mail.
Participants will contribute to build collective intelligence, visualized in form of a coloured cloud in perpetual motion, changing as the data are fed into it. The (in) complete project arises from the themes that Aldo Cibic developed and tested for a year in Italian and foreign universities and research centers (among them: Politecnico di Milano, IUAV University of Venice, University of Rome “Tor Vergata”, IED – European Institute of Design in Milan, McGill University in Montréal in Canada).
Aldo Cibic spent the last year working in the Bay Area of San Francisco, in touch with the energies and stimuli of the Silicon Valley: one of the worldwide places where innovation and future take shape in the contamination between technology and freedom of thought. The set of questions included in the questionnaire have been formulated with the contribution of Cibic Workshop and the research center “Italy Innovation”.
Since the survey is not targeted just to experts, the aim was to create simple and direct questions, understandable by a wide audience, so as to generate a faithful representation of the generality of thoughts and experiences. The data obtained from the questionnaire are gradually collected in a database and processed thanks to an Application Programming Interface which allows to produce two types of epresentation:
1) The first (www.incomplete.design/en/data) transforms the data into percentages and graphs in real time. Thanks to the filters (enabling to know the age, origin and gender of those interviewed) it is possible to isolate information, so as to better focus the needs and – consequently – to determine the opportunities for designers who must answer to them.
2) The second visualization gives rise to the 3D cloud, whose evolving form is a realtime processing of the data saved in the database. The answers are combined with an intensity of color, which varies depending on whether they are positive or negative for each topic, while the distortion of the cloud’s surface is related to the variance of answers concerning the age. (www.incomplete.design/en/about-the-shape)
In an era of historical revolution in environment, society, and technology, (in)complete is a tool that uses data to investigate the spirit of our times. (in)complete was born as an opensource project in constant evolution, hence destined to be forever ‘incomplete’. Thanks to the data that will have been gathered over the course of three months, the project will enter its phase two as a platform for discussion: a participative space open to all that are willing to contribute – however much or however little. All to understand which actions we may undertake to imagine and plan sustainable future.
The questions asked for (in)complete are related to the theme of the 2018 Venice Architecture Biennale. The current and sixteenth edition of the Biennale, curated by Yvonne Farrell and Shelley McNamara of Grafton Architects, is title Freespace and is about the spirit of generosity and the sense for humanity that architecture has as one of its primary focus – the attention to the quality of space. A sense for humanity that reflects our responsibility and respect for nature and that explores the genius loci as a way to integrate culture and places. Source and images Courtesy of Nemo Monti.