Centro di Cultura Contemporanea Strozzina
Palazzo Strozzi - Florence
in collaboration with Fabbrica Europa
from May 15th until June 30th 2008
Opening hours
Tue/Wed/Fri/Sat/Sun: 10am > 8pm
Thu: 10am > 11pm
Mon: closed
Exploded Views - Remapping Firenze is an interactive installation consisting of two conveyor belts and two large projection panels. Two participants can simultaneously run on individual tracks and physically move themselves through an interactive audio-visual 3D environment representing contemporary Florence in a way it never has been experienced before.
Marnix de Nijs, one of Netherlands most famous contemporary media artists, has been invited by the CCCS at Palazzo Strozzi to realize a site-specific sculptural intervention to be presented in May and June 2008 in the venues of the CCCS. De Nijs has based his artistic proposal on the juxtaposition of the aesthetic experience of today's Florence, a city characterized by its immense tourist flows. De Nijs proposes to convey Florence in a dream space making the use of the magnificent architectonical context an experience in absence of any visual human trace.
As much as the visual world presented will focus on the concept of emptiness and mere beauty, the additional level, the acoustic dimension, will again add a layer of presence, quoting and sampling soundtracks from movies shot in Florence during the last decades.
The acoustical layer will consist in a composition of sound recorded in the city of Florence itself mixed with sounds referring to movies shot in the capital of Tuscany.
The graphical effects the artist creates are directly being inspired by the Brunelleschi's non-perspective and perspective visual experiments.
The image material the public will experience will be generated in 3D using highly experimental technology currently developed at the Fraunhofer Institute of Darmstadt, Germany. De Nijs is the first artist using this state of the art technology as it makes it possible to combine a cinematographic quality of film with the interactivity of a gameengine.
Marnix de Nijs is a Rotterdam based artist who explores the dynamic clash between
bodies, machines and other media. Originally educated as a sculptor his works includes nowadays mainly interactively experienced machines that play with the perception and control of image and sound. Marnix de Nijs is internationally recognized as one of the frontrunners in sculptural interactive art. His work has been presented at all biggest international festivals as well as museums such as the DEAF festival in Rotterdam, the DAF festival in Tokyo, the 6th Shanghai Biennial, the ARS Electronica festival in Linz, the Itau Cultural museum in Sao Paulo, the Transmediale festival in Berlin and in the Millennium Museum in Beijing. His sculptures are currently being evaluated for the acquisition to the permanent collection at the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam.
In 2005, de Nijs has received the 'Witteveen & Bos Art and Technology award' for his
complete contribution to the field of Art and Technology. He also received a honourable mentions from 'Vida 5.0 Art and A-life award' in Madrid, from the 'Transmediale Award' in Berlin, from the 'Prix Ars Electronica' in Linz on two occasions and in the year 2000 he won first prize at the ' Art Future 2000 Award' in Taipei.
The exhibition is also part of the programme of the 2nd edition of Olandiamo?, festival of Dutch arts and creativity, organized by the Dutch University Institute for Art History in Florence (NIKI) and the Cultural Office of the Netherlands Embassy in Rome, on the occasion of the 50 years of the activity of the Institute.
